The Manchester Museum contains two ‘turtles’ from the Middle Purbeck Cap and Feather Bed of Swanage which are referable to Lydekker's Thalassemys ruetimeyeri. The first of these, L. 7017, was purchased from Swanage in 1906, and consists of a carapace lacking all the marginals, but otherwise complete and undisturbed. The second, L. 9520, was obtained by the writer from a quarry some 2 miles west of Swanage in March of this year. This specimen, although crushed, is important because it retains the whole shell, both carapace and plastron, with the exception of some of the peripherals.

J. Sowerby's type - specimens of Ammonites cordatus and Ammonites excavatus have been dealt with comparatively recently by Miss M. Healey in the Palœontologia universalis (sér. II, fasc. 1, August, 1905, Nos. 94, 94a, and 92, 92a, 92b respectively), but her statements require a little modification in some details. Both specimens are in the British Museum collection, and were described and figured in the Mineral Conchology.

In the little note on “Fossil Representatives of the Lithodomous Worm Polydora” which appeared in the Geological Magazine for March, 1909 (pp. 108–10), it is said that, “so far as I can ascertain, this genus has not hitherto been recorded in a fossil state.” It has since come to my knowledge that I was not the first so to record it, and I therefore ask permission to make the necessary emendation.

In the year 1831 the famous mineralogist and chemist, Gustav Rose, described a mineral which he had observed in his travels in the Urals the previous year. He pointed out that he had found in the greenstones of the Urals crystals with the cleavages and the prism angle of hornblende, but with the external form of augite. The porphyritic crystals of these greenstones are sometimes hornblende, sometimes augite.

The Liassic strata generally are so barren of any minerals of importance or of an appreciable size or extent that the record of the discovery of one not hitherto known to occur in a crystalline form, apart from the part it plays in the formation of shell-layers at that horizon, is assuredly of interest. Hitherto the Liassic strata have not yielded any minerals unassociated with shell-structure, except selenite, which occurs commonly in some Upper Liassic clays, whilst it is not unusual to find fossils converted into iron-pyrites or marcasite, especially at certain horizons. The Doggers of Yorkshire are noteworthy instances of this kind. In the Middle Lias, zinc, nickel, and cobalt are found in the iron-ores of the Cleveland district.

In September last I discovered a number of plant remains in the Carboniferous Limestone at Meathop Fell, Westmorland, amongst which were several fragments of what, at first sight, looked like a species of Lepidodendron. A closer examination, however, of one or two of the better preserved specimens, which showed traces of leaf-scars, at once suggested Archœsigillaria Vanuxemi, specimens of which I had previously seen in the Kendal Museum.

Two well-preserved Teleostean fishes from the Eocene Limestone of Tura, between Heluan and Cairo, have been submitted to me by Dr. W. F. Hume, Director of the Geological Survey of Egypt. They apparently represent new species, but, like most fishes of Eocene age, they are remarkably modern in type, and one seems to be referable to an existing genus. With them were found remains of two species of Percoid fishes, which are scarcely sufficient for exact determination.

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.

Vertebrate-Remains are by no means abundant in the Inferior-Oolite rocks of the Cotteswold Hills and Bath—Doulting Distriet. Mr. H. B. Woodward, F.R.S., has written—

“The Inferior Oolite Series has yielded a rich and varied Invertebrate fauna, but the remains of Saurians and Fishes are very rare.

“The Reptilia that have been found include Megalosaurus and Steneosaurus, and the Fishes are represented by Hybodus, Strophodus, etc.”

In this communication it is proposed to briefly note the divisions which have been proposed for the Lower Carboniferous Rocks of Great Britain and Belgium; to discuss their validity in the light of the important additions that have been made to our knowledge during the last few years; and to suggest a new classification which, while expressing the physical and faunal changes which characterized that particular time interval, shall be generally applicable and at the same time do justice to the workers who have contributed most largely to our knowledge.

Since the Swansea earthquake of June 27, 1906, no strong shock has visited these islands, and, with one exception, all those felt in the years 1908 and 1909 were comparatively slight tremors. The list includes 36 earthquakes, all of them originating in Scotland. The most important were the Dunoon earthquake of July 3, 1908, and the Ochil earthquake of October 20, 1908, the latter being the strongest shock felt in that district during the present century. The remaining tremors occurred in the Ochil district, and the great majority of them would have remained entirely unknown to seismologists had it not been for the interest taken in them by Mr. W. H. Lindsay and Mr. T. J. H Drysdale of Menstrie, Mr. J. Dempster of Airthrey, and Dr. W. L. Cunningham of Alva. To the courtesy of these gentlemen I am indebted for the principal materials of this paper.

Allusion has been made in a previous paper to the crinoidal limestone band and Transition bed at Billesdon Coplow, and to the existence of the former at Tilton Hill near Lowesby Station. At the latter place, though the Transition-bed is not exposed in situ, the position of the crinoidal limestone bed (after making full allowance for Drift deposits), is low enough, with beds normally horizontal or with a slight easterly dip, to adduce without any doubt the extension of the Transition-bed above it at this point. Thus the crinoidal limestone band had been traced at three points — Tilton (vide Wilson, ibid.), Billesdon Coplow, Tilton Hill—in the southern portion of the exposed area of the Rock-bed in Leicestershire, up to the time when the second paper, contributed by the author dealing with this bed in Leicestershire, was written. That is to say, it had only been found in the southern series of bold escarpments or spurs into which the district is divided. For the Twyford brook, running more or less west and east, divides the two series to which reference is directly made into a northern and a southern series, or if we include the Belvoir, Stathern, Eastwell, Holwell, and Waltham tract still more to the north, into three, with a central tract north of the Twyford brook.

In 1905 trenches for electric mains were carried up the northeastern slope of Shooters Hill, along Shrewsbury Lane to “The Bull”, and thence down the western hill-slope along the Dover Road. From about 350 O.D. in Plum Lane to 424 O.D. at “The Bull” the trench ran for nearly two-thirds of a mile along the junction of the London Clay with the overlying group of sands, pebbles, and clayey gravels which form the ‘gravel cap’ of Shooters Hill. Neither the exact age of these superficial deposits nor their mode of formation—whether marine or fluviatile beds—is as yet known, but the general coarseness of the sands, the presence of pebbles of Lower Greensand chert, and the very stiff clayey matrix of the gravel distinguish them from typical Bagshot Beds, and moreover throughout the greater part of the section a sharp and irregular junction could be traced between them and the brown London Clay. At a few points, however, the top of the London Clay was seen to pass into pale-brown and yellowish sandy clays, sometimes of significant thickness. Thus in the Dover Road, about 100 yards above Christ Church, below the thick red clayey gravel of the ‘cap’, lay about 3 feet of yellow loam, the lower part of which became a pale-brown clay passing quite gradually into normal blue or brown London Clay with septarian nodules. In the same series of excavations (1905) a trench at the junction of Shrewsbury Lane with the Dover Road showed the Shooters Hill gravel resting irregularly on a bed of fine clean yellowish sand quite unlike anything previously noted in the numerous pits and trenches opened upon the Hill, but as unfortunately the trench was only a few feet deep the relation of this fine sand to the London Clay could not then be made out.