This district is of especial interest from the palæontological point of view in that the different members of the Upper Trias each afford a representative though not extensive flora and fauna. The scantiness of the material, in so far as the Lower Keuper and in some respects the Dane Hill Series are concerned, is due rather to the absence of good sections. This cannot, however, be said of the Rhætic beds, for the section at Glen Parva is one of the finest in the Midlands.

In a recent paper on the Marble District of the Apuan Alps or Carrara Mountains I showed that the gneissose schists which form the nucleus of that range, and upon which rests the Triassic marmiferous formation, are, not of Archæan, but, upon irrefutable palæontological evidence, of Palæozoic age, and that, upon equally conclusive lithological and stratigraphical evidence, they must be assigned to the later part of that period, that is, to the Lower Permian. The former conclusion was first arrived at in the course of the geological survey of the range by Lotti and Zaccagna and upon the palæontological authority of the late Professor Meneghini; the latter conclusion was chiefly the result of the striking analogy, first pointed out by Zaccagna, between the stratigraphical sequence and lithological characteristics of the Apuan Alps and the Montgioie range of the Maritime Alps which forms the divide between Southern Piémont and the Western Italian Riviera.

The groups of ophiolithic, that is, crystalline ferro-magnesian rocks in the comprehensive sense, to be dealt with in this and the subsequent paper are those west and east of Genoa. Of these the principal western or Voltri group was already referred to in the preceding paper as being, on its western margin, contiguous to the crystalline massif of Savona, and as constituting with the latter the geological contact-zone of the Alps and the Apennines. The anomaly of its position and petrological character is enhanced by the abrupt, clean-cut division of its eastern margin from the adjacent, more recent, and smaller ophiolithic group of Sestri and Isoverde, which is coeval with the groups of Eastern Liguria.

This paper attempts a brief summary of the structure of the Northern Pennines for geologists and geographers, especially for those who are interested in the relation of geographical form to geological structure. It is, for the most part, a re-statement, and advances little that is new; but it is thought that the present visit of the Association to the North may be a fitting opportunity to summarize our knowledge of the structure of an interesting region, especially as considerable progress has been made in our detailed knowledge of the Northern Pennines since the visit of the Association to Newcastle in 1889.

Although detrital mineral work is as yet in its infancy, sufficient has been accomplished to show that we may look to it with success for indications of changes of drainage direction, evidences of denudation by reversal of the order of respective mineral assemblages from a sequence of rocks, and generally for information regarding details of palæogeography. Professor A. de Lapparent referred to Professor L. Cayeux's work as proving the proximity of land, composed of primary rocks, to Lille in Landénian times. Dr. H. H. Thomas was able to demonstrate the change in source, and therefore in direction of drainage, of the river-borne heavy minerals in the Bunter sandstones of South Devon, the occurrence of garnets and staurolite being especially significant. Dr. T. O. Bosworth, in some preliminary work upon the detrital minerals of the Carboniferous Sandstone of the Midland Valley of Scotland, was led to the conclusion, partly by the respective presence and absence of garnets, that the beds could be divided into a series of great lenticular masses of sediment introduced from directions varying from north and north-west to north-east, east, and south. Mr. W. R. Smellie has discussed in rather more detail the origin of the minerals in the Upper Red Barren Measures of the Glasgow Basin, the drainage having been from the west or north-west.

Topaz is commonly supposed to have been formed by the action of fluorine-bearing vapours on felspar, but evidence has recently been advanced with the object of showing that some important veins intrusive in the porphyritic granite of Gunong Bakau, a mountain 4,426 feet high, situated in the centre of the Main Granite Range of the Malay Peninsula, were formed of a rock in which “the topaz and cassiterite are not alteration products of previously formed minerals”. The author of this theory gives the rock the descriptive name of ‘quartz-topaz’, and adds as his reasons for not calling it ‘greisen’ the fact that in places it contains very little mica and that, unlike the majority of greisens, it is not an alteration product.

Dr. preller's recent contributions to this Magazine on the geology of the Piedmontese Alps prove that (1) Italian authorities have expressed widely different opinions on this subject, and (2) some of them have maintained sundry Alpine gneisses and crystalline schists to be Palæozoic or Mesozoic (often Permian or Trias) in age. I infer from these contributions that he is well acquainted with the physical geography of this region, but fail to find in them any signs of either microscopic study or independent petrological work. As these have led me in several cases to very different results, I shall venture to put them on record as briefly as possible. In the course of thirty-five visits I have wandered over the peaks and valleys of the Alps from the southern border of the Cottians to the Salzkammergut, paying at first much more attention to physical than petrological questions. But in 1869, when beginning to lecture on geology, I found not only (as I was already aware) that my knowledge of rocks was scanty, but also that on this subject very little trust could be given to much that had been written. So I tried, as best I could, to teach myself. With this intention I visited many places of petrological interest in our own country and on the Continent, forming (partly by purchase) a considerable collection of rock specimens and slices. Circumstances soon directed my attention to the gneisses and crystalline schists, and from 1872 I paid more and more attention to them in my Alpine journeys, of which this was the thirteenth. In 1885 (my twenty-first journey) I began endeavouring to obtain clearer ideas about their succession, history, and relation to the ordinary stratified rocks, by running sections, sometimes up to, sometimes across the watershed of the chain, going in that year from the Lake of Lucerne to the Lago Maggiore and returning across the Great St. Bernard.

