During the past eighteen years I have made certain observations on the cliff formation on the east of Brighton and on the sections successively brought into view by repeated falls of the cliff. The chief item to be noted from them is, that as the cliff wears back, the base-platform of chalk grows in height, that is, the old surface of the chalk dips towards the south. Also, that the layer of sand which Prestwich found above the chalk grew thinner and thinner, until it has now completely disappeared. At the same time the raised beach has grown in thickness from 1½ feet to 12 feet.

The difficulties, which the palæontologist encounters in attempting the interpretation of fossil organic remains are numerous, especially when compared with the task of the zoologist in the study of recent forms. In a fossil, for instance, the soft parts of the animal are wanting, while the endo- or exoskeleton is often remarkably dissimilar from that of its nearest living allies. Furthermore, the object he has to deal with has undergone mineralization, more or less completely, so that its appearance is greatly altered. But most frequently the object placed before him is only a fragment of the hard part of some animal which he is nevertheless called upon to identify at once.

More than twenty-three years have now passed since Dr. Kidston published his memoir on the fossil flora of the Somerset and Bristol Coal-field, and in the meanwhile no further additions to our knowledge have been made. Kidston's paper was chiefly concerned with the plant-remains of the southern or Radstock portion of the basin. Those from the northern or Bristol area have only been studied incidentally. This would seem quite natural on account of the greater size and industrial importance of the Radstock Coal Series, and from the fact that this locality has been long known to yield the finest and best preserved impressions of fossil plants to be found in any coal-field in the British Isles. The collieries in the Bristol district are comparatively few and smaller, fossil plants being much scareer and less well preserved.

Capping a small patch of London Clay on the highest part of Bostall Common (234 O.D.), there is a ‘drift’ that presents peculiarities identical with part of the gravel on Shooters Hill (2 miles distant) at 424 O.D.

Zoœcia large, subpyriform, with broad margins sloping slightly inwards and expanding at the foot into a short front wall; areas elliptical, length ·5 to ·75 mm., breadth ·31 to ·45 mm., tapering towards the head, across which stretches a slight internal shelf, which straightens the apparent outline; from the edge of this shelf hangs a stout oval ring, which connects it with the floor of the zoœcium; zoœcial boundaries distinct.

Since the publication of Charles Darwin's memorable monograph on the Fossil Lepadidæ (Palæontographical Society, 1851) little has been written on the British Cretaceous Cirripedes. Among the thirteen species of Scalpellum which Darwin figured and described, ten are British, and, so far as I am aware, only one, Scalpellum attenuatum, has since been added to their number. Several species have, however, subsequently been described from Foreign Cretaceous Rocks.

A small collection of fossils was made a few years ago by Mr. V. M. Turnbull from a cutting on the Alston Road, near Melmerby, and the author has already described a new species of Lichas (L. melmerbiensis) which was included amongst them. Several more new species of trilobites and other groups are now described, and the complete list of the fauna is as follows:—.

During the autumn of 1909, I made a short excursion into the Bridgend district and examined the Avonian sequence near Llantrisant. The present note embodies the results of a few traverses and suggests a correlation with the sequence already established at other points of the South-West Province.

The Christianburg and Akyma deposits afford excellent examples of the highly aluminous or bauxitic type of laterite formation. They here occur as parts of a residuary deposit derived from the decomposition in situ of an igneous rock, probably a porphyrite or a tuff, an almost pure quartz-sand, and masses of bauxite containing in the more aluminous varieties from 92·6 to 94·4 per cent. of the hydrates of alumina and in the ferruginous ones 64·6 per cent. of the hydrates of alumina with about 24 per cent. of the oxides and hydrates of iron.

On the occasion of a recent visit to the quarry in the Great Oolite at Milton-under-Wychwood, which has become known amongst geologists as —Groves' Quarry, Milton”, Mr. E. T. Paris, F.C.S., and I were disappointed to find that no quarrying operations were in progress and that apparently they had ceased for good.

