British Carboniferous corals belonging to the Fasciculophyllum omaliusi group are usually erroneously referred to the genera Zaphrentis Rafinesque & Clifford and Densiphyllum Dybowski. None of the species usually attributed to Densiphyllum is congeneric with that genus: some, such as D. bradbournense Wilmore, have been shown to belong to the genus Rhopalolasma Hudson (Hudson, 1936, and in press); for others, such as D. rushianum Vaughan, a new genus, Rotiphyllum, is here erected.

The Glacial deposits along the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts are important to geologists and archaeologists, as some of the formations here, even those which are later than the Cromer Forest Bed Series, are earlier than those of many other districts. Finds of Palaeolithic implements in this area have not so far been abundant, but an industry was recorded by us in 1938 (see Nature, 19th November, 1938, p. 912), and it is now possible to give greater details about its mode of occurrence. The geological dating of this industry will be discussed first, and the implements will then be considered from the archaeological point of view.

John Macculloch, who was the first geologist to describe the Island of Rum, was so perplexed by the geological relations of the lavas of this island, that he wrote— “It is fruitless to accumulate conjectures, but it is not useless to confess ignorance, since it will point out to other travellers the blanks to be filled, and the errors to be corrected; while I may state in the words of St. Augustin my conviction that in this science also ‘Melius est dubitare de occultis quam litigare de incertis’. [It is better to doubt about mysteries than to dispute about uncertainties.]” (Macculloch, 1819, i, 497.) In spite of this self-imposed limitation Macculloch quite correctly compared the “stratified traps” of Rum with those of Skye and Canna, but otherwise he did little towards the description of these rocks.

The nearest known pre-Cretaceous rocks to Jamaica are Jurassic in Western Cuba, and Carboniferous in Colombia, Venezuela, and Honduras, all about 500 miles away. The evolution of Jamaica seems to have been somewhat as follows. Andine (?) orogenesis on or near the site took place, accompanied by magmatic invasion; the rocks are nowhere seen “in situ”, but they have supplied pebbles of granite, granodiorite, porphyry, hornfels, vein stuff, and limestones, more or less foliated or marmorized, but not gneisses nor schists. There is no evidence that any of them are older than Cretaceous, but they go to form the oldest beds of the island, the massive Blue Mountain purple conglomerates whose composition varies from place to place and of which no natural base is seen. Interbedded with these conglomerates are fossiliferous shales and Rudist limestones of Upper Senonian to Maestrichtian age. Low down, however, there is in Eastern Jamaica a bed of algal and foraminiferal limestone, without Rudistae, which was partly torn up and incorporated as rolled pebbles in the conglomerate. Some of these pebbles contain Camerina dickersoni Palmer, a foraminifer of Upper Cretaceous age, so the pebbles are but little older than the conglomerate containing them. Laramide orogenesis took place and this series was invaded by granodiorite and other intrusions. The uplifted area was eroded and some of the igneous and associated Cretaceous rocks exposed to denudation. Depression occurred and Lower or Lower Middle Eocene Carbonaceous shale or Richmond Beds, a Flysch-like series of limestones, shales, and conglomerates, were deposited.

During the past few months some papers on early amphibia and reptiles have reached me from America, Russia, and China. These have afforded me much pleasure as a change from my present unaccustomed work, and I therefore feel that I can usefully express my thanks to their authors by writing a criticai summary of their conclusions. And such a review is justified because collectively these papers add very greatly to our knowledge and understanding of the evolution of early Tetrapods. Reference will be made to a list of these papers at the end of this review. It is most convenient and logical to discuss firstly the individual animais and then their distribution in time.

Examination of a xenolithic minor intrusion of Caledonian age at Slievenagriddle, County Down, has shown the existence of felspathic replacement rims and rheomorphic veins associated with the xenoliths, and derived from them by metasomatic action of the magma.

Chemical and spectrographic analyses of the main rock of the intrusion, and of a rheomorphic vein, establish an order of geochemical migration for the metals of the alkali series.

In conclusion I wish to express my thanks to Mr. J. J. Hartley, of Queen's University, Belfast, for valuable advice and help in the field work; to Dr. J. E. Richey and other members of the Geological Survey for much useful criticism and assistance; to Dr. D. L. Reynolds for reading this communication in MS., and to Dr. R. L. Mitchell, of the Macaulay Institute for Soil Research, for performing the two spectrographic analyses.

