It is very much to be regretted that amongst our rising geologists we have none who are turning, as far as we know, their attention devotedly to fossil plants. There is a wide field open, and a most interesting one, for since the time of Lindley and Hutton, now six-and-twenty years ago, we have had no important British work on this branch of geology, and it cannot be supposed that the advance made by recent botanists in that interval would not be applicable, and of the highest advantage to the study of fossil vegetable remains. We have quite enough shell-pickers and mammoth-hunters for a few to devote their time and their energies to the ancient “flowers of the fields,” if flowers there were in those dreary days which some of our savants picture when they tell us how the carboniferous vegetation luxuriated in the warmest and densest of fogs, and the earth itself was a gigantic warming-pan for the plants that grew upon it.

The pretty fern-leaf we have figured came into our possession some years ago very accidentally, so much so that we are not quite sure of even its locality, and it is now deposited in the National Collection. Neither in Lindley and Hutton, the figures in which are not exquisite examples of art, nor amongst the actual specimens in the British Museum cabinets, could we find anything with which it seemed to accord.

On each side of a long, hollow, deep valley, bounded by dark and lofty mountains, at elevations respectively of 1266, 1188, and 980 feet, three strong lines are traced on the mountain-sides, parallel to each other and to the horizon, and at levels exactly corresponding on the opposite slopes,—so extraordinary in their appearance as to impress the most unphilosophical and incurious spectator.

These singular and solitary phenomena, although long known and celebrated by the Highlanders of that wild region as the traditional opposite slopes,—so extraordinary in their appearance as to impress the most unphilosophical and incurious spectator.

These singular and solitary phenomena, although long known and celebrated by the Highlanders of that wild region as the traditional works of their great ancestors, remained unnoticed by science and the world at large, until that indefatigable disturber of hidden mysteries, animals, and antiquities, the tourist Pennant, published in 1769 a short account of Glen Roy, in his ‘Tour through England, Wales, and Scotland.’

A second description appeared in the ‘Statistical Survey of Scotland,’ in 1793.

The subject was next taken up by Macculloch, who published an admirable paper, illustrated with views, maps, and sections, in the Transactions of the Geological Society for 1817. “So rarely,” he remarks, “does nature present us in her larger features with artificial forms or with the semblance of mathematical exactness, that no conviction of the contrary can divest the spectator of the feeling that he is contemplating a work of art,—a work, of which the gigantic dimensions and bold features appear to surpass the efforts of mortal powers.

At least seven geological ages ago, and there were aeronauts in those days. Not Glaishers and Coxwells, clinging to bubbles of gas at six miles high, but reptiles and birds,—the latter at least, and perhaps the former, capable of long and lofty flights. On the red sands of Connecticut, perhaps some two or three ages before, wingless birds had left their footprints; but nor bone nor feather has the searching eye of man yet looked upon to glean a notion of what those birds were like. Not from all the thick mass of stratified rocks deposited by lake or ocean in the long interval between the period of those impressed tracks—persistent through 2000 feet of stone—to the time when a solitary bone was entombed in the sandy mud of the Cretaceous Sea.

A little time ago the geological and palæontological worlds were astonished by the announcement of a feathered reptile. We recorded the reports without comment; the reason was, we could not rightly reconcile the statements to our conscientious content. We endeavoured to procure drawings, but without success; the specimen was for sale, and no doubt its value would have been prejudiced by its portraits being handed about as “cartes de visite” in the houses of the learned. The accounts that reached us were second-hand and by hearsay. Professor Wagner, on his death-bed, wrote the notice in the ‘Sitzungberichte’ of Munich, from the description of a M. Witte, who had derived his information from a sight of the specimen in M. Häberlein's possession.

