The Museum of Yale University contains a small collection of footprints of much interest, which were found in 1873, in the Middle Coal-measures, near Osage, in South-eastern Kansas. A careful re-examination of these footprints has been recently made by the writer, and the main results are given in the present paper.

The impressions are well preserved in a calcareous shale, which separates readily into thin slabs, each representing a surface of the beach at the time the footprints were made upon it. A few shells in the shale are sufficient to prove that the formation is marine. Trails of annelids, and perhaps of other invertebrates, are seen on some of the surfaces.

The most interesting and difficult climatic problem presented in all the geologic record is that of its latest period, immediately preceding the present, to discover the causes, first, of the accumulation, and later, of the rapid final melting of its vast sheets of land-ice. The fossil floras of Greenland and Spitzbergen indicate that those far northern latitudes enjoyed a temperate climate in the Miocene period; and, from the absence of glacial drift through the great series of Tertiary and Mesozoic formations, we infer that climates as mild as those of the present day had prevailed during long eras before the Ice-age.

Prof. Krasnov states that the decomposition of the roots of plants gives rise to the humus, but attaches much more importance to the effect of climatic conditions. Thus, he remarks, “that it is impossible not to note that the Tchernozem occupies a band stretching from S.W. to N.E., that is, the position where the influence of a temperate and moist climate ends, and the region of dry S.E. winds begins. In the N. and N.W. of Russia the woods predominate, unless destroyed by man, or prevented by the marshy nature of the country.

This paper deals with the species which are considered to belong to the genus Cymbites, and the reason for placing Paroniceras, Bonarelli, as a synonym. A few notes are added concerning Agassiceras, which is also affected; and a description of the little-known species Agassiceras Colesi (J. Buckm.) is given.

Having made my first acquaintance with that puzzling series of strata which bridges over the vast interval of geologic time between the Carboniferous and the Jurassic in the Nottingham district during a residence of eight years in the good old town (see Proc. Geol. Assoc. vol. iv.; also Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, November, 1875), the meeting at Nottingham seems a fitting occasion for summarizing the results of further work in connection with those rocks, as opportunities have offered, during the last twenty years.

It not unfrequently happens in these days of superabundant scientific periodical literature that articles appear in which the authors, usually unwittingly, and generally from want of leisure, fail to give an adequate idea of the work of authors anterior to periods with which the writers are more specially acquainted. The injustice thus perpetrated can best be prevented by giving occasionally a brief resumé of work done in certain formations and in special areas during a given period.

I Cannot sufficiently welcome the two letters devoted to myself in the July Number of the Geological Magazine; and I only hope Mr. Harker and Mr. Deeley will continue to face the issues between us, and not be content, as others have been, with fulminating more or less testy protests, and then retiring from the field.

Mr. Deeley objects to my statement that the tendency of the most philosophical writers on geology is to go back from the scholastic formula of Uniformity enunciated by Lyell and Kamsay to more inductive reasoning. With the writings of Suess and Lapparent, of Spencer and of Prestwich, before me, all of them veterans of the first class, I cannot either understand or appreciate Mr. Deeley's protest.