For more than a quarter of a century the Tertiary geology of Burma has been the subject of investigation from the point of view of the petroleum resources of the country. A vast amount of detailed information must be stored up in the private files of the various oil companies operating in Burma, and it is a source of continual regret to the geologist that at least some of this information—much of which has great scientific but little commercial value—cannot be made public. Although there exists Dr. Noetling's important but misleading monograph on the supposed “Miocene Fauna of Burma”, published in the Palæontographia Indica, 1901, it is only within the last decade that the Tertiary stratigraphy has been seriously considered from a palæontological standpoint, and for this progress the officers of the Geological Survey of India are almost entirely responsible. In this direction immensely valuable results have already been obtained, though the study is scarcely more than in its infancy.

The specimens here described were obtained by the writer from a pocket in the surface of the Silurian Slates about 200 yards to the north of Gillet Brae, exposed during the preliminary excavation for Mr. Delany's quarry (the Horton Lime Works) in 1889. The quarry is situated on the right bank of the Ribble, opposite Horton village. The site of the exposure is now buried under tip heaps and there is little chance of further sections being exposed.

In studying the evolution and distribution of the Proboscidea and the arrival of man in Great Britain (Osborn, 1922, 1922a, 1922b), the writer has recently had occasion to review the faunal researches of Lydekker and Newton, and the collection of Mr. A. C. Savin, in connexion with the very interesting question of the geologic correlation of Great Britain with the Upper Pliocene fauna of Europeto the south-east, and of the Scandinavian Glaciation I on the north, with the advent of the northern forest, the boreal, and the Arctic mammal fauna of Great Britain.

During spring and summer of 1915, an expedition was sent to the peninsula of Lower California (Baja California) by a Swiss Colonization Company. The scientific work was under the direction of the writer, who enjoyed excellent assistance from his friends Prof. Dr. Ad. Hartmann, of Aarau, and Top. Eng. E. Kluth, of Zurich. Although little time was available for stratigraphic studies, some of our observations of that almost unknown country seem to be worthy of publication.

The specimens submitted to me were obtained by Dr. E. O. Teale in the Tanga Hinterland in the Tanganyika Territory from beds assigned by Bornhardt to the Stormberg series of the Karroo system. Tanga is situated approximately on Lat. 5° S. Owing to the imperfect state of preservation and the fragmentary nature of the specimens, which occur as impressions on a hard lazninated arenaceous shale, it is impossible to express with confidence an opinion on the precise geological horizon of the beds or to assign all the fossils to a definite position in the vegetable kingdom.

The following brief notes compiled mainly some years ago will, it is hoped, convey information supplementary to that provided in the Memoir on the Geology of Eastern Fife (Appendix, pt. ii), and are to be regarded as useful only where they furnish particulars not already available from that source.

Barrettia, the most abnormal of the Rudistæ, and among the strangest of all the mollusca, was first found in Jamaica by Lucas Barrett, F.G.S., in the year 1861. The specimens were ably described by S. P. Woodward, F.G.S., in 1862. The original specimens, now in the British Museum of Natural History, consist of polished transverse and longitudinal sections of the upper part of the shell, the latter showing the junction of the upper and lower valves, and a cross section of the young shell near the apex of the lower valve. They were called Barrettia monilifera in honour of the discoverer. The locality where they were found was on the banks of the Back River, a tributary of the Rio Grande, about 15 miles from the coast in Portland Parish in the north-east of the island. The rock is described as a hard, grey limestone which occurs in bands of a few inches to a yard in thickness, subordinate to many hundreds of feet of shale which graduate up into other grey shales of the Eocene, followed by white limestones of Miocene age.

The contents of this paper record the results of a detailed examination of certain extensive areas of dolomitization in the Carboniferous Limestone of the Midlands. During the period 1912 to 1914 the faunal succession in the Carboniferous Limestone bordering the Leicestershire Coalfield chiefly claimed my attention, but many problems associated with dolomitization arose in connexion with that work and have been discussed in a previous paper. Being thus introduced to a study of metasomatism which yielded interesting results in Leicestershire, I turned my attention to the larger Carboniferous Limestone outcrop in Central Derbyshire, where a considerable thickness of dolomitized beds awaited description. The question as to whether the dolomitization in Derbyshire affected material on similar horizons or exhibited other features analogous to those of the dolomitization of the Leicestershire outcrops afforded considerable scope for investigation. Additional incentive to this particular study lay in the fact that dolomitization in the Carboniferous Limestone of this country had not been treated as a principal theme, but had been briefly described in notes occurring in papers by various authors, whose main object was the elucidation of other problems such as faunal succession.

