The Tablazos or Quaternary raised beach deposits of the West Coast of South America have attracted attention for a considerable time, as evidence of recent changes in sea-level. Early accounts of those occurring on the more southerly portion of the Continent are given by d'Orbigny in his Voyage dans l'Amérique méridionale and by Charles Darwin in his Observations on the Geology of South America. The Tablazos of Peru received considerable attention in Dr. Bosworth's work (1) and a brief sketch of the fauna was given.

Seven beads were found, details of which are given below:—

Bead No. 1.—Pale cobalt-coloured annular glass bead. Weight, 5·21 g.; sp. gr., 2·412. There are two varieties of this bead which are very similar: one is of the La Tene period, and the other is Saxon. There has been a small difference of specific gravity in practically all the specimens I have examined, but it is so slight that I do not think it is safe to trust as a means of dating them. At the same time it has been fairly consistent, as in twelve specimens from different sites dated to the early period in Britain, France, and the Mediterranean the specific gravity has been below 2·46, and the only other early specimen I have tested was 2·485. On the other hand, all the beads that I have tested which I know to be Saxon have a specific gravity of 2·485 or over. I have, however, recently seen a bead from Lincolnshire with the same specific gravity as this No. 1, which, I think, is probably Saxon. Blue annular Saxon beads of this type, but usually smaller, are more common in the eastern counties than in any other part of England.

GUTENBERG is not a geologist but, as a geophysicist, he is directly interested in several of the broader questions of geology. He has been impressed by the simple way in which Wegener’s drift theory seems to solve many geological problems, but he finds it impossible to accept that theory in its entirety. He has, therefore, tried to formulate another theory which is more in accordance with geophysical data, and which still solves the same geological problems. “Continental Spreading,” a name suggested by Dr. Harold Jeffreys, expresses very clearly its dominant feature.

THE dyke which is to be described is of interest for two reasons: first, because a dyke actually cutting the limestones of Derbyshire has never been recorded, and secondly on account of the xenoliths which it contains.

There is reason to suppose that a rise and fall of any part of the earth's surface may be due to anticlines travelling through the crust either (a) at the depth at which isostatic compensation becomes effective, which may be likened to the “surface” on which the crust “floats”, or (6) at a less depth, in a layer which becomes molten through the action of radioactivity.

In the case of (a) the cause would seem to be mountain-building in the crust above and the anticlines are outflows of rock-material: the rise and fall may be about equal: there is also some slight reason to suppose that an oscillation, analogous to that occurring when a buoyant object is thrown into water, with the production of a series of waves of diminishing amplitude, has occurred, but it is not yet clear whether such an oscillation is possible.

In the case of (6) the cause of the anticlines is the collapse of a portion of the crust which squeezes out plastic material below: a small rise is followed by a long, slow fall: a rise in one region is accompanied by a fall in an adjacent region : areas may be raised into domes by collapse of surrounding areas, in which case the central area will be a seat of vulcanicity.

During the last two years the Coventry City Corporation has put down three boreholes, for water supply purposes, near Mount Nod Farm, on the north side of Broad Lane, 2 miles 5 furlongs W. 6° N. of the centre of the city.

In his posthumous paper on the geology of the Island of Raasay H. B. Woodward (1) remarks: “On the fore-shore south of Oskaig Point, the modern beach is cemented into a conglomerate.” The unique mineralogical composition of this conglomerate, which has been collected in the course of a study of the Tertiary igneous rocks of Raasay and neighbouring islands, warrants the following note.

The complete sequence of Fenland deposits at St. Germans consists of five clays interbedded with four peats; the whole is apparently of post-Glacial age, and the later beds at least were laid down in historic times. Fourteen specimens were collected from the clays, and all yielded foraminifera. Forty-one species of these are indigenous, five are derived from the Chalk, and twelve from the Kimmeridge Clay. Of the indigenous species nearly all are forms tolerant of brackish-water, while species intolerant of this are almost lacking. From this fact and from the presence of many fragments of peat in the clays it is concluded that these are of brackish-water origin. From the presence of a proportion of micaceous silt in many of the clays, accompanied by and correlated with foraminiferal species less tolerant of brackish water, occasional ingress of estuarine water is presumed.

In the neighbourhood of Pont-erwyd and Devil’s Bridge in North Cardiganshire, the Afon Rheidol flows through a series of gorges; and it seems probable that these have not all of them the same history.

