At the meeting of the British Association in Nottingham,inAugust of last year, a joint discussion on “Coral Reefs” was held by the sections of Zoology and Geology. Prof. Sollas,inopening the discussion, referred to the “ Dolomites of South Tyrol” as a country affording brilliant examples of Fossil Coral Reefs. He demonstrated this by sections taken from the wellknown work of Mojsisovics, and showed several photographs of some of the more imposing dolomite mountains—Schlern, Langkofl, and Sella—which had been explained as reefs of Triassic age. in the course of the discussion, Dr. Hickson said he believed there were no corals in these so-called fossil reefs. Dr. Rothpletz corrected this statement, saying briefly that there were corals in the dolomite and limestone rock, along with other groups of marine animals, but that many of the sections shown by Prof. Sollas were incorrect. Prof. Bonney emphasized the ample evidence of Coral life in many parts of the district which he had visited.

Ellipsolites Compressus, J. Sowerby (Min. Con. vol. i. p. 84, pi. xxxviii. 1813), has been hitherto usually regarded as a Nautiloid,1 and referred either to Nautilus or to-Discites.

During an examination of the collection of Mr. Joseph Wright, of Belfast, by one of the present writers, a fossil from the same horizon, and almost the same locality as the type-specimens of Ellipsolites compressus of J. Sowerby, was observed, so much resembling Sowerby's species (but exhibiting also the character of the suture-line) that a comparison with, and a re-examination of, Sowerby's types was suggested.

In a collection of vertebrate remains from the south-west coast of Madagascar, recently received in the British Museum, there occur numerous bones belonging to, at least, three species of Æpyornis. Among them are two tibio-tarsi, right and left, of gigantic size, much larger than any hitherto described. Both these bones are, unfortunately, considerably damaged at the upper end, the right one alone showing any portion of the proximal articular surface. They both, without doubt, belong to the same species, though probably not to the same individual. The left, which on the whole, is the better preserved, may be taken as the type of the species which it is proposed to call Æpyornis titan.

Amongst the rocks whose original structures have been more or less deformed by metamorpbic agencies the geologist very commonly meets with curious eye-like inclusions of mineral matter, which are generally known by the name of augen. Close investigation of a large series of rocks exhibiting these eyes brings to light the fact that under this name are classed two essentially different kinds of structure. in the one, the kernels or eyes are manifestly the unsheared portions of the rock, whose sheared portions constitute the schist that envelops the eyes. in the other kind of augen structure the eyes consist of crystalline minerals, whose development as such is shewn to be posterior to the shearing to which the matrix has been reduced, by the fact that the eyes of crystalline matter have not participated in the shearing, but are bright and generally unfractured throughout.

Until very recently it was thoroughly recognised that in post- Tertiary, viz., Pleistocene or Diluvial times, there occurred in Switzerland, as elsewhere, two glaciations which covered the Alps and the greater part of the Swiss lowlands, and between which intervened a genial or interglacial period. The repeated advance of Swiss glaciers was first established by Escher von der Linth and Heer, more especially upon the evidence of the lignite slate deposits near Durnten and Wetzikon, which fringe the edge of what was at one time the Limmat and is now the Glatt valley, to the N.E. of Zurich, and were formed during the interglacial period referred to.

MR. Teall,inhis very interesting and suggestive address to the Geological Section of the British Association at Nottingham, alluded to the composition of sediments (clays, etc.) as compared with that of older sedimentary rocks, and specially to the amount of alkali contained in them.

At the time he made his remarks I was engaged on some analyses of clays, with a view to gaining information on this particular point,inconnection with studies of clays and slates which I have been carrying on for some years, and on which I have published papers in this MAGAZINE on former occasions. The results of these analyses, and some considerations arising out of them, I propose to give as the first item of these present “notes.”