In August, 1841, Professor J. D. Forbes, in company with Professor Agassiz and Mr. Heath, spent some time upon the Lower Glacier of the Aar, and Forbes states that it was then for the first time that he noticed the veined or ribboned structure of glaciers. Although the description given in the communication he made to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in December of the same year is most interesting, he does not state clearly how the structure is related to the glacier grains of which the ice streams are built up.

When last year I had an opportunity of examining a few rocks and fossils from the limestone of Creechbarrow Hill, which the late Mr. W. H. Hudleston considered of Bagshot age, I at once suspected that they belonged to the Bembridge Limestone. Upon my pointing this out to Professor Hughes he requested me to go down to examine the ground, which I did in November of last year, but I found only the same fossils which Mr. Hudleston had recorded, namely, Melanopsis and Paludina. On my return to Cambridge I expressed the opinion that better evidence would probably be obtained if a few openings were made here and there, and the Professor arranged that I should carry out a further examination of the area at a more convenient season. This I have done, and I now offer the results of my further researches.

On pages 20–2 and 99–105 of the Geology of the Gold Fields of British Guiana I gave a condensed account of the residual earths derived from the gradual decomposition of igneous rocks in situ which characterize wide areas ia British Guiana as well as in the neighbouring countries of Venezuela, Dutch Guiana, French Guiana, and Brazilian Guiana. This deposit forms in many places a widespread very thick blanket-like coating to the igneous rocks from which it is derived, and owing in many places to its striking resemblance in general properties to the typical Indian formation described by Buchanan in 1807 it has been alluded to by many authors and by numerous mining engineers as ‘laterite’. I gave on p. 101 two analyses of lateritic deposits which I selected from many I had made as showing the general composition of the earths. Unfortunately I omitted to show in them separately, as I had done in the original analyses, the proportions of silica present as quartz and of that present in a combined state. If I had done this it would have been seen that the earths contained but little combined silica and a relatively high proportion of alumina presumably present in the state of hydrate. For instance, in the Tumatumari sample which I collected myself from a deep cutting in the laterite lying on the diabase of the Tumatumari cataracts a few feet only above the surface of the unaltered rock, out of 51·76 per cent. of silica 49·35 is in the form of quartz, leaving 2·41 per cent. in the combined state in the presence of 24·55 per cent. of alumina.

Lying at the foot of the Cheviot Hills are deposits of sand and gravel, which, between Wooler on the north and Glanton on the south, cover a considerable area, occupying the greater part of the lower valleys of the Breamish and other tributary streams of the Till. They form mounds and ridges running in different directions, often dividing and reuniting in a very irregular manner. They are indicated, along with deposits at greater altitudes, on the Drift Edition of the Map of the Geological Survey of England (Sheets 109 N. W. and 110 S. W.) as “sands and gravels of Glacial age”. It is for the purpose of describing these accumulations and in some measure elucidating their source and mode of deposition that this paper is written.

The following is a preliminary account of the rocks overlying the Lower Old Red Sandstone of the Titterstone Clee Hills, Shrops.

As a result of an investigation covering the Midland area, and especially from a study of the Upper Keuper of Leicestershire, the author, who has been aided in this research by a grant from the Government Grant Committee of the Royal Society, has arrived at the conclusion that, in so far as Great Britain is concerned, the Trias was laid down under delta conditions, during which, as in the Nile area to-day, æolian action took place, but was not responsible for deposition except locally on a small scale, and following the prevalent wind course.