Very little reformation can now be gathered about a remarkable shower of meteoric stones that fell many years ago in a remote district in south-west Queensland. Only a few scraps of information have appeared in print, and these are largely contradictory. However, some very tangible evidence arrived unexpectedly at the British Museum in 1935 in the form of a remarkable collection of 102 complete meteoric stones with a total weight of 107¾lb. This material had been in the possession of Mr. Benjamin Dunstan, formerly Government Geologist of Queensland, who had been collecting information of the fall with a view to writing up an account for publication. This unfortunately he never did, and much of the information is now lost. The specimens were offered to the British Museum by his widow, but they came along quite casually as an appendix to a collection of fossils.

In a previous paper (24) the writer discussed the relations between the chemical and physical properties of a number of potash-sodafelspars, mainly of the schillerized or perthitic variety, and the effect of high temperatures upon them. The present paper gives the results of further examination of these and of several additional specimens selected to make the range of composition more complete.

Twenty-six specimens were selected for this investigation. They include two albites, six microclines, and eighteen felspars which have been grouped as an orthoclase-microperthite series. The confused nomenclature of the alkali-felspars makes a choice of suitable names difficult. Alling's classification (1, pp. 253-254) represents a systematic attempt to overcome this confusion, but it seems doubtful whether some of his arbitrary subdivisions (e.g. ‘anorthoclase potentially eutectoperthite’ and ‘microcline eutectoperthite’) can exist.

The Cairnsmore of Carsphalrn igneous complex (1) is the smallest of the larger Caledonian intrusions of the Southern Uplands of Scotland. The intrusion is composite, consisting of a central granite, followed by successive zones of granite-tonalite hybrid, tonalite, and basic hybrids. The complex began with the intrusion of a gabbro. When this was crystallized, but still at a high temperature, the tonalite was emplaced. This intrusion of tonalite produced a series of hornblende-hybrids. The hybridization of the original gabbro attendant on the injection of the tonalite is the result of a 'partial magma' of potash-felspar, quartz, and volatiles. The final intrusion of granite took place while the tonalite was still incompletely crystallized, and resulted in the formation of a zone of acid hybrid rocks. The three biotites that have been analysed occur in the granite, tonalite, and hornblende-hybrid respectively.

The natural glasses, found as small corroded pieces scattered on the earth's surface and in alluvial deposits in a few limited areas, have long presented a puzzling problem; and many theories have been propounded to explain their origin. They have been known in southern Bohemia and western Moravia since before 1787; and similar material has since been found in the Dutch East Indies, Malay States, Australia, Tasmania, French Indo-China, south China, Philippine Islands, and quite recently in the Ivory Coast in West Africa [M.A. 6-106]. These glasses are distinct in chemical composition from volcanic glass (obsidian), and there are no volcanoes in the districts where they are found. They have been given the names m oldavites, billitonites, austral ites, Darwin glass, indoch inites, rizalitcs [M.A. 4-422; 6-403], &c.