The specimen here figured is an internal cast of a right valve, occurring in the well-known, reddish, fossiliferous, Palæozoic quartzite of the Triassic pebble-bed at Budleigh-Salterton, in Devonshire; and it resembles some forms of Cypridina brevimentum, J. and K. (“ Monogr. Carbonif. Entom.” Pal. Soc. 1874, p. 15, pl. 5, figs. 15–19), in general aspect; and also in some respects Polycope simplex, J. and K. (op. cit. p. 54, pl. 2, fig. 12). It was detected by the late Mr. J. W. Salter (in 1865?) during his enthusiastic study of that interesting conglomerate.

The Archæan (Pre-Cambrian) rocks of Britain have of late years received considerable attention, owing partly to the more or less complete working out of the younger groups, and partly, perhaps, to the fascination which attends a study of peculiar complexity. Whatever interest attaches to the correlation of formations which can be easily identified by their organic remains, or which can be traced across country for scores of miles in unbroken lines, it will be readily understood that the spirit of inquiry will be strongly piqued when it is challenged to construct orderly systems out of rock-masses to which the ordinary tests can be but partially applied. Yet much has been done towards the establishment of a succession amongst these ancient groups. In America, Dr. Sterry Hunt describes six distinct systems.

The old lacustrine deposits of Ireland do not seem to have attracted so much attention from geologists as they deserve. By the old lacustrine deposits, we understand the dried-up lakes at present occupied by peat-bogs, with their underlying beds of marl and clays. During the past century it was known that in these bogs, or in the marl-beds beneath them, were found antlers and bones of a gigantic extinct deer, which Professor Owen named Megaceros Hibernicus, and now popularly known as the “Irish Elk,”1 not that it was exclusively confined to Ireland, its remains having been found in England and Scotland, also in France and Germany, and it is even reported to occur in caves as far east as the Altai Mountains in Asia.

In the May Number of the GeologicalMagazine, Mr. Milne Home expresses anew his doubts about our conclusions on the glaciation of Shetland, laying special emphasis on the discordance between the statements of Mr. C. W. Peach and ourselves. He also cites Dr. Hibbert and Mr. Russell as to the position of certain boulders which, he considers, are at variance with our conclusions. In his recent criticisms, Mr. Milne Home still displays a curious misapprehension of many of the facts bearing on this question; besides he has committed a serious error in making allowance for the magnetic variation, on the strength of which he tries to establish a discordance between the trend of the ice-markings as given by Mr. C. W. Peach and ourselves, in Unst and the Outskerries of Whalsay.

In his Report for 1880, Prof. John Collett, Ph.D., State Geologist of Indiana, says:—Of the thirty individual specimens of the remains of the Mastodon (Mastodon giganteus) found in this State, in almost every case a very considerable part of the skeleton of each animal proved to be in a greater or less condition of decay. The remains have always been discovered in marshes, ponds, or other miry places, indicating, at once, the cause of the death of the animal and the reason of the preservation of the bones from decay.