In examining ideas so novel as those of Wegener it is not easy to avoid bias. A moving continent is as strange to us as a moving earth was to our ancestors, and we may be as prejudiced as they were. On the other hand, if continents have moved many former difficulties disappear, and we may be tempted to forget the difficulties of the theory itself and the imperfection of the evidence. Those who study the distribution of animals and plants must be especially subject to this temptation, and it will be instructive to note how far they agree in their demands upon the moving continents.

The petrologist who attempts the systematic investigation of igneous rocks is unfortunately too familiar with the difficulty of naming the rocks examined. The discovery of a border-line type necessitates a choice of two alternatives: either the introduction of a new name to a science already overburdened with such, or the widening of the definition of the nearest established type to include the newly described rock. The decision is no easy one to make, especially if the petrographer is young and eager for the transient fame won by the discovery of something new. In such a case the temptation to create a new name is very strong. As a result, both student and teacher spend tedious hours in trying to discover differences between rocks bearing different names, differences which, however, have been magnified out of all proportion to their importance as diagnostic characters.

In the early half of 1922 a boring (“jumped”) was made by Mr. H. G. Godwin, of Quenington, Fairford, Gloucestershire, for Mr. Oswald Collier, of Calcutt, in search of water. The site of the borehole is at Calcutt—¼ in. above the “C” in Calcutt on 6 in. map, 5 S.W., Wilts.

When visiting the fireclay quarry of the Dominion Fire Brick and Clay Products Company at Claybank, Sask., during the summer of 1918, the writer noticed an occurrence of banded precipitatesin the fireclay of one part of the quarry. Through the kindness and courtesy of Mr. H. G. Love, Managing Director of the Company, a collection of some examples of the occurrence was made and forwarded to the writer for further examination.

The rock which is described in this communication, occurs along the western flank of Llwydmor Bâch, about 6 miles eastsouth-east of Bangor, and about 8 miles south-west of Conway. On the 1 in. map of the Geological Survey, this rock, together with entirely different types on its eastern margin, are all marked as intrusive felspathic rocks. On the ¼ in. map, it is described as granite, and its eastern boundary is mapped.

Among the Brachiopoda described in my recent memoir on the Kuckers stage of north-east Estonia, there was an undetermined member of the Strophomenacea, of which the interior of the dorsal valve was unknown. I have since found a dorsal valve with its exterior (concave) outwards, embedded in kuckersite. By filling the concavity with plaster of Paris the shell could be easily removed from the kuckersite. A complete description can now, therefore, be given. Since my return to Estonia I have found additional examples of the same species and of another species of the same genus amoug the collections of the Tartu (Dorpat) Museum, which were removed into Russia during the war, and have now been returned.

The deposits which are the subject of this paper have already attracted some attention, because of their connexion with the contents of a small, though highly fossiliferous bone-cave at a placecalled Holly Lane (Figs. 1, 2), discovered by Mr. G. E. Male, of Clevedon, towards the close of the year 1905. Mr. Male worked at it for many weeks, and with his brother, Dr. H. C. Male, of Croydon. collected hundreds of bones, though unfortunately considerable numbers had been already thrown away. In the following year Professor Sidney Reynolds also began to collect, and obtained about 500 more. Probably not less than 2,000 have been preserved. They are now in the museums at Jermyn Street (London), Bristol, and Taunton, and in Dr. Male's collection. The vertebrates were named by Mr. E. T. Newton, Professor Reynolds, and Mr. Martin Hinton (with notes by Mr. S. G. Shattoek, of the Royal College of Surgeons, and by Professor Sir W. Boyd Dawkins), and the gasteropods by Mr. E. T. Newton, the shells having lately been re-examined and the list revised by Mr. A. S. Kennard.