In the following brief notice it is my wish to communicate to the Society a description of the physical properties and chemical composition of one of the geological specimens recently brought from the above group of islands.

Since writing the letter quoted in the foregoing communication by my friend Prof. Liversidge, I have had the opportunity of examining a larger fragment of the calcareous rock to which it refers, and am thereby enabled to add somewhat, not merely to the list of Foraminifera which it contains, but also to the general conclusions to be drawn from it. The lithological characters of the rock are, as Prof. Liversidge has stated, precisely those of many specimens of white chalk, but it is seldom that a Cretaceous mineral is so entirely composed of the recognizable remains of microzoa, and it is still more rarely that a geological deposit occurs, for which so exact a counterpart in process of formation can be indicated. Under these circumstances some further remarks on the subject may not be without interest.

Numerous buried channels filled with drift occur over Ohio and the neighbouring states forming the St. Lawrence basin. Some of these penetrate the water-parting, and formed, according to Prof. Newberry, waste weirs through which the lake waters of the St. Lawrence basin escaped into the valley of the Mississippi, as the land rose and the sea retired from that valley.

About half-way between Hayburn Wyke and Cloughton Wyke, and five miles North of Scarborough, a scar of hard sandstone, remarkable for its even bedding, may be seen rising with a considerable dip from the sea. This sandstone contains along its bedding planes occasional thin layers of a very dense ironstone, from which it has probably received the name of ”Iron Scar.“ Immediately beneath are about five feet of shales closely resembling those of the Middle Lias, and containing two bands of dogger ironstone.

In May last I had the honour of laying before the Geological Society a description of all the known British Cretaceous Patellidæ and patelloid Gasteropoda. Since then the well-known collector, Griffiths, of Folkestone, has forwarded to me a new limpet from Hythe, which appears to belong to the genus Hipponyx. The finding of a shell of this genus is remarkable, as hitherto the shelly bases were the only indications of the existence of Hipponyx in Cretaceous rocks in England, whilst Capulus Dunkerianus, d'Orb., was the only shell on the Continent, of this age, which could be referred to the genus.

Whilst in Irkutsk I had many opportunities of conversing about the earthquakes which sometimes disturb these Central Asian localities. Not long before my arrival in the town, a sharp shocks had been experienced. The general effect it produced was given to me by Miss Cathleen Campbell, now Mrs. Szlenker, who had been keeping a record of meteorological and other phenomena. The shock took place at 2.55 a.m. on the 4th September. It was at first felt in a direction from east to west, but after 1¾ minutes it changed to N.E. and S.W. The shock, which was severe, caused ornaments on the table to rattle, and a few bottles which were close together knocked each other with so much force that they fell over. There were thirteen of them, and they tumbled in various directions—nine fell on the table, and four were broken on the floor. Watches and clocks were stopped, and screws 1¼ in. long, fastened in the wall to keep a clock straight, were drawn out. Preceding this shock, from observations which I saw, the barometer appears to have been lower than usual.

In the Rev. T. G. Bonney's article, Geol. Mag. Nov. 1877, p. 499, lines 8 and 14, for “Hungary,” read “Bohemia.”