Of all English geologists, Mr. Sorby has been at once the most indefatigable and the most successful in the study of the microscopic structure and metamorphic conditions of rocks. The brief abstract furnished us by the Geological Society, which we print at p. 231, gives but little idea of the importance of the paper Mr. Sorby read last month. It gives, it is true, the pith of the subject, but so short and inexplanatory a paragraph is not likely to attract such attention as the paper deserves. Those who have the pleasure of Mr. Sorby's acquaintance know how persistently he works at anything puzzling which comes in his way. He never leaves it until he has got to the solution of the riddle. It happened some time ago, when in Germany, at the meeting of savants at Speyer, on which occasion he transmitted an account of the proceedings, with some notes on meteorites and sponges (see Vol. IV. p. 501), that Professor Blum presented him with a specimen of the singular conglomerate known as the “nagel-flue.” This conglomerate, which occurs in some places in Switzerland, consists of hard limestone pebbles, the ends of some being impressed into the substance of others,—a condition hitherto inexplicable, although Blum, Von Dechen, Escher von der Linth, Nöggerath, Daubrée, and others have essayed opinions and suggestions, some of them attributing the impressions to merely mechanical, others to purely chemical action.

“Why is it that there is no bituminous coal of any account in Ireland?” This is a question which I have often been asked by well-informed people, and the answer is comprised in the one descriptive word “Denudation.” In truth, there is no reason why, at one period of our geological history, the great mass of the bituminous coal-bearing strata occurring in England should not have extended over what is now Ireland; but, strange to say, while this store of inestimable wealth was being preserved in England, and covered by the New Red Sandstone and probably Tertiary rocks, the adjoining portion of the earth's crust was being gradually raised from beneath the sea, and wellnigh effectually denuded of its carbonaceous covering. Ireland, therefore, for the most part, presents an older geological surface than England, especially over the areas now occupied by the Devonian and Carboniferous rocks; and I believe that all we have now remaining to us in the upper portion of the latter, is some of the basal beds of the English coal-measures, represented by three thin layers of bituminous coal, capping the mountains at either side of Lough Allen, in the counties of Roscommon and Leitrim, and extending into the Co. Sligo.

The most important coal-beds of the Arigna district, or those which are being worked at present, occur to the west of Lough Allen, and near the summits of the mountains of Kilronan and Altagowlan; the former being 1081 feet, and the latter 1377 feet above the sea, having the valley of the Arigna river between them. From an examination of these coal-fields, which I made in the month of March, 1862, I am enabled to add some information to that which we already possess regarding them, which, I have no doubt, will be acceptable to those who are interested in the subject of the Irish bituminous coals.

Some time since, a gentleman handed me, at one of the meetings of the Geologists' Association, a bone from the Stonesfield slate. Unfortunately the label attached to the specimen has been accidentally lost, and consequently I can neither give due credit to its owner for his find nor return the specimen to him as I would wish to do, as his name and address are both thus unknown to me.

The nature of the specimen was very evident, at the first glance, to any practised palæontologist. It is a bone that is peculiarly characteristic of a peculiar class of reptiles which, at the present day, comprises the tortoises, terrapins, and turtles. In short, it is the coracoid bone of some member of the family Chelonia.

Our evidences of this order of reptiles, in strata of Mesozoic age, are few and far between; but Chelonian remains are rare in the Secondary beds, chiefly by reason that many of our most productive localities are neglected to be well worked.

Every day's experience confirms more and more the opinion that the central heat doctrine has less foundation than formerly it was supposed to possess. Its great supporters have gradually increased the necessary thickness of the solid crust in proportion to the internal supposed fluid core from forty to eight hundred miles at least: rather a wide difference in itself, but not perhaps so very great in respect to the absolute diameter of the earth, to which such a relationship would be about in proportion to the thickness of a sheet of cartridge-paper round a 12-inch globe. We know nothing, however, so perfectly a non-conductor that so thin would resist the heat of the internal molten mass. Moreover, upon the alleged increase of temperature with depth in coal and other mines, much doubt has been thrown by the subsequently ascertained facts that in many instances the higher temperatures have disappeared after the mines had ceased to be worked. The necessity, if the interior were fluid, for internal tides below the supposed solid crust, also militates against the existence of a fluid core, because we can detect no such tides at the surface of our earth; and if they existed, it is difficult to conceive the rigidity and strength of so thin a crust to be equal to restraining them entirely; and if the crust were in the least degree yielding or elastic, we must have evidence of such tides in the heavings of the surface.

On the shore of the English Channel, half hidden by its shady grove of trees, stands Walmer Castle, the sweet red roses trailing up the ramparts and clustering in lovely bouquets round its cannon, emblematic of the peaceful end of him—illustrious Wellington—whose last breath ceased within those grey stone walls.

