Between Bishop Colenso and the volcanoes of Central France, and between these and ‘Rogation Days,’ there would at first sight seem to be but little connection. Nevertheless, a statement made by the Bishop was the cause of some curious information, which had previously been known to but few, being generally circulated; and as it then appeared only in one or two newspapers, and at different times, it may be useful to give a résumé of the controversy in a more permanent form. The Bishop, referring to Lyell (‘Elementary Geology,’ pp. 197, 198), adduced the exitstence of cones of loose scoriæ and pumice in Auvergne and Languedoc as an argument against the Noachian Deluge; because these, which ‘must have been formed ages before’ that happended, did not show the slighttest sign of having ever been disturbed. In the course of the endless controversy which has arisen from the Bishop's works, a Mr. E. L. Garbett addressed a rather angry letter to the ‘Guardian’ newspaper (Aug.24, 1864), taxing the Bishop with wilfully shutting his eyes to the fact that there had been eruptions in these districts in the fifth century, which had given rise to the ecclesiastical fasts commonly called ‘Rogation Days.’ The Bishop replied in a letter, which was refused by the ' Guardian' on account of its length, and was afterwards published in the ‘Daily News.’ However, in the ‘Guardian’ of Sept. 14, a summary of it is given, in which the following statements are made: (1) that volcanic cones do exist as above described; (2) that, according to Hoffman's ‘Lexicon,’ Rogations were instituted owing to earthquakes and to the irruption of wild beasts into Vienne; (3) that there are no volcanoes near Vienne; (4) that the authors who are supposed to describe volcanic eruptions, only speak of earthquakes and ordinary fires, or perhaps of lightning.

Several years since, when collecting Mountain-limestone fossils on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire, I found some specimens of Actinocrinus which appeared to have internal channels from the base of the arms towards the summit of the dome. Not having seen such channels noticed by any author, I showed some of the specimens to Mr. Salter, then of the Geological Survey, who suggested that they probably might be analogues of the aquiferous channels found in recent Echinoderms; and he advised me to follow up the subject, and ascertain if such passages were to be found in other Crinoidea occurring in these rocks. His advice has been followed, and a large collection of specimens, some in good preservation and others weathered, has been made, which I have had the advantage of collating with a series from the same district collected by Mr. James Parker of the Manchester Museum; and upon examination they give the following results, some of which, though probably of no great importance in themselves, may serve to illustrate some doubtful points in the organization of this confessedly obscure Order of the Animal Kingdom.

Any Geologist travelling to Nairn, viâ Perth, will be interested (in a degree compatible with his sense of the nuisance created) in the wonderful outspread of wind-blown sand betwcen Dalwhinnie and Kingussie. I do not know any more wonderful drift of sand than is here displayed; a sand-surface so constantly in motion, that I believe it must really be in connection with the ever-shifting sand-drift of Culbin, near Elgin, which may be rightly termed the British Sahara. The nuisance caused by the constant settlement, even in the calmest weather, of this fine-grained siliceous sand upon everybody and everything passing through the district, was annoying enough, even in the old coaching days, but is increased tenfold to the traveller now that the Central Scottish Railways has superseded the more tedious method of travel; for the more rapid rate of motion raises such legions of blinding sand-atoms, that when Forres Junction was reached, a traveller is scarcely recognizable for the dust, and the vacant cushions are coated two inches deep. Indeed, I would call special attention to the Sands of Culbin, mentioned as probably being in geological connection with the shifting sands cut through by the railway, as they have afforded the best instance of a real sand-storm known in Britain; hills of blown sand, from 60 to 100 feet in height, and from 200 to 300 feet in circumference, having been formed by wind-action during a single night.

Many travellers have spoken of the numerous traces of volcanic acrion to be found in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea; but the author states that he invariably found the ‘lava-currents ’ of M. de Saulcy to be nothing more than deposits of silica and nodules of oxide of iron, while his ‘extinct craters’ proved to be the flat summits of limestone-hills.

In the map appended to the ‘Report on the Geology of Trinidad,’ we find the principal Tertiary coal-bearing strata of the Island indicated by a more or less irregular band of dark colour, strectching from Chaguanas, Couva, and Savonetta, on the western or Parian coast, to Manzanilla on the eastern or Atlantic side. To the north of this band lies a sterile region of detrital matter, chiefly siliceous, marked in the map by yellow with res sponts. I wish to draw attention more particularly to that part of this latter formation which lies on the eastern coast between the River Matura and Saline Bay.

Clays are generally the mud of rivers; sandstones, the detritus of old crystalline rocks; while limestones are organically or chemically formed. If, therefore, there is a great clay, it bespeaks a great river draining lands that were; though small and local clay-bands may be but the ruins of denuded sea-cliffs. The sandstone is the evidence of coast and reef, where and wave disintegrated plutonic rocks, or constructed over again the palæozoic or older sand-rocks. And limestones have been formed either from the denudation of calcareous cliffs in shallow seas.