Mr. Arthur Russell collected in 1930 on Pim Hill, near the village of Harmer Hill, 6 miles north of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, specimens of Triassic sandstone encrusted with minute black crystals. They resemble very closely the material from Mottram St. Andrew, Cheshire, which was described and named mottramitc by Sir Henry E. Roscoe in 1876.1 Mr. Russell pointed out this resemblance and kindly placed his specimens of this rare British mineral at our disposal for investigation.

A recent account of pseudo-meteorites by Dr. L. J. Spencer includes a description of nodules of pyrite ‘popularly thought to be “thunderbolts”’. Dr. Spencer himself collected in 1931 a large number from the Lower Chalk outcropping on the foreshore below ‘The Warren’ at Folkestone, Kent. Some of these show well-developed octahedra 5 to 10 ram. across on the outer surface, undoubtedly to be referred to pyrite. More commonly the nodules exhibit small distorted octahedra which might easily be mistaken for marcasite. Indeed, in the past, many of these nodules from the Chalk at Folkestone and elsewhere, have been named marcasite, and they were so labelled in the British Museum collection. Dr. Spencer, therefore, suggested that modern methods should be applied to those cases where the crystalline form is distorted or shOt sufficiently developed to serve as a means of distinction between pyrite and marcasite. The methods suggested in his paper are (1) X-rays, (2) polarized light reflected from polished sections of nodules.

Among the many beautiful rocks of Unst, the most northerly of the Shetlands, is one composed of rosettes of pale blue kyanite set in a base of glassy quartz. This rock was mentioned by Heddle, but has never been described, nor have its genetic relationships been considered. During the mapping of Unst for the Geological Survey, opportunity was afforded of examining the field-relations of these quartz-kyanite-rocks and of collecting adequate material for study. I am indebted to Sir John Flett, F.R.S., Director of the Survey, for permission to present this account. These rocks have a considerable intrinsic interest; in addition, their investigation is closely concerned with certain general problems in metamorphism, especially those connected with metamorphic differentiation. The present paper is therefore divided into two portions, the first dealing with the description and origin of the Unst rocks, and the second with more general aspects.

A statistical study of clay and bauxitic minerals, which consisted of plotting all available analyses of these minerals on two triangular diagrams (figs. 1 and 7) and constructing frequency curves for the cardinal ratios, led to a classification of these minerals on a purely chemical basis. The suggestion is also made that among substances claimed to be minerals we can select only a few as belonging to definite mineral species, and that the others are probably mixtures of these selected minerals, or their hydration products, or colloidal hydrates of variable composition. The distinct crystalline mineral species thus singled out are as follows :

Besides these minerals, other substances, such as termierite, anauxite, allophane, &c., are suggested as probable species, without, however, any clear statistical evidence. The bentonitic minerals, not belonging strictly to the pure hydrous aluminium silicates, are placed in a separate group.

In conclusion, I should like to thank Dr. G. Hickling and Mr. G. S. Mockler for reading the MS. of this paper and for their valuable suggestions.

In July 1930 a fragment of this meteorite was received at the Government Laboratory, Perth, with a request from the sender that he should be informed of its nature and value. Realizing its scientific interest, one of the authors (E. S. S.) took advantage of a visit to Beneubbin (lat. 30° 48′ S., long. 117° 51′ E. ; about 150 miles NE. of Perth in the South-West Division) to interview the finder and suggest that the whole mass should be handed over to the Government Laboratory for examination, a specimen detached for the British Museum, and the main mass finally presented to the Western Australian Museum in Perth. This arrangement was agreed to.

The mineral berthierite has hitherto been known from two localities in the region of the Carpathian Mountains. It was first recorded by A. Löwe in 1847 from Aranyidka in the Hungarian comitat Abauj-Torna, where it occurred' massive and disseminated, columnar and fibrous, with jamesonite and stibnite'. Much later, about 1908, J. Krenner recognized it from Felsőbánya in the Hungarian comitat Szatmár but his paper describing it, which was read before the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on October 19, 1908, was not published until after his death.

