There are left to us at the present day but a few of those naturally-gifted masters in science whose career may be fitly likened to that of the illustrious Faraday; to this type of man belongs Professor John Morris among geologists. Though occupying a modest position in society, and possessing but few of the advantages which the world offers, Professor Morris has achieved for the science of his choice a vast amount of popularity and recognition; and during a long career he has by his eloquence, his unassuming manner, and straightforward, earnest, and warm-hearted friendship, exercised a powerful influence over all with whom he has been brought in contact.

Many of the living forms of Cephalopodous molluscs are now, thanks to the Brighton Aquarium, familiar to us all; and, as the habits and characteristics of the squids, octopods, and cuttles have been duly recorded by Mr. Henry Lee in his amusing book on “The Octopus,” published in 1875, I shall here restrict myself to those points in the structure of the living forms which bear upon the history of the class as a whole, giving merely those anatomical details which are absolutely indispensable for a right comprehension of the nature and affinities of the numerous fossil and extinct members of the order. I may, however, observe, en passant, that the existence of a certain sub-stratum of truth in the old stories of giant Cephalopods was ably proved by Mr. Saville Kent, in the “Popular Science Review,” for 1874, and that specimens have been more recently cast ashore in Trinity and Logie Bays, on the coast of Newfoundland, that may fairly claim to be of enormous dimensions. Thus, in a truly formidable calamary, or squid, the tentacular arms measured 30 feet, the largest suckers being one inch in diameter, the shorter (or pedal) arms were 11 feet long, and the body was 10 feet. Professor Verrill has also described a huge cuttle, estimating the total length at 40 feet, the large tentacles were 26 feet long, with a maximum circumference of 16 inches at their union to the body. A new genus of calamary, allied to the Architeuthis of Steenstrup, with arms measuring over 23 feet, was discovered on the island of St. Paul, in the Indian Ocean, by M. Charles Vélain, the naturalist attached to the French Expedition for the observation of the transit of Venus, at that station. The size attained by some of the fossil species will be noted in the sequel.

By way of introduction to the subject of this paper, I will very briefly describe the physical features of the country drained by the River Calder. We shall thereby gain a clear idea of the present configuration of the Calder valley and better understand how the forces have operated which have produced the grand diversity of hill and valley, of moorlands bleak and wild, of precipitous crag, and steep, wooded slopes, and of the lower lands, rich and fertile, which extend along their base. To know clearly what has been done, is more than half to understand how it has been done.

In 1874, whilst searching in the Boulder-clays south of Bridlington, on the Yorkshire Coast, for transported fossils, I was greatly surprised to find a few water-worn fragments of shells dispersed through the clay at the base of the cliff, inasmuch as all the writers on this subject agree in assigning to the Yorkshire Clays “no contemporaneous shells whatever,” that is to say, no shells actually coeval with the deposition of the clay.

It is with great pleasure that I add a few remarks to Mr. Lamplugh's paper. His observations are, I think, highly important, and will, I anticipate, be found to do great credit to the intelligence and powers of observation of a very young and entirely self-taught naturalist.