Several years since, when collecting Mountain-limestone fossils on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire, I found some specimens of Actinocrinus which appeared to have internal channels from the base of the arms towards the summit of the dome. Not having seen such channels noticed by any author, I showed some of the specimens to Mr. Salter, then of the Geological Survey, who suggested that they probably might be analogues of the aquiferous channels found in recent Echinoderms; and he advised me to follow up the subject, and ascertain if such passages were to be found in other Crinoidea occurring in these rocks. His advice has been followed, and a large collection of specimens, some in good preservation and others weathered, has been made, which I have had the advantage of collating with a series from the same district collected by Mr. James Parker of the Manchester Museum; and upon examination they give the following results, some of which, though probably of no great importance in themselves, may serve to illustrate some doubtful points in the organization of this confessedly obscure Order of the Animal Kingdom.

I have been favoured by Mr. G. E. Roberts with the inspection of a fossil from the London Clay of Sheppey, which indicates a genus of mammals distinct from Pliolophus and Hytacotherium, to both of which it is nearly allied. It consists of so much of the upper jaw (Plate X., fig. 1 ) as includes the six sockets of the molar series of each side, with the intervening bony palate and the anterior piers of the zygomatic arches: the upper part of this portion of skull has been crushed and filled up with compact septarian stone. The last, m 3, and penultimate, m 2, molars of both sides, and the last right premolar, p 4, remain in their sockets. In point of size they differ from those teeth in Hyracotherium leporinum in about the same degree as do those of Hyracotherium cuniculus, but exhibit a modification of generic value.

I obtained last summer, through the kindness of my venerable friend, Dr. Nils Nordenskiöld, of Helsingfors, a fine collection of Finnish focks and minerals, collected by his son, Professor Adolph Nordenskiöld, of the Academy of Science, Stockholm. Very little attention has been given in this country either to the rocks or mineral productions of this part of Northern Europe, although both are exceedingly remarkable. I propose, therefore, to introduce some of the more interesting in this article, giving at the same time a brief sketch of the general mineralogy of the land.

Since the discovery of remains of air-breathing Vertebrates in the Coal-shales of Carluke,* several other evidences of a like grade of organization have been obtained from scotch Carboniferous deposits; but I had not, until the present year, seen any such fossils from English or Welsh formations of the same antiquity. The spencimens figured in Plate I., however, give evidence of the fact. They were discovered by John Edward Lee, Esq., F.G.S., in the much disturbed coal-beds at Llantrissent. Glamorganshire, which are referable to the lower part of the ‘Middle,’ if not to the upper part of the ‘Lower’ Coalmeasures.

About Midsummer of the year 1857, when a quarry was being made in the soft calcareous sandstone in the district of Gaudia, near the village of Micabba, Malta, one of the numerous fissures so common in all the formations of the two islands was observed to run in a straight line about E. and W. It was a simple vent, with several funnel-shaped expansions, and, as usual, was filled with red earth and stones. Among the débris of one of these expansions, several bones of large size attracted the attention of the workmen, and Dr. Speteri Agius, LL.D., a gentleman residing in the neighbourhood, having heard of the discovery, repaired to the spot, and picked up from among the exuvise a portion of a tooth and several fragments of bones, which he deposited in the Museum of the Maltese University. Shortly afterwards, a dispute between the proprietor and the lessee of the quarry put an end to the excavation, and the entire cavity was filled with rubbish, and levelled out into afield. In that condition it remained until reopened in June 1865.

Since the publication by the palæontographical Society of the third part of my monograph of the ‘Eocene Mollusca’, containing descriptions of the several Eocene species of Cypræa then known, I have obtained from the beds in the New Forest, foeming parts of the Bracklesham Bay series, several additional species; and Mr. Wetherell has also been so fortunate as to obtain another remarkably fine species from the cutting lately made near Highgate for the Highgate and Edgeware Railway. I now forward descriptions of these new Cyprœœ for publication in ‘The Geological Magazine;’ and I avail myself of the same opportunity to correct an error committed by me in the same part of my monograph, in referring to Marginella pusilla, a species described by me from High Cliff, a small Marginella from Headon Hill, which I now propose to seperate under the specific name œstuarina.