It is well known that the existing flora of Western Caucasia is of great interest from the point of view of the origin of the floras of Europe and Asia, as in it have survived to this day numerous types of plants which were widely spread over the Northern Hemisphere during Tertiary times. The Palæontological history of the Tertiary Flora of the Caucasus is very meagre. The Pliocene Flora of the Caucasus is discussed by me in my work on the presence of the leaves of the recent Caucasus beech-tree (Fagus orientalis Lipsky) and some other species of deciduous trees and shrubs in the Pliocene beds, the so-called “Aktschagyl Series”, of the Elisapethpol province. It is worthy of remark that the wood was found in seams interstratified with beds rich in well-preserved Pliocene shells, which could be determined with certainty. It was proved that in the southern Caucasus there existed in Pliocene times the same species of beech as at present.

Professor Sir Edgeworth David was born in 1858 at St. Fagan's Rectory, near Cardiff, and was educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford, becoming head of the school and captain of the football and boat clubs. In 1876 he was elected to the Senior Classical Scholarship at New College, Oxford, and graduated in 1880, having won further distinctions in classics and in athletics. He had included in his studies a course of geology under Professor Prestwich, and had commenced in South Wales his life-long research upon the problems of glaciation. His geological studies were continued in London under Professor Judd, at the Royal School of Mines, and in 1882 he was appointed to the Geological Survey of New South Wales, under the late Mr. C. S. Wilkinson. On his arrival in Sydney in November of that year he made an investigation of the very fossiliferous Silurian beds of Yass, and shortly afterwards commenced the study of the rich tin-bearing deep-leads and alluvium of New England, completing a large quarto memoir thereon in 1887. His duties led him to visit many pirts of the State, but attention was now devoted chiefly to the Survey of the Hunter River Coalfield, which has occupied much of his time ever since; indeed, part only of his researches thereon has yet appeared. This investigation has been of immense value both economically and scientifically. The western portion, or Maitland coalfield, the extension of which was discovered during his survey, has proved the most important coalfield in Australasia.

The writings of Charles Darwin, Renard, Mellis, Reinisch, and others have already made the salient features of lonely Ascension and St. Helena accessible, if not familiar, to geologists— St. Helena has won the surprised interest of biologists, who have long speculated on the origin of its unique species of plants and animals. From each island collections of rocks have been made. Following Renard's well-known contribution to the petrography of Ascension (“Challenger” Reports, Physics and Chemistry, vol. ii, 1889), Reinisch's paper in the Report of the Deutsche Siidpolar Expedition (1901–3) gives a large number of petrographical. descriptions, including a goodly number of chemical analyses. No adequate geological map of either island has, however, been published, nor, indeed, was this really possible before the British Admiralty had issued the greatly improved chart (No. 1691) of Ascension, in 1910, with corrections added to the year 1921, and the British War Office had issued its excellent contour-map of St. Helena, dated 1904. Each map is on a large scale. Even, though lacking contour lines, the Ascension chart was obviously to be of service to anyone attempting a reconnaisance survey of that island.

During the construction by the Hastings Corporation of a new arterial road to th.e north of St. Leonards, near Silver Hill, not far from the Old Eoar Waterfall, and close to the quarry dubbed by Mantell the “Iguanodon Necropolis”, the cutting passed through some sandy beds of the Wadhurst Clay Series. In these there was one particular stratum that had been a pale blue concretionary calciferous sandstone, but which had been altered for the most part by the percolation of water into a rusty-brown ferruginous sandrock.1 Numerous large, typical concretions occurred in it, but besides these Mr. H. L. Tucker, who was then acting as engineer to the contractors for the work, noticed the presence of certain huge spiral bodies that seemed to differ from the ordinary concretions. These bodies generally lay in cavities, or “moulds” in the surrounding sandstone, but unfortunately no part of these moulds was preserved.

Norfolk.—The so-called Red Chalk is visible in two quarries at Snettisham, but the exposures there are less favourable for investigation than the well-known section to be seen in the cliff north of Hunstanton. The thin rock-bands there comprised under this title have given rise to much discussion amongst geologists, whose views have been summarized by Mr. W. Whitaker and by the late A. J. Jukes-Browne. The Red Rook, not more than 4 feet thick at this locality, has been variously referred by different authors to the whole Gault formation, to the Upper Gault, to the Upper Greensand, and to the Lower Chalk. So long ago as 1869, the Rev. T. Wiltshire published an illuminating paper in which he described the characters of the three beds that can be recognized as composing the red band. Chiefly on the basis of the fossils found in the two lower beds he made a correlation with the Upper Gault of Folkestone. The late Professor Judd and Professor C. Barrois emphasized the fact that the Red Rock is unconformable with the underlying Greensand, but conformable with the overlying Chalk. Professor Barrois was so impressed by this fact and by the unequivocal character of the fauna that he correlated the red beds with his zone of Ammonites inflatus (Upper Gault).