From this lonely beach, against whose front the “wild waves ceaseless play,” creating their own barrier in the great banks of shingle which ceaselessly they raise, we look out upon the fleet of vessels in the Downs, and far beyond the long white line of surf—the shroud of many a noble heart—that marks the Goodwin Sands, is seen the distant coast of France.

From Walmer,the “white cliffs of Albion,” so conspicuous here for their numerous and regular bands of flints, gradually rise towards Dover, whose far-famed castle stands on a mountain mass of microscopic shells, overlooking the red-roofed tenements of that ancient port, winding along the deep valley which at this point cuts abruptly through the strata.

The opposite hill is furrowed in its entire extent with the trenches of the citadel, and at the foot of its steep cliff is the long and narrow street which formerly, when the town was walled, led to the Snaregate.

The yery fine specimen of palatal tooth of Ptychodus polygyrus, which we figure in Plate IX., from the collection of N. T. Wetherell, Esq., of Highgate, temporarily draws our attention to a class of remains of very considerable interest.

We have not the leisure at the present time for going as deeply into the subject as it well deserves, nor as the mass of valuable materials accumulated since the publications of Agassiz in 1843, and Dixon in 1850, require.

There are also other important points than the mere bearings of more detailed information of the characters of species very possibly to be gained by a study of the singular and marked group of cestraciont fishes. First known, in abundance of individuals, in the Carboniferous age—though not at any time numerous in genera,—and presenting various forms, numerically abundant, in the Jurassic and other intermediate formations up to the Chalk, characterized by its many varieties of Ptychodus, but now dwindled down to a solitary representative in the Port Jackson shark, it is one of those very circumscribed groups in which we ought to find more especially and distinctly marked traces of the transmutation of one species into another, if such transmutation did exist in the past ages of our planet. That the group does present important evidence on this point is certain, but whether sufficient or not to come to a practical and definite conclusion, may be as yet doubtful; although, if collectors will turn to the fossil remains of these fishes in earnest, we may rest assured of good work in this direction being done. By a glance at the British Museum specimens, and a careful looking over of the descriptions and figures in the ‘Poissons Fossiles’ and the ‘Geology of Sussex,’ any intelligent observer would at once see what new additions would be useful for supplying the missing links in the historic and stratigraphical series. We add here a list of the species of Ptychodus exhibited in our National Collection.

England has been visited by an earthquake. The newspapers have dilated upon it, and hundreds of persons have hastened to record their sensations. They have told us how they got out of bed and lit their candles, as if they had hoped to have seen the earthquake, like a ghost, wandering about the earth; but earthquakes do not linger, and the last British one was over before most people knew anything about it. Others fancied they heard a great roaring noise; others compared the shock to a great dog or animal shaking itself under the bedstead; others to the vibrating of a steam-engine. Some saw leaves fall, walls shake, and some felt “a warm breath of air” upon their cheeks. In short, some told the truth as far as they could, and some told what was not quite the truth. If the truth had been simply stated, and the press had helped to state it by publishing as many letters as their correspondents chose to send them, we should have no other comment to make than to have thanked it for its pains. But when leaders were printed in such terrible paroxysmal terms, thanking Heaven we were not all swallowed up, we can scarcely regard such sensation articles as little less than impious.

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.

Since the publication of Agassiz' ‘Poissons Fossiles’ only one addition, that we are aware of, has been made to our knowledge of this interesting genus of fishes,—certainly, at least, in respect to British geology. In 1845 Sir Philip Egerton described, before the Geological Society, a large jaw, or rather mouth of teeth, of a fish of this kind, found by Captain Ibbetson in the Isle of Wight, and named by Sir Philip Hylodus bassanus.

This species has been assigned to the Lower Greensand, in Morris's Catalogue, but the bed seems, from Sir Philip's statement, to be in a dubious position, for he speaks of it only as “near the junction of the Lower Greensand and Wealden,” and says the specimen was sent to him “in the hopes it might tend to show to which of the two formations its bed should be assigned,”—a question he further declines to answer, as “the evidence it affords on this question is neither direct nor conclusive, inasmuch as it is an undescribed species; and consequently any deductions beyond those based upon general affinities would be unwarrantable.” Sir Philip adds, however, further on: “The geological inferences afforded by the specimen are briefly told. The species is new. The genus is undoubtedly Hybodus. This genus attains its maximum expansion in the Oolitic series, but it ranges from the Muschelkalk to the Chalk inclusive.