During the autumn of 1939 a series of bores were put down in the area immediately west of Green's Farm, 3 miles S.W. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and 1½ miles E.S.E. of Whickham. Only one bore was carried beyond the Hutton seam, and in the thick sandstone beneath 1 that coal the borer recorded the presence of five “ limey bands ”. These bands were 10, 3, 5, 7, and 4 inches thick at 82, 103, 110, 113, and 116 feet respectively, below the Hutton seam. Each appeared to be a hard, compact, fine-grained greyish sandstone, no different from the remainder of the bed, except that it effervesced freely with dilute hydrochloric acid. On attempting to break open the 7 in. band it parted along a vertical joint, on the face of which were found the crystals of millerite.

Pleistocene deposits near Homa were first visited by Dr. F. Oswald (1914), who described the exposures at Kanjera. Dr. L. S. B. Leakey and his colleagues of the 1931–2 East African Archaeological Expedition located human remains while collecting the fauna of the beds, and the importance of this discovery led to resumption of work on the area by the 1934–5 expedition to which the writer acted as geologist, and to a special study of the geology of the area and provenance of the human remains, for which Professor P. G. H. Boswell joined the expedition at Dr. Leakey's invitation, his visit being facilitated by the Royal Society. Mr. E. J. Wayland, of the Uganda Geological Survey, also spent a short period with the expedition before Professor BoswelPs return. It was a sad disappointment to ali concerned that the early date of the human remains could not be established with certainty (Boswell, 1935), but in tne present note it is proposed to describe the geology of the deposits, which is itself of considerable interest.

The increasing diversity of interpretation of the Jurassic Record is proving very troublesome to teachers and students alike. “To-day, hardly a subdivision of the Jurassic is free of controversy as to its exact scope and nomenclature,” wrote S. W. Muller in a recent laudable attempt to reconcile the differing opinions. More is involved, however, than a mere reconciliation of conflicting views. Our knowledge of the Jurassic Record is as yet far less complete than many geologists realize. For while some of the subdivisions of Jurassic time are in general use by all stratigraphers and have stood the test of time, others are in dispute because they are still based on too local and often defective material, or on too incomplete information; a number remain as much surmises as when they were originally introduced. Any scheme put forward at the present day cannot thus be regarded as the final word in the subdivision of the Jurassic, but merely as a contribution towards an ultimate, ideal, “Standard.”

The term pseudodeltidium was proposed by Bronn (1862, p. 242) for the shell-plate covering the delthyrium, or triangular opening between the teeth, in the ventral cardinal area of those brachiopods now assigned to the order Protremata. It is typically developed among the “family” Strophomenidae, of which it is a diagnostic feature, as a convex arch overhanging the interior of the ventral valve (Text-fig. 1A). In the embryo, the pseudodeltidium is secreted as a single unit when the shell is first formed, and is therefore not homologous with the deltidium (von Buch, 1834, p. 15) of the order Telotremata, since this is formed in the post-embryonic period as two separate plates which may subsequently coalesce (Beecher, 1892)

In August, 1938, while participating in the expedition to Rum organized by the Botanical Department of King's College, Newcastle-on-Tyne, under the leadership of Professor J. W. Heslop Harrison, I was fortunate enough to discover a fragment of fossil wood enclosed in a trachybasalt lava. This is the first discovery of a fossil of any kind on this island and one of the few discoveries of fossil wood in the British Tertiary lavas.

In the course of examination of the non-marine lamellibranchs from British Carboniferous rocks I have for several years noted all instances of the attachment of the tubes of Spirorbis. The observations which have been made confirm the conclusions of Pruvost (1919, p. 32; 1930, p. 257) that Spirorbis in the Coal Measures is frequently found attached to plants, occasionally to marine shells, and more commonly to non-marine lamellibranchs. Of the latter, Naiadites and Anthraconauta show the greatest number of attachments; attachments to Carbonicola are not uncommon, but Spirorbis is rarely, if ever, attached to Anthracomya. Over 80 per cent of the attachments recorded by the writer from the Lower Westphalian relate to Naiadites, practically all the remainder relating to Carbonicola; in many instances, however, there were great numbers of Spirorbis attached to individual specimens of Naiadites whereas the numbers in the case of Carbonicola were generally much smaller. In the Upper Westphalian attachment to Anthraconauta is very common, and the similarity of Anthraconauta and Naiadites in this respect was urged by Pruvost as one evidence of their presumed relationship and as justification for separating Anthraconauta from Anthracomya (1930, p. 223). These conclusions I am able to endorse from these observations.