A very remarkable fact in the palæontological study of the Eocene strata of Egypt is the succession of echinid faunas, which seem definitely localized at well-determined horizons, enabling these to be recognized with ease.

I have just finished the revision of the Neogene Echinids of Egypt preserved in the collections of the Cairo Geological Museum. Before the publication of this work, which will form the fourth fascicule of the Catalogue of the Fossil Invertebrates of Egypt, it has seemed to me that it might be useful to consider the fauna as a whole, drawing from it some conclusions as to the palæobiology of the Neogene seas of Egypt. I wish further to ascertain if the Echinids of this region can be of some aid as regards the stratigraphical divisions, and in synchronizing these with the divisions already established in the other regions of the Neogene basin of the Mediterranean.

This footprint was noticed by Mr. A. R. Horwood in the British Association Trias Committee's Report for 1909 (5) and there referred to as resembling Cheirotherium herculis (Eg.) and to be from the Lower Keuper Sandstone. As mentioned in that note, it was found in an excavation at Kegworth, North Leicestershire, some thirty-four years ago by Mr. J. Large, who in 1909 presented it to the Leicester Corporation Museum. It is interesting as being the only Chirosauroid print so far recorded from the Keuper rocks of Leicestershire, and proves the occurrence in that area of animals and conditions similar to those which existed in Cheshire, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire during the Keuper period.

Though Hinckley is now possessed of an excellent supply of water brought from the Lower Keuper Sandstone of Snarestone, in North-West Leicestershire, up to 1891 it had an unenviable reputation for abortive water-schemes. Some £20,000 had been spent in considering eighteen different propositions and in carrying out three deep borings within a few miles of the town. During this time six consulting engineers were called in by the local authority. All these schemes failed, not through any lack of water—for this was obtained from the Waterstones of the Lower Keuper in almost unlimited quantity—but because it was found impossible to shut out the chlorides and sulphates from the gypsiferous Keuper Marls through which the borings passed.

[In the Geological Magazine for June last, p. 255, Mr. W. R. Jones refers to a Preliminary Report of Mining in the Main Granite Range, Federated Malay States, 1913. This report bore a slightly different title, and was not published. It is the property of the Federated Malay States Government, but I have the permission of the Chief Secretary to forward to you a typescript marked “Office Copy” and initialled by Mr. Jones, and to ask you to publish that portion of the report which refers to Gunong Bakau.—J. B. Scrivenor, Geologist to the F.M.S. Government. Geologist's Office, Batu Gajah, July 14, 1916.]

The following analyses were made to ascertain the magnitude of local variations in the St. Bees Sandstone of West Cumberland. It will be convenient for this purpose to consider the district as follows:—

The area south of St. Bees, as far as Calder Bridge.

The area north of Maryport, as far as Wigton.

Supported by the great weight of Hutton's authority, his views, with which those of Haast and the early views of Hector were in general agreement, have gained wide acceptance, notwithstanding the opposition of McKay. Marshall, for example, as late as 1911 wrote as follows: “The great elevation [Mesozoic orogenic movement] was succeeded by nearly as great a depression. The majestic mountain ranges were gradually lowered until nothing but a chain of islands showed above sea level. To what a great extent this movement prevailed is seen at Lake Te Anau, where the Oamaru formation, some 3,000 feet thick, rises to the tops of the mountains. At Wakatipu and in the Rangitata valley the Oamaru rocks are found in the recesses of the mountains. In the Trelissick basin and between the masses of the Kaikoura ranges there was deep water. The valleys of the tributaries of the Buller are filled with Oamaru sediments.”

We have now finished the survey of the characters of the head-shield of Trinucleus sufficiently to enable us to discuss the vexed questions of the affinities, systematic position, and evolution of the genus; and from the foregoing details of the various species we can perceive that there are many difficult problems presented when we attempt to correlate its structure with that of other trilobites. Whether the peculiar characters of the genus are the result of degeneration or of the persistent retention of early phylogenetic stages or of a reversion to such stages is a matter of dispute.

In the Geological Magazine for April, 1913, I drew attention to certain features of the country forming the Yunnan–Tibet border. Further travels there in 1913 and through the Burmese hinterland in 1914 enable me now to supplement and extend those notes.

The British Museum has recently received (in the James W. Butler collection, presented by his daughter, Miss Daisy Butler) a particularly fine mandible of a gigantic fossil Cephalopod. Unfortunately the locality of the fossil is not recorded, but as the collection contained quite a number of specimens from Bradford Abbas (Dorset) and the immediate neighbourhood, and the matrix of this specimen agrees very closely with that of those examples, there can be little doubt that the locality of the fossil is almost certainly Bradford Abbas, or the immediate neighbourhood, and that the specimen is of Bajocian age.

The triangular non-perforated areas lying on each side of the glabella and bounded in front and laterally by the fringe are usually described as the cheeks and distinct from the fringe, as if they alone corresponded to the fixed cheeks of the Opisthoparia and Proparia, or even included also the free cheeks of these orders. But if the facial suture is marginal, and if the lower plate of the fringe is considered to represent the free-cheeks, as Beecher maintained, the upper plate of the fringe must be regarded as merely a modified marginal portion of the fixed cheeks, so that the triangular areas within the fringe would only constitute the inner part of the fixed cheeks.