The local interest aroused by the discovery in 1931 of the meteorite craters near Henbury in Central Australia has led to the finding of a new meteoric iron in South Australia. This is due to the energy and enthusiasm displayed by Mr. R. Bedford of the Kyancutta Museum. According to his letter dated August 23, 1932, the mass was found in June 1932 by a farmer, Mr. L. G. Gardiner, whilst cultivating a sandy paddock 28 miles ESE. of Kyancutta. It was turned up from just beneath the surface. He describes it as weighing 72 lb., and being 17 inches long and roughly triangular in section with a thickness of about 8 inches. The mass is weathered and one face shows four Sharply cut hemispherical pits (fig. 2) averaging 1¼ inches in diameter and 1 inch in depth. The main mass is now in the Kyancutta Museum.

Concentrates from the platiniferous norites of the Bushveld, Transvaal, are not completely soluble in aqua regia. The insoluble portion consists of steel-grey fragments first analysed chemically by R. A. Cooper and considered by him to be a new platinum mineral represented by the formula Pt(As,S)2. The name cooperite was proposed for the new mineral by F. Wartenweiller, and after further work Cooper decided that the arsenic found in the early analysis was due to the presence of sperrylite, and he changed the formula to PtS2. H. Schneiderhöhn observed simple twinning and, less frequently, polysynthetie lamellae on polished sections of mineral grains from the same deposits, and he suggested that cooperite is probably orthorhombic and isomorphous with marcasite. The latest account of the new mineral has been published by H. R. Adam who gave several analyses of cooperite from the Rustenburg and Potgietersrust districts and concluded that the ‘mineral is PtS2 with a small amount of excess metal (platinum, palladium, and nickel) present in solid solution’.

The end of October 1932 information was received at the West Siberian Museum in Omsk that in May 1932 a meteorite fell in the village of Kuznctzovo (Кузнецово), 140 km. east by north from Omsk. On November 3-7, together with my assistant P. Serov, I investigated the matter on the spot. In March 1933 some further information was received, and I am now able to make the following preliminary communication.

At the suggestion of, and with much assistance from, Dr. L. J. Spencer, Keeper of Minerals in the British Museum, I have examined and, as far as possible, verified and corrected the recorded places of fall of all reported Indian meteorites. The original records were consulted, and as far as possible the places found on the large scale (usually 1 inch = 1 mile) maps in the India Office. This left a residuum regarding which inquiries were made of District Officers in India, to several of whom I am indebted for useful information which has been embodied in the list.

In this list the falls are entered under their original names in alphabetical order by Provinces in British India, but in one list for all the Indian States, and the positions are indicated on the map (plate XII). The correct names of the places of fall are given in each case, in some only the spelling has required correction in accordance with the Government of India standard system, in others the vernacular name has clearly been mistransliterated, and in many cases the name of the district or province has been changed since the fall. Wherever possible the exact date and time of fall, the latitude and longitude of the place thereof, and its distance from some big place or railway station have been given.

With the exception of beryl, there are very few recorded occurrences of beryllium minerals in the whole of Africa. Phenakite is represented by a single small crystal from Tanganyika Territory which was described in this Magazine in 1906. Chrysoberyl has been found in small amount in the Somabula diamond field in Southern Rhodesia, and in Belgian Congo and Gold Coast; and gadolinite a in Gordonia in Cape Province.

In describing the chief assemblages of the Scawt Hill contact-zone in Co. Antrim brief reference was made to the occurrence of wollastonite and xonotlite associated with the flint nodules of the contact-altered chalk. A more detailed examination of these nodules has now been made and the study of a large number of examples has revealed an interesting group of mineral assemblages which have developed by a progressive metasomatism of these siliceous bodies.

Unfortunately nothing is known of the history of this stone. It was found in 1933 by Mr. R. Bedford in the old museum at Port Adelaide in South Australia. Attached to the specimen is a small label with the number 23, and accompanying it was a card giving in faded writing the information '(23) Meteoric stone from Silverton'. The Port Adelaide Museum has been in a neglected condition for thirty years, and recently it has been decided to reorganize it as a Nautical Museum, and to discard all mineral and miscellaneous material.