At the present stage of the controversy, it may seem, to those who have read carefully the paper of M. Marcou in the March Number of this Magazine, that very little remains to be said. Yet, however much it is to be regretted, it must be feared that insular prejudice still finds place with English geologists, and prevents them from seeing so clearly as they otherwise might do the full bearing of the evidence which we possess. I have thought, therefore, that at the present juncture it would be useful if one gave a short historical résumé of a few facts, taken partly from the introduction to Geinitz's great Monograph on the Dyas. The title of this work is of importance as an index of the stage at which the battle between the followers of Murchison in this country and the advocates of what we may call German views had arrived in the year 1862, when Geinitz's great work was published in Leipzig. Some years before this, Murchison had propounded his view of a “Palæozoic Trias” in his Siluria, and subsequently he went over a good portion of Central Germany with Prof. Morris, and on his return gave to the Geological Society his long paper on the Thüringen and Hartz country.

The occurrence of two Archæan groups in Shropshire is now well known to geologists. The chain of hills which strikes to the south-west from Lilleshall, north-east of Wellington, to the region south of Church-Stretton, is mainly composed of bedded volcanic rocks; but gneissic and granitoid types have been recognized at the Ercal and at Primrose Hill, the elevations forming the opposite extremities of the Wrekin, and a small exposure was detected near Hope Bowdler, east of Church-Stretton. A second axis of the old rocks, ranging parallel to the Wrekin chain, consists of volcanic ejecta and highly indurated grits, which are probably to be referred to the younger of the two Archæan groups hitherto recognized in the county. The relations between the volcanic and the gneissic systems is clearly defined by the Charlton Hill (see map) conglomerate (a band in the volcanic series), which contains numerous well-rounded pebbles of rock precisely similar to the granitoid gneiss of Primrose Hill. This fact implies a considerable break between the two groups.

In recent Numbers of the Geological Magazine has appeared a paper by the Rev. O. Fisher, “On Faults, Jointing, and Cleavage,” which, it seems to me, should not be left to stand unchallenged. It is one of those in which mathematical symbols are made to do duty for arguments. Some idea is started, a few W's and P's are scattered about, an equation is written down, it leads to nothing, and then the conclusion is triumphantly reached. Sometimes, however, there is no conclusion at all; but statements come in incidentally which will hereafter be quoted with the introduction “I have shown.” Surely there must be many geological birds too old to be caught by such chaff; but the “Magazine” is also for the nestlings. Such papers, too, are otherwise harmful, for the wideawake soon learn that credit may be gained by work unfinished, and speculations that are crude, and they are tempted so to seek it rather than by harder labour. So goes our science down and loses caste.

[The following list of localities in New Zealand where the remains of the Dinornis have been discovered has been most obligingly drawn up for me by Mr. Charles Smith, an old resident in New Zealand, and I gladly publish it as a useful list for reference. —Edit. G. M.]