The present paper is based on rnaterial partly from the collection of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and partly from a collection made by myself in May, 1947, at Kilmalaug Bay, North Trotternish, Skye. It is believed that the species of mollusca here reported form the first records from the Bathonian beds exposed there. Tate (1873) did not make any reference to this locality, although the area was marked as “Aird” on the map of the Islands of Skye and Raasay forming plate xi of Bryce's paper (1873), to which Tate's work was an appendix.

The occurrence of what is probably clear secondary zircon on detrital grains of this mineral seems first to have been noticed by Butterfield (1936), in heavy residues from the Millstone Grit of Yorkshire. He showed that the outgrowths were too sharp and delicate to have withstood transport, and were, therefore, formed after the deposition of the rock. He also gave some account of their frequency and mode of occurrence in relation to the crystals to which they were attached. Smithson (1937) found similar outgrowths on zircons from the Middle Jurassic of Yorkshire, remarking that until we know of other occurrences it may be unwise to generalize, but that Butterfield's Millstone Grit zircons and his own Jurassic examples occurred in deposits which were either deltaic in origin, or closely associated with deltaic conditions.

The Rosroe Peninsula, on the south side of Killary Harbour, Co. Galway, is formed of the Rosroe Grits, mapped by the Geological Survey of Ireland (1875) as “Lower Silurian”. Kilroe (1907) in a rapid revisionary survey of Galway and Mayo, described the succession on Rosroe as inverted (op. cit. p. 154, n. 3):—

“ Mr. McHenry informs me that the fossils (graptolites) on the south side are indicative of Upper Llandeilo, while those on the north side are Lower. This being the case, the order of the beds is inverted, as they dip northerly.”

In the past there have been two main lines of approach to the glacial problems of East Anglia:—

(1) Attempts to find out the number of. glacial and interglacial deposits; and

(2) The direction or directions of ice-movement as shown by the constituent materials.

A fresh investigation of the boulder clays has been undertaken, combining as far as possible these two points of view, with special attention (so far) to the varieties of “Chalky Boulder Clay” (see Baden-Powell, 1948, pp. 287–8).

During a recent excursion to Shropshire members of a Sedgwick Club party collected a number of graptolites, and some of these, supplemented by specimens collected by the writer many years ago, now seem worth recording.

In a recent letter to this journal, Stewart and Wager (1947) record the occurrence of rhythmic banding in the Cuillin gabbro of Skye. Apparently, before this the only described British example of rhythmic, banding was in the Belhelvie Complex of Aberdeenshire (Stewart, 1946). In view of the interest in these structures aroused by Wager and Deer's vivid and illuminating account of the Skaergaard Complex of East Greenland (Wager and Deer, 1939), a preliminary note on a more accessible occurrence where rhythmic banding is very beautifully displayed, in excellent quarry sections, seems desirable. This occurrence is in the Huntly complex of Aberdeenshire.

It should by now be fairly well realized that the West Indian islands are not a subsiding mountain range, but represent rather an Alpine or Pyrenean area in process of emerging from the sea. In the West Indies we witness something of the condition of metamorphism of the rocks as they came up. Comparison of the metasomatism of the formations in the two widely separated areas of the Alps and Antilles may provide some evidence as to how the processes operated and what sort of forces raised them up.

The problem of the boundary between the Pliocene and the Pleistocene is still very far from satisfactorily settled both from a geological and from a faunal viewpoint. It becomes increasingly apparent that the two aspects of the problem require different definitions and in consequence there has been very great confusion in the application of the terms “Pleistocene” and “Quaternary” both in geological and in palaeontological literature. The original definitions of these terms, too, seem very largely to have been forgotten and they have been used by a variety of writers for various purposes.

In 1940 Professor O. T. Jones published in the Geological Magazine significant observations on certain of the Lower Palaeozoic contacts in north Pembrokeshire. His detailed inspection of the Solva-Caerfai contact at Caerfai Bay, and the Arenig-Lingula Flag junction at Whitesand Bay, revealed erosional and depositional features which clearly established hitherto debatable lines of unconformity. In addition, his results have aroused much needed assiduity in the interpretation and inspection of formational breaks in the Lower Palaeozoic rocks. Shearing and structural deformities, as well as the emplacement of cleavage, frequently mask such erosional and depositional features but, as Professor Jones has demonstrated, vestiges of them sometimes remain.

The Eighteenth Session of the International Geological Congress was the first session in Great Britain for sixty years; and because of wartime interruption the interval between the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Sessions was longer than that between any previous consecutive sessions. The Session therefore presented a special opportunity for the renewal of international discussion and for the demonstration of classic and recent research in Britain.

The Kalahari Sand formation extends over a large part of the territory of Southern Rhodesia, and it has been estimated that it covers 12 per cent of the surface of the Colony.

The first systematic study of anal variations found among various Carboniferous crinoids was presented by James Wright (Geol. Mag., lxiii, 1926) and covered Eupachycrinus calyx (McCoy) (now Phanocrinus Kirk) and Zeacrinus konincki Bather. Subsequently (Geol. Mag., lxiv, 1927), the genus Hydreionocrinus, and Ulocrinus globitlaris (Geinitz) (now Ureocrinus Wright and Strimple, Geol. Mag., lxxxii, 1945) were also considered. A total of 2,014 dorsal cups from the Scottish Lower Carboniferous (Mississippian) were involved in the examinations. These specimens were all from strata considered equivalent to the Chester Series (upper Mississippian) of North America. When presenting the genus Phanocrinus Kirk (Journ. Paleont., 11, 1937) recognized the importance of Wright's studies, but noted that examination of an almost equal amount of American material (primarily the Springer collection of the U.S. National Museum) had failed to disclose such great variations. That Kirk was highly impressed by Wright's studies is certain, for in personal conversations, several years ago, he emphasized the potentialities as they might affect my impending studies of Pennsylvanian crinoids. It has, therefore, been with much interest that I have watched similar patterns of development appearing in the large collections being made from both Chester (Upper Mississippian = European upper Lower Carboniferous) and Missouri (Middle Pennsylvanian = European middle Upper Carboniferous) of north-eastern Oklahoma.

During a recent visit to Fife I was so fortunate as to find in the Seafield Tower Limestone, on the shore at Seafield near Kirkcaldy, two rare crinoids, one of which belongs to a new species of Scytalocrinus and is described herein. The other is a specimen of Ureocrinus bockschii (Geinitz) which has part of the column and three arms attached to the cup. Although cups of this species are common at various horizons in the Scottish Carboniferous limestones, this is the first example hi this state of preservation to be recorded from rocks north of the Forth, other specimens previously noted all occurring on the Scottish border near Penton Linns in Roxburghshire (Wright, 1939–1940, Wright and Strimple, 1945).

The formation of a fold mountain chain is, essentially, a thermal phenomenon, as may be deduced from the internal locus of the forces involved, the frequent association of magrriatic activity with erogenic movements, and the widespread thermal and regional metamorphism of the sediments within the deeper parts of the mountain belt.