The phenomena of ‘plate-crushing’ in the course of the growth of the ambulacra of the regular Echinoids have for many years been utilized for purposes of classification of those forms, but the similar features which exist among some of the irregular types have not been studied in such detail as to render them systematically useful. It is with a view to showing that the structure of the ambulacra in one group of the Echinoidea Irregularia can be relied upon as an index of the relationships of the various genera, that this note has been written. It makes no pretence at completeness, as the material and time available have not been sufficient to allow of an exhaustive study. But the results of those observations that have been made seem to indicate that among the Holectypoida it should be possible, with the aid of zonal collecting, to trace genetic series among the various species, and perhaps to bridge the gulfs existing between the genera, by a study of their ambulacral plating.

Dr. Hans Beck has adduced an example of a volcano which, according to him, has been formed independently of a fissure. The volcano pierces the centre of a faulted block, the Herdubreid, in Iceland, and on the vertical fault-faces there is no sign of any fissure. The example is probably unique in the world, and seems at first sight to negative the hypothesis that the escape of gases which tear through the earth's crust and form the chimneys of volcanoes is in the first place initiated by a fracture; on closer examination, however, the fact that the volcano stands in close relation to the faults which bound the horst, and the many cases which are known to occur where a fracture in the earth's crust may be healed at the surface so that the rocks about the fracture are subsequently more resistant than before, seem to point to the Herdubreid volcano being a normal fissure-formed volcano, only that it stands in the same relation to the fracture as a parasitic cone stands to the central crater. In other words, the chimney is an escape vent leading below the surface to one of the bounding faults of the horst.

Zoarium composed of a group of branches of equal size diverging in a fan-shaped manner in nearly the same plane from a single short somewhat stouter stem; the branches originate and increase by repeated bifurcation, which takes place at uneven intervals proximally, and most frequently near the stem where the branches also are less regularly disposed and somewhat flexuous; but further from the base the bifureation is rare and more regular, and the distal portions of the branches are nearly straight and sub-parallel or only very slightly divergent. Zoœcial openings present only on one side; zoœcia arranged in 3–4 longitudinal rows, the outer row on each side composed of regularly disposed equidistant zoœcia of equal size and placed alternately; peristomes prominent, laterally projecting out-wards as short sharply triangular spines directed forwards and situated about one to one-and-a-half times the diameter of the branches apart; zoœcia in the one or two inner longitudinal rows without prominent peristomes, opening obliquely on the face of the branches, smaller than the lateral rows, and somewhat irregularly arranged. Reverse face of branches non-celluliferous, minutely pitted.

A Dyke of pre-Tertiary age is exposed in the lower course of the Usway Burn, a tributary of the Coquet. It is intruded among the Cheviot igneous rocks, and crosses the burn in a somewhat northeasterly direction. In hand-specimens the rock appears black or dark brown with a sub-vitreous lustre, and contains porphyritic crystals which are quite visible to the unaided eye. It weathers a bright red colour and even the fresh portions are streaked with red veins of agate.

On pages 20–2 and 99–105 of the Geology of the Gold Fields of British Guiana I gave a condensed account of the residual earths derived from the gradual decomposition of igneous rocks in situ which characterize wide areas ia British Guiana as well as in the neighbouring countries of Venezuela, Dutch Guiana, French Guiana, and Brazilian Guiana. This deposit forms in many places a widespread very thick blanket-like coating to the igneous rocks from which it is derived, and owing in many places to its striking resemblance in general properties to the typical Indian formation described by Buchanan in 1807 it has been alluded to by many authors and by numerous mining engineers as ‘laterite’. I gave on p. 101 two analyses of lateritic deposits which I selected from many I had made as showing the general composition of the earths. Unfortunately I omitted to show in them separately, as I had done in the original analyses, the proportions of silica present as quartz and of that present in a combined state. If I had done this it would have been seen that the earths contained but little combined silica and a relatively high proportion of alumina presumably present in the state of hydrate. For instance, in the Tumatumari sample which I collected myself from a deep cutting in the laterite lying on the diabase of the Tumatumari cataracts a few feet only above the surface of the unaltered rock, out of 51·76 per cent. of silica 49·35 is in the form of quartz, leaving 2·41 per cent. in the combined state in the presence of 24·55 per cent. of alumina.

