Having in the autumn of 1878 arranged to make a geological excursion to the Eifel, with my friend Mr. John Edward Lee, F.S.A., F.G.S., of Torquay, we were so fortunate, when near Gerolstein, to meet Professor Dr. Ferdinand Roemer, of the University of Breslau, Silesia, who has made the Eifel region his special study, and who cordially joined our party, giving us the benefit of his great knowledge of this most interesting geological region.

It must be admitted that first impressions are to a certain extent instinctive, and need not, therefore, be taken for more than they are worth. To do any really valuable work in such a troubled district as Assynt would require a considerable length of time. Still, after having been nearly a fortnight in the place—a fortnight in which the rainy days and the dry ones were about equally balanced —it is almost impossible to avoid forming some idea as to the respective merits of the interpretations which have been put forth. And this one is all the more apt to do in order to be able to institute comparisons with other districts of the North-West already visited in previous years.

In a paper published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society for January, 1860, p. 178, I drew attention to the remarkable fact that in various parts of the world the presence of glaciers had been attended by a submergence of the land, and I suggested that the enormous weight of ice laid upon the surface of the country might have caused a depression, while the melting of the ice would also account for the rising again of the land which seems to have everywhere followed some time after the ice disappeared.

The country at the base of and forming the south-western slope of the Urals has been little visited by geologists from Western Europe, and deserves more attention than it has received. Several years' residence in it form my excuse for recording a few notes thereon. The area I have travelled over extends from Samara on the Volga in the W. to Preobrajensky and Bieloretzky in the E., and from Orenburg in the S. to the town of Ufa in the N. The formations met with within these limits are the Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, and Jurassic. The three former are the crystalline rocks of the Urals, the western edge or front range being composed of Carboniferous grits and limestones.

In a previous communication to this MAGAZINE I suggested that the Loess originated from the thawing and refrigeration, during the major and minor glaciations, of the upper layer of the soil, which, where it was unprotected by land ice, was permanently frozen to a great depth; such layer having a sliding motion which caused the material to accumulate in the hollows, and so expose continually to this action over the rest of the surface, fresh subsoil which had been previously permanently frozen. I now supplement this by a particular examination of the way in which such process appears to me to have acted in originating that part of the Loess which is represented by the ‘Limon,’ or briekearth, of Picardy.

We must now turn to the theories which make these terraces to be deposited by the rivers when so charged with water that the whole valleys, from their solid foundations up to a height of at least 80 feet, were filled with water. These theories postulate no gigantic denudations extending over limitless ages, but accept the valley terraces as fluviatile deposits left along their own banks by the rivers when, by means of exceptional causes, they were, at one time, so flooded, that they actually reached the upper level terraces which in fact represent their old banks when so flooded. Two causes for such abnormal floods have been assigned. Mr. Tylor postulates a Pluvial period, characterized by most exceptional rainfall; while Mr. Belt urges that these floods were caused by the pounding back of the European rivers, and the consequent formation of a European lake by a great Atlantic glacier.

At the end of the year 1880, Dr. O. Hahn, of Reutlingen, a lawyer by calling, published a big work entitled Die Metcoriten (Chondrite) und ihre Organismen mit 32 Tafeln photographischer Abbildungen (1880, Tubingen: H. Laupp), by which he claimed to have shown the presence in meteoric rocks of sponges, corals, and crinoids. A statement of his views was read before a meeting of the Geological Society the same summer. Early this year Dr. D. F. Weinland published a paper in support of these views, Ueber die in Meteoriten entdeekten Thierreste. Illustrated with two woodcuts (1882, Esslingen: G. Fröhner). The question was thoroughly gone into in a scientific way by Prof. Carl Vogt, of Geneva, and the conclusions at which he arrived are contained in a paper entitled Les prétendus Organismes des Météorites, published 1882, Genéve: H. Georg. It is shown that Dr. Hahn had no foundation for his conclusions; that all the pretended organic structures are purely inorganic; and that in no single case do they present the microscopic structure of the organisms for which they have been mistaken — such as crinoids, corals, and sponges. See also Dr. Laurence Smith on the subject in the Amer. Jour. Sc. 1882, February, 156.