THE Warren House Series consists of lavas which belong to a sodic suite, being rhyolites, keratophyres, and spilites. The rhyolites have a fine-grained micrographic groundmass, and some contain phenocrysts of quartz, orthoclase, anorthoclase, and plagioclase felspar. Epidotization of the rocks has occurred, but it is the felspathic and femic constituents of the groundmass which have suffered alteration and not the felspar phenocrysts, the action not being intense enough to affect the latter. The keratophyres consist essentially of small lath-shaped albite crystals which give a trachytic texture to the rock. The spilites are more basic, vesicular, and variolitic or sub-ophitic in texture, while some of them show pillowstructure in the field. The keratophyres and the spilites also exhibit varying degrees of epidotization. Pyroclastic rocks are not very common, but a few interesting varieties have been noted. Intrusions of dolerite occur within the lavas. One type is an ophitic dolerite, which when fresh probably contained olivine. Another type is now an epidiorite. Both these types have been epidotized, the epidiorite to such an extent that it passes into an epidote-uralite rock in places.

The object of the present paper is to describe certain metamorphic rocks which occur in the eastern cordillera of the Ecuadorian Andes, immediately to the east of the interandine basin of Cuenca (Fig. 1). The latter region contains a series of late Tertiary volcanic breccias, followed by hard white shales which are overlain in their turn, and possibly in part replaced laterally by the massive, white, saccharoidal and tuffaceous sandstones of Azogues, in the composition of which rearranged volcanic ash and detritus play a large part (Fig. 2). These beds, originally described collectively as the Azogues Sandstone by Wolf (1),1 were considered to be of Wealden age upon the evidence of a meagre lacustrine fauna discovered by the same author, and subsequently described by Dr. Geinitz, of Dresden, which were found in the more shaly sandstones of the group. A more extensive collection of fossils made by the present writers from the same beds and localities was submitted to Dr. W. B. Marshall, of the United States National Museum, who reports that it consists largely of new genera and species, and that the age cannot be later than the Pliocene, and it may be earlier (2). These beds are thrown generally into a series of relatively gentle folds, having a north-south trend, but occasionally they are found in a more highly disturbed condition as, for example, on the Biblian-Azogues road, where they are sometimes seen to be vertical. The strike of the folding shows that it is a product of pressure from the same direction as that which accompanied the main Andean uplift.

The Trilobites, which include one new species, here described were collected by the writer from Akpatok Island 1 in Ungava Bay while on the Oxford Hudson Straits Expedition in 1931. The single species of graptolite found there has already been described 2; in addition to the trilobites, there are brachiopods, corals, crinoids, gasteropods, cephalopods, and ostracods, which still await identification. The following species of trilobites are here recorded: Isotelus iowensis Owen, Megalaspis beckeri Slocom, Illaenus eucentrus Troedsson, Illaenus groenlandicus Troedsson, Bumastus sp., Calymene cf. fayettensis Slocom, Calymene cf. meeki Foerste, Encrinurus sp., Ceraurus horridus Troedsson, Ceraurus tuberosus Troedsson, Ceraurinus icarus (Billings), Ceraurinus daedalus sp. nov., Pterygometopus fredricki Slocom.

THERE has been considerable uncertainty about the true characters of the species Illaenus bowmanni Salter, and many foreign palaeontologists have consequently found it difficult to institute a close comparison of it with other species and have suspected its composite nature. As Holm and Warburg have remarked, the species is badly characterized, and some important critical features, such as the shape of the caudal fascia, are ill-defined or not clearly described in the definitions or well represented in the figures. The poorness of the specimens is largely accountable for these omissions. A recent detailed investigation which the author has been enabled to make of the specimens used by Salter, Portlock, and McCoy in drawing up a definition of the species, together with the examination of many other specimens ascribed to it from the original and other localities, throws some useful light on the subject and helps to clear up some of the obscure points, but it also shows that most of the earlier and current synonymies and references which have been published from time to time are untrustworthy and inaccurate.

The records of fossil fishes in the Denbighshire Coalfield appear even more scanty than those of the molluscs, and one of the first references1 is to a fish-bed in the roof of the “ Queen Coal ” at Llay Hall Colliery in the north of Denbighshire. This coal is 300–400 feet from the bottom of the Middle Coal Measures, and is known as the “ Premier ” in Flintshire, and in South Denbighshire as the “ Wall and Bench ”. Throughout Denbighshire it is the lowest generally worked seam of the productive measures, as the coals below it are few and, in any case, too thin for profitable operation, except when in association with pottery clay.