At the last meeting of the Society, Mr. Plant made statements respecting the supply of so-called fossil shells from the Drift at Macclesfield, of a striking and curious character: he warned geologists against certain specimens, on the grounds that some were only recent shells sold as fossils, and others, though bearing the appearance of Drift-fossils, were not only spurious as such form Macclesfield, but were not even fossils at all, being nothing but the results of an elaborate system of importation and manufacture: forgeries, in fact, to meet a new demand. Mr. Plant allowed that some of these frauds were well calculated to deceive even geologists, and quoted a statement that they had been successful at the Museums of London, Liverpool, and Manchester. Besides the simple introduction of recent shells, he specially reported a process of fecthing such shells from recent beaches at Liverpool, Southport, or Ireland (even the use of West Indian African shells), the breaking-up of the same, and the subjection of the fragments to fire or acid, and a subsequent treatment by friction in a basket with gravel, ‘to give them the true Drift-character and the necessary redtinge.’

Lindley and Hutton, in their ‘Fossil Flora’ (vol. i. p. 181), give a plate and description of some specimens, termed by them Polyporites Bowmanni, which were found by the late Mr. J. E. Bowman, F.L.S., in the Carboniferous strata, near the entrance of the Vale of Llangollen, in the county of Denbigh.

Any Geologist travelling to Nairn, viâ Perth, will be interested (in a degree compatible with his sense of the nuisance created) in the wonderful outspread of wind-blown sand betwcen Dalwhinnie and Kingussie. I do not know any more wonderful drift of sand than is here displayed; a sand-surface so constantly in motion, that I believe it must really be in connection with the ever-shifting sand-drift of Culbin, near Elgin, which may be rightly termed the British Sahara. The nuisance caused by the constant settlement, even in the calmest weather, of this fine-grained siliceous sand upon everybody and everything passing through the district, was annoying enough, even in the old coaching days, but is increased tenfold to the traveller now that the Central Scottish Railways has superseded the more tedious method of travel; for the more rapid rate of motion raises such legions of blinding sand-atoms, that when Forres Junction was reached, a traveller is scarcely recognizable for the dust, and the vacant cushions are coated two inches deep. Indeed, I would call special attention to the Sands of Culbin, mentioned as probably being in geological connection with the shifting sands cut through by the railway, as they have afforded the best instance of a real sand-storm known in Britain; hills of blown sand, from 60 to 100 feet in height, and from 200 to 300 feet in circumference, having been formed by wind-action during a single night.

Having last summer accepted the kind invitation of Mr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys to be his guest on a dredging expedition to these Northern Isles, I was induced, by a request from Sir R. I. Murchison, to look out for any trace of glacial action that I might meet with there. The result of my observations I have thought right to lay before the British Association, apologizing for the meagre story I have to tell. This poverty arises partly from my resolve to devote all time possible to the zoological work, and partly from having seen so small a portion of these islands.

The Suffolk Crags.—There are few deposits in this country which form so admirable a field for study as the Crags of Suffolk. Unique as to age, the sole representatives in England of the great Pliocene deposits of Europe, it becomes a matter of very high interest to identify them in any way with particular strata in other countries. The lowest of these Crags occurs in small patches over an area of about eighty square miles, and consists of either loose or compact light-coloured sand, alternating with bands of Polyzoa, which sometimes form a kind of limestone. From this Crag 299 species of Mollusca have been obtained: of these, 148 are extinct, 151 are still living. This so-called ‘Coralline Crag’ lies on London Clay, and is seldom more than 20 feet in thickness. The ‘Red Crag,’ so called from its iron-stained appearance, is an irregularly stratified deposit, composed of rather coarse sand and fragments of shells, abounding also in more perfect remains, but very rarely affording the valves of Conchifera, opposed or in sitû. It extends over a larger area than the Coralline Crag, abont 200 square miles, part of which is in Essex. The Red Crag, rarely exceeding 20 feet in thickness, in most localities rests on the London Clay, the Lower Crag having probably been denuded: it is occasionally, however, found resting on the latter. At the base of both Crags, when resting on the London Clay, a deposit of rounded concretionary nodules, derived from and containing the fossils of the London Clay, is found, and is worked for the nodules, which in great part consist of phosphate of lime, and are manufactured into manure. Associated with these nodules, are teeth of Mastodon, Rhinoceros, and other Mammals,† which have been derived perhaps from earlier Pliocene, perhaps from Miocene strata, and are similar, in some respects, to those obtained at Eppelsheim in Germany. In addition to these, there are the remains of large Cetacea, much worn and rolled, as well as the teeth of the large Carcharodon and Oxryrhina. These are probably the remains of a former Pliocene deposit, broken up like the Miocene beds at the beginning of the Crag era. Similar vertebrate fossils and phosphatic nodules are also dispersed at intervals in the higher strata of the Red Crag. Their occurrence here has led to much confusion, since they have been, and still are by many, regarded as indigenous to the Crag.

