The first crossing of the Greenland Ice Cap by Fridjof Nansen in 1888 had shown that the southern part was a flattened dome rising to a height of 2,720 m. Crossings in 1912 by the Danish expedition of J. P. Koch and A. Wegener and by a Swiss expedition under de Quervain proved that there was a northern culmination, reaching to a height of at least 3,000 m., which was separated by a saddle of about 2,500 m. from the southern culmination traversed by Nansen. The form of the Ice Cap determined by these three crossings and by other expeditions near its margin of Rink, Jensen, Baron Nordenskiold, Peary, Gaarde, Mikkelsen, Rasmussen, and L. Koch, has been summarized in sketchmaps by L. Koch (1923) and de Quervain (1925). In the year 1930–31 several expeditions were simultaneously making further contributions to our knowledge of the Greenland Ice Cap. (See Fig. 1.)

In his description of the older rocks of Kintyre the writer has described in some detail the field characters of the Green Beds of that peninsula. Many difficulties were met with in the southern part of Kintyre where the rock-groups are repeated by folding. The chief of these difficulties were occasioned by the knowledge that schists identical in composition and appearance to the Green Beds occur at many different horizons below the Erins Quartzite.

The Quaternary deposits of the Fenland, consisting of silts, clays, and peats, offer several problems of correlation. Large exposures of these beds have been rare, and hitherto no attempt at dating individual beds has been made, although from the descriptive point of view the whole of the Fenland deposits were dealt with very fully by Skertchley in 1877 (1).

Seven beads were found, details of which are given below:—

Bead No. 1.—Pale cobalt-coloured annular glass bead. Weight, 5·21 g.; sp. gr., 2·412. There are two varieties of this bead which are very similar: one is of the La Tene period, and the other is Saxon. There has been a small difference of specific gravity in practically all the specimens I have examined, but it is so slight that I do not think it is safe to trust as a means of dating them. At the same time it has been fairly consistent, as in twelve specimens from different sites dated to the early period in Britain, France, and the Mediterranean the specific gravity has been below 2·46, and the only other early specimen I have tested was 2·485. On the other hand, all the beads that I have tested which I know to be Saxon have a specific gravity of 2·485 or over. I have, however, recently seen a bead from Lincolnshire with the same specific gravity as this No. 1, which, I think, is probably Saxon. Blue annular Saxon beads of this type, but usually smaller, are more common in the eastern counties than in any other part of England.

The complete sequence of Fenland deposits at St. Germans consists of five clays interbedded with four peats; the whole is apparently of post-Glacial age, and the later beds at least were laid down in historic times. Fourteen specimens were collected from the clays, and all yielded foraminifera. Forty-one species of these are indigenous, five are derived from the Chalk, and twelve from the Kimmeridge Clay. Of the indigenous species nearly all are forms tolerant of brackish-water, while species intolerant of this are almost lacking. From this fact and from the presence of many fragments of peat in the clays it is concluded that these are of brackish-water origin. From the presence of a proportion of micaceous silt in many of the clays, accompanied by and correlated with foraminiferal species less tolerant of brackish water, occasional ingress of estuarine water is presumed.