In North-East Scotland the igneous rocks have been divided into two series, whose times of intrusion were separated by the movements responsible for the foliation and disposition of the crystalline schists of that area.2 With the older series, intruded prior to or during those movements, this paper is not concerned. The younger, or non-foliated, series supplies rock types ranging from peridotite to granite. Gabbro is the chief rock in the large independent basic masses formed by the younger igneous rocks; to the more important of these masses may be given the names of the Huntly, Insch, Boganloch, Haddo, Arnage, Maud, and Belhelvie Masses. For the most part they lie within Sheets 76, 77, 86, and 87 of the 1 inch Geological Survey Map of Scotland.

Drevermann has already described and figured this species, and there can be no doubt that the shell from Smugglers' Cove described by Etheridge as ‘O. hipparionix (sic) or striatula’ belongs to it. There are several much better examples in the Sedgwick Museum from Smugglers' Cove, which fully confirm this conclusion. The specimen from Looe, figured by Davidson (op. cit. supra) as O. hipparionyx ? is believed by Drevermann to belong to O. provulvaria, but he does not mention Etheridge's shell from Smugglers' Cove. There is also one imperfect example in the Sedgwick Museum from the New Cut. Williams and Breger consider Schnur's Orthis hipparionyx (non Vanuxem) from Prtim in the Eifel, to be identical with Hall's Schuchertella woolworthana from the Lower Helderberg of New York.

In a recent note Mr. J. Wilfrid Jackson, F.G.S., and the writer mentioned the occurrence at Cauldon, Staffordshire, at highly fossiliferous limestones, resembling those of the “Brachiopodbeds” of Castleton, Park Hill, Narrowdale, Thorpe Cloud, and other stations on the north-west, west, and south-west of the Staffordshire- Derbyshire limestone massif. It will perhaps be of interest to put on record the fauna of these beds, as far as it has yet been worked out, since the conditions under which they occur renders it highly improbable that any considerable amount of material will ever be available from them, and since they represent a phase which does not, so far as is known at present, occur to any extent in the more immediate neighbourhood of this station.

Some remarks made at a meeting of the Cornish Institute of Engineers by Dr. R. H. Rastall directed attention to the possibility of platinum being found in the Lizard. In a paper upon “Ore Deposits of Igneous Origin”, Dr. Rastall pointed out that in the Lizard the local characteristics were favourable to the presence of platinum, although no definite information of its occurrence had been reported. Much interest was aroused locally by these remarks, and the writers resolved to investigate the alluvials derived from the altered ultrabasic igneous rocks of the Lizard Group.

In the Oolitic rocks of the Cotteswold Hills fissures are of frequent occurrence. Noticeable phenomena are that when snow or hoar frost is on the ground it is usually melted or not deposited along the lines of these fissures and that air is usually continuously expelled from them.

THE oil-springs of Jaba are situated at the foot of the steep lime stone hills 1½ or 2 miles distant from the village of Jaba and 7 miles from the railway station of Massan. On the topographical map (Sheet 38, p. 9, scale 1 inch = 1 mile) the two main oil-springs are marked. The north-western spring is called Chota Kutta by the natives, the south-eastern Burra Kutta, from the brooks where they are found.

When Richthofen journeyed in the Wutai district, Shan-si, he found a mighty sequence of metamorphosed sedimentary strata which could not be classed as his Sinian or any series younger than the Sinian, nor could it be regarded as belonging to the Old Gneiss and Gneiss-granite group. They are apparently equivalent to similar strata occurring in eastern Shan-tung and Liao-tung. In descending the Wutai-shan along its southern flank, Richthofen first came across a thick series of green schists with alternating beds of grey slates and quartzites, and then several series of coarse quartzitic and felspathic well-stratified rocks, aggregating to a thickness of more than 5,900 feet. He calls the whole sequence of these strata the “Wutai Formation”, and parallels it with the Huronian. This term at once found a wide application in Chinese geology. Thus in the western Tsing-ling Range, south of Lioyang-hsien (about long. 106° E., lat. 33° 25′ N.), and in the high mountains west of Ta-tsien-lu (about long. 102° 10′ E., lat. 30° N.), Loczy distinguishes a series of highly metamorphosed sedimentary rocks, such as gneiss, schists, phyllites, crystalline limestone, etc., and assigns it to the Wutai Formation. The “Nan-shan Sandstone”a series of unfossiliferous grey and green sandstones with well-cleaved or even schistose clayslates, typically developed in the northern foothills of the Nan-shan Ranges—is also tentatively regarded by the same author as a Wutai Formation. Between Ping-liang and Men-chou, in the province of Kan-su, Futterer identified in several places the Nan-shan Sandstone, and found other metamorphosed sedimentary strata of the Wutai Formation, consisting of chlorite-schist, coarse-grained quartzite, slate, and graywacke. In all these cases the term Wutai evidently implies the analogy with the Algonkian of North America.