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.

In the parish of Baldernock, county of Stirling, and in the neighbourhood of “fragments of stone reared by creatures of clay,” Craigmadden Castle, the pedestrian will find three large stones well worthy of his notice. They are situated in the centre of a bog; consequently, if the said pedestrian desires to observe, measure, and minutely examine them, he must, as three friends lately did, take off boots and stockings and wade through the water that surrounds the stones to within two feet; that is to say, if he desires such articles to remain dry. The bog forms part of an extensive natural amphitheatre, situated in the Craigmadden moor; and the stones have received the name “Auld Wives' Lifts,” from the absurd tradition that they were placed, once upon a time, among the heather by three old women, natives of Baldernock, Strathblane, and Campsie.

The Lifts are considered by some antiquaries to be nothing more or less than a cromlech or sepulchral monument; others, however, think they are an altar which the Druids used. The former opinion is maintained by Dr. Daniel Wilson in his ‘Archæology.’ His words are: “It is remarkable as an example of a trilith, or complete cromlech, consisting only of three stones. Two, of nearly equal length, support the huge capstone; a block of basalt measuring fully 18 feet in length, by 11 in breadth, and 7 in depth. A narrow triangular space remains open between the three stones, and through this every stranger is required to pass on first visiting the spot, if, according to the rustic creed, he would escape the calamity of dying childless.

The following interesting letter by Professor Hall (31st Oct. 1862), “On a New Crustacean, from the Potsdam Sandstone,” was published in the December number of the ‘Canadian Naturalist.’

I have been much interested in reading your observations upon the tracks of Limulus in sand, and comparisons with the tracks in the Potsdam Sandstone; more especially as these observations connect themselves in a remarkable manner with a recent discovery of my own; and a question may arise as to whether you have described an animal which I have found, or I have found the animal corresponding to your description. I will leave you and the scientific world to judge of the facts. However, after what you have written, I cannot now publish what I communicated to the Albany Institute last winter, without referring to your paper; and in the meantime you may lay this note before the Montreal Natural History Society, and publish it, or such parts of it, as you please.

In February last, I communicated to the Albany Institute a notice of a new crustacean from the Potsdam Sandstone of Wisconsin, and subsequently I sent a drawing of the same to M. Barrande. In 1855, I obtained from the Potsdam Sandstone of the Upper Mississippi River, a fragment of what appeared to be a spine of a crustacean, of very remarkable and peculiar structure, reminding one of that bone; and which might at one time, before we had accustomed ourselves to limit the geological range of fishes, have been taken for an ichthyic remain.

Since the original foundation of the genus Dichobune by Cuvier, and the critical observations made thereon by Owen, the national collection has continued to receive new accessions, indicating the existence of a certain range of variation in the molars of that genus.

The specimen (No. 30673) in the British Museum collection, is figured in Plate II., by Mr. Mackie. It consists of the three molars of the right side of a species of small quadruped closely resembling Dichobune. The length of the fractured ramus containing these teeth, of which the inner aspect is exposed to the observer, measures 27mm.; its greatest vertical depth between the penultimate and last molar being 11mm.

The last molar (m 3) measures 7mm. in length, and 4 in breadth. Its form is quadricuspid; the two outward cusps being least eroded; from the ectoposterior cusp is developed a slight basal talon, extending towards the entoposterior cusp, which is the smallest of the four, pyramidal, and acuminate; the entoanterior cusp is larger, and is tipped with a small exposed ring of enamel; the ectoanterior cusp is much worn; there is no trace of the distinct hinder lobe of Xiphodon, which lobe in the Dichobune (sp. ?) from Hordwell, marked 29714 in the British Museum, exhibits a well-marked bicuspid division, having the effect of rendering the ultimate molar in that specimen virtually hexacuspid, to a greater extent than in the Dichobune ovina.