Of Mr. Ruskin's admirable lecture on the Alps of Savoy, delivered at the Royal Institution, we have already given an abstract at p. 256. We recur again to that subject because there were two points so forcibly and so well put by Mr. Ruskin, and so seemingly pregnant with the germs of future progress to our science, as to merit the special attention of geologists. These were the inefficacy of ice to scoop out lake-basins, and the mighty wave-like action of force that crumbles the gigantic rock-masses of our mountains almost into wave-like breakers ready to nod and fall. “Geology,” well remarked Mr. Ruskin in his opening words, “properly divides itself into two branches,—the study, first, of the materials and chronology of deposits; and, secondly, of their present forms.” The interest attaching to the relics of organic life, without doubt, has carried geologists away from the study of external forms; and this almost exclusion of regard for structural phenomena is the more to be regretted that it is the threshold of the grand field of record of ancient physical phenomena. The gigantic mountain-wave is not heaved up and rolled onwards in a few moments, like the surging waves of the sea; the particles of rock-masses are not quickly moved about like the water-atoms of the dancing ripples on our rivers, but slowly—slowly indeed—are the almost immovably linked-together particles forced onwards by some ponderous pressure, some solemn but irresistible force, due perhaps to the very strain of the earth's altering rotation or the leverage of its surface inequalities upon its central axis.

The fossils represented in the accompanying Plate are probably only fragments of the original structure, and possibly only the smaller and less essential portions of the whole. Nevertheless I have determined to publish some account of them, although at the risk of committing an extravagant error, as a last resort towards obtaining more complete examples or suggestions for their more correct interpretation.

Both specimens have been presented to the British Museum; one by J. Wickham Flower, Esq., of Park Hill, Croydon, the other by the Rev. Norman Glass, of London.

The first example (Fig. A) was obtained, at least sixteen years ago, from the Upper Chalk of Higham, near Rochester, and was submitted to Prof. E. Forbes, in whose custody it remained for several years. It was originally shown to me in connection with the anomalous Cirripede Loricula, then newly discovered by Mr. Wetherell. The resemblance between them is certainly curious; but there is no real relationship. Mr. Flower's fossil exhibits distinct traces of the crystalline structure peculiar to the petrified Echinodermata, and the pairs of pores in the ambulacral plates are equally characteristic of the Echinidæ. Mr. Darwin also has examined this fossil and rejected it from his province of inquiry.