Edale lies in the valley of the River Noe about 3 miles north-west of Castleton. Near Edale End, about 2½ miles below the village, the Noe turns from a nearly east and west course to a nearly north and south course past Hope to join the River Derwent. In the neighbourhood of Edale the floor and lower flanks of the valley are formed of black shales known as the Edale Shales; they are overlain in succession by the Mam Tor Sandstones, the Shale Grit, the Grindslow Shales, and the coarse Kinder Scout Grits which form the great plateau of the Peak and the precipitous edge of Kinder Scout. North of the Edale valley the Mam Tor Sandstones reappear below the Shale Grit in Ashop Dale and Alport Dale. They occur also to the west of the valley in two narrow inliers just north of the railway in Roych Clough and Moor Clough.

In view of the wide distribution of Gangamopteris in the Gondwana deposits of the Southern Hemisphere it is surprising that the genus has not been previously recorded with certainty from Western Australia. The only doubtful record has been published by Glauert in 1923 who found “? Gangamopteris sp.” in carbonaceous shale underlying the lowest coal seam of the Coal Measure series of the Irwin River. The occurrence of Gangamopteris in the Irwin River Coal Measures has since been confirmed by finds made in 1939 during a joint excursion with Professor E. de C. Clarke and students of the University of Western Australia. The age of the Irwin River Coal Measures corresponds most likely to that of the Greta Coal Measures of New South Wales in which Gangamopteris is well represented. Some notes on the Irwin River flora were published some time ago (Teichert 1939) and the writer hopes to present additional information at a later date.

A number of test bores were sunk for Swansea Corporation in 1931 during the investigation of a site. Some samples were obtained by Professor O. T. Jones, F.R.S., from a line of borings east of Swansea, which trended north-east from the eastern end of King's Dock and Queen's Dock.

The Kordofan Sand is a deposit of unconsolidated surface sands covering large areas to the west of the White Nile in the central part of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and especially in the province of Kordofan. In character, it is a typical winddeposited sand of well-rounded quartz grains, with a colour varying from pale buff to deep red. The colour is due to iron staining on the surface of the quartz grains, but only extends to a very shallow depth, sometimes as little as 4 to 5 feet, below which depth the sand is colourless. The absence of colour in the deeper parts of the deposit appears to be due to absence of iron rather than to its presence in a reduced state, and it is thought therefore that the iron must represent a concentration in the upper portion of the deposit. As far as investigation has been made there is no evidence of a downward leaching of iron-bearing solutions with penetration to underlying deposits.

Most of the specimens described herein have been in my collection for a long time, but lack of opportunity has prevented their being dealt with until now. Several species still require to be worked out and it is hoped to describe them later. Recently my friend, Mr. Stanley Westhead, of Clitheroe, allowed me the privilege of seeing certain specimens he had collected at Coplow Knoll, and one of these, a new Platycrinus, is described here. Some of the species, especially the Poteriocrinids, are assigned to genera whose validity at present is a matter of doubt. In recent years, American workers have made many changes in the nomenclature of the older Carboniferous genera, restricting some and giving new names to others and under the present disturbed conditions it has not been possible to see all these works some of which have a special bearing on the subject. Lack of reference to the majority of these must therefore be expected. In this connection I wish here to thank Mr. Harrell L. Strimple, of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, for much information and for copies of his papers up to date, as well as for other kindnesses. I have also to thank Dr. A. C. Stephen, of the Royal Scottish Museum, for ready access to specimens under his charge and the authorities of the Museum for permission to figure the specimen shown on PI. XI, figs. 5–8. Thanks are also due to Mr. Tot Lord, of Settle, Yorkshire, for the loan of the specimen shown on PI. IX, figs. 7–9.

Venanzite. Venanzite is a volcanic rock consisting essentially of y melilite, leucite, olivine, and a little phlogopitic biotite, which occurs as small lava-flows of late- or post-Pliocene age near San Venanzo, Umbria, Italy. This isolated centre of activity lies north-west of Lake Bolsena and is regarded as an outlying part of the Vulsinian district of the Roman netroaranhic nrovince.

As in Anglesey, these are numerous, dykes being there more numerous than sills. But petrologically there is far less variety, all but one of them being basic. There are no picrites, no coarse dolerites, no rhyolites, no lamprophyres.

The type specimen of Monograptus sedgwicki Portlock sp. has at last been found in the Collection of the Geological Survey in London, and Dr. Stubblefield has submitted it to me for examination. It bears the label “Prionotus sedgewicki” Portlock, and Graptolithus sedgewicki, and there can be no doubt of its identity. Portlock described the fossil as Graptolithus—PrionotusSedgewicki stating that it was named after Professor Sedgewick, though that is not the correct spelling of the name of that great geologist, which should be written without the second “e”.