Étel is situated on the west of the Megalithic district of which Carnae is the centre. It stands about 2 kilometres from the sea on the Rivière d'Étel. This so-called river is really an arm of the sea, which drains the extensive estuarine basin to the north-east, which is, in its way, almost another Morbihan (Little Sea) similar to the well-known one farther east. The tide rushes into the latter at a rate of from 7 to 11 knots per hour, at neap and spring tides respectively, and its ingress into and egress from the Rivière d'Étel cannot be much less. M. P. Le Strat, who has been much at sea in different parts of the world, considered that the incoming tide was rushing in at a rate of 7 or 8 knots an hour under the bridge of Lorrois, where the river narrows, when we passed it on October 11, 1909. The channel of the Rivière d'Étel is thus kept permanently open, and ships of from 50 to 150 tons are engaged in the tunny fishery and smaller boats in the sardine trade. Messrs. Peneau have a sardine-curing establishment at La Magoire, just opposite, across the river (Diagram, Text-fig. 1, p. 7).

J. de C. Sowerby (1836, p. 335) founded two new species of, Pollicipes from the Gault of Folkestone. To the one, based on a carina and tergum, he gave the name P. lœvis (p. 335, pl. xi, fig. 5); to the other, based on a rostrum and one of the latera of the lower whorl, the name P. unguis (p. 335, pl. xi, fig. 5*). He also referred a carina and tergum from the Upper Greensand of Blackdown to P. lœvis (p. 340, pl. xvi, fig. 1), but published no description of them.

The town of Dolgelley lies slightly outside the main tract of gold-bearing country of Merionethshire, but it forms a convenient headquarters from which to visit the various gold-mines and auriferous lodes. The Dolgelley Gold-belt lies within the area covered by the quarter-sheets 27 N.E., 27 S.E., 32 S.E., 33 N.W., 33 N.E., 33 S.W., 36 N.W., 36 N.E. of the 6 inch Ordnance Survey maps of Merionethshire. It is on the north side of the estuary of the Mawddach, extending from the sea at Barmouth to the locality of Gwynfynydd on the north-east. The belt forms the south-eastern flank of a range of high ground sloping down to the south and south-east from the mountains of Rhinog, Diphwys, and Garn. It is drained by several tributaries of the Mawddach, of which the principal are the Afons Hirgwm, Cwm-llechen, Cwm-mynach, Wnion, Las, Gamlan, Eden, and Gain.

“In a trough from 2 to 10 kilometres wide and 100 to 300 metres deep lies the Nile, meandering through a flood plain formed by yearly deposits of silt brought down from the Abyssinian table-land by the Blue Nile and the Atbara. This trough was determined in the first instance by fractures of the crust which caused a strip of country from about Edfu (lat. 25° N.) to Cairo to be depressed, leaving the plateau standing high above it, just as the Red Sea and the gulfs of Suez and Akaba were formed, probably about the same epoch. This interference with the drainage of the country doubtless produced a series of lakes in the low-lying area, while the drainage of the eastern plateau commenced to excavate the valleys which now exist as dry desert wadies, their development being in many cases far from complete, as shown by the cliffs which interrupt the slope of the valley when a harder bed of rock than usual is met with.

The Ross of Mull is a comparatively low-lying peninsula exposed to the storms and swept by gales from the Atlantic. On these rocky shores are occasional stretches of sand which frequently have been driven inland, forming dunes and patches of blown sand at intervals around the coast. Sometimes the sand is forced up the cliffs and deposited more than 100 feet above the sea, and there are places in the centre of the peninsula where the blown shell-material is quite a noticeable constituent in the soil.