‘The Coal-measure hills that form the outer margin of the Castlecomer table-land are generally covered with local drift; but the drift on nearly all the other Coal-measure hills is largely composed of limestone, even on the top of hills 700 feet high. What is most remarkable, however, is that in some places there are valleys and plains not more than 400 feet above the sea without a particle of limestone-drift on them, while hills in their vicinity are covered with it’.

In sinking the various pits in the Queen's County Collieries, a Stratified Drift was found under some of this Boulder-clay. When the place was visited, none of these sections could be examined; but fortunately a record of each was kept in the ‘bore-books’ that are in the possession of the different agents and proprietors.

Relations of the Crags of Antwerp and Suffolk.—Having thus passed through the various strata, we may inquire what relation the three Crags bear to the Suffolk deposits. The lists of Mollusca which I have carefully complied from the researches of Mr. Searles Wood, on the one hand, and of M. Nyst, on the other, have been revised by my frined Dr. S. P. Woodward, and will enable us satisfactorily to determine this point. The lists of Mollusca which I have carefully compiled from the researches of Mr. Searles wood, on the one hand, and of M. Nyst, on the other, have been revised by my friend Dr. S. P. Woodward, and will enable us satisfactorily to determine this point.

The very important addition to our knowledge of the Belemnitidæ contained in Professor Huxley's Memoir on Xiphoteuthis encourages the hope that, by following the steps of Mr. Day, we may clear up some other perplexities among the Cephalopoda of the Lias. One of the singular forms which presents itself for more complete inquiry is the fossil called by Mr. J. Sowerby Belemnites pistilliformis, found at Lyme-Regis. It is not the species so named by Blainville, which belongs to quite another part of the series of strata. The phragmocone is as yet undiscovered. If a considerable number of specimens be examined, including varieties of figure—club-shaped, fusiform, and subcylindrical,—there will appear enough of resemblance to the guard of Xiphoteuthis to suggest the probability that the phragmocone might be slender and elongate as in that fossil. The same idea has, indeed, already been expressed by Quenstedt (‘Der Jura’) in reference to Bel. clavatus, Blainv., a fossil rather common in the Lias, and which is probably identical with Bel. pistilliformis of Sowerby. Quenstedt expressly proposes to join Orthoceratites elongatus of De la Beche, which was unprovided with a guard, with Bel. clavatus, still deficient of a phragmocone. And, in addition to the English example of that phragmocone from Lyme, he figures (‘Der Jura,’ pl. 17, fig. 9) another, having similar general characters, from the Lias of Heckingen.

About a mile and a half to the east of Llandudno, forming the eastern boundary of Orme's Bay, a range of Mountain-limestone runs from the Little Orme's Head on the coast nearly to Conway, enclosing between it and the Great Orme's Head, to the west, a flat tract of ground, which appears to consist for the most part of Boulder-clay overlain by a more recent alluvium.

A Post-Tertiary deposit, under the above denomination, lies upon the ‘Drift’ in the valley through which the River Nar takes its course towards its junction with the Ouse at Lynn; the united streams terminating in the Wash, an estuary bounded by the shores of Norflok and Lincolnshire.

Amongst a number of Crinoidal remains collected from the Mountain-limestone near Clitheroe, in Lancashire, I found one which differs from any I have before seen, and which is belived to be new. This is as yet unique, and is now in the British Museum.

In 1862 Mr. John E. Taylor (of Norwich), while surveying a newly-opened slate quarry at Dalby, on the western side of the Isle of Man, discovered three impressions of an oval form about nine inches long, and described them as resembling the tracks of Protichnites, figured in Owen's Plaæontology; the quarrymen told him that they were of frequent occurrence.