The genus Coryphodon, established by Owen in 1846, is of great importance alike to geologists and palæntologists. It represents a remarkable group of large ungulate mammals now known to have lived both in America and Europe during early Eocene time. The remains are found in a distinct horizon, essentially the same in each, continent. This horizon is so well marked that geologists may use it as a base for determining the age of other strata. The Coryphodont mammals themselves are of special interest to anatomists, owing to the primitive characters shown in the skeleton. Perhaps their greatest importance lies in the fact, that these large hoofed mammals make their appearance suddenly in great numbers at the base of the Tertiary, without a hint as to their ancestral line, and with only diminutive generalized forms for their Mesozoic predecessors.

The only important fragment of a Pycnodont fish hitherto known from the English Cretaceous Formations, is the portion of head and trunk figured and briefly noticed by Dixon under the name of Gyrodus angustus, Ag. This specimen displays the splenial bones from the oral aspect; some of the vertebral hæmapophyses; and thick scales with a reticulated ornament, covering only the anterior half of the trunk. The ventral ridge-scales also exhibit very conspicuous serrations. The splenial bones are imperfect, but sufficient to show all the essential characters of their oral face; and these elements present the only unique feature in the specimen. It will be observed that, whereas in all Pycnodont splenials hitherto described the dentition reaches the outer border at least in part of its extent, the bone in Gyrodus angustus has a wide toothless outer margin and an attenuated knife-like edge. The two vacuities in this margin shown in Dixon's figure are partly due to accident, partly imaginary, and there is no doubt that the bone forms a continuous whole.

The rocks of Raasay have attracted a good deal of attention from geologists, despite the fact that no house of public entertainment exists on the island. That portion of it which lies to the south of Brochel Castle, exhibits a base of Torridon Sandstone, above which there may be traced, more or less completely, in two faulted areas, an ascending series from the New Red rocks to the Great Oolite group. The Jurassic strata are finely exhibited in the eastern cliffs, but westwards they are largely covered by volcanic rocks, and especially by great sheets of Granophyre which descend in that direction to the sea-level. To the south-west there is a mass of Gabbro; in other parts there are sills and countless dykes of Basalt, while the summit of Dun Caan is formed of a bedded mass of that material. Coverings of Peat, of Boulder-Clay and Gravel, serve to add variety to the geology, and to obscure the outcrops of the Jurassic and other rocks.

Since writing my previous paper on the question of whether, during the so-called Glacial period, the Arctic lands had a milder and not a more severe climate, I have met with some evidence on the subject so important and suggestive that I feel sure it will be welcome to some of your readers, especially as it involves a considerable departure from conventional views. In 1861 Sir Joseph Hooker wrote his famous paper on the distribution of Arctic plants, in which he argued that the flora of Greenland is distinctly of European type; that Greenland is a sub-region, in fact, of the Scandinavian Botanical province. To state his own conclusion in his own words, “the flora of Greenland is almost exclusively Lapponian, having an extremely light admixture of American or Asiatic types.”

The Pliocene mammalian land fauna lived at a period when Europe had already obtained the main features of its present configuration. Italy, to be sure, at the beginning of this period was still partly overflowed by the sea, and in Belgium, Holland, and the South of England, the North Sea extended further over the land than to-day and left behind the deposits known as the Crag. Over the extended mainland of Central Europe, the conditions for the preservation of mammals were, on account of the absence of more extended fresh-water lakes, extremely unfavourable. Only the volcanic tuffs in Auvergne, the fissures filled with Bohnerz of the Upper Rhone valley, and the scattered fresh-water deposits of the Rhone valley, Roussillon and the neighbourhood of Montpellier, contain remains of the Pliocene land fauna, which are handed down in greater perfection in the swampy, and in part coal-bearing, sediments of the Arno valley and in the partly marine formations of Piedmont and the Romagna.

The genus Myalina was erected by Prof. De Koninck, in his Description des Animaux fossiles qui se trouvent dans le terrain Carbonifère de Belgique, for certain Modioliform shells, and M'Coy re-defined the genus in his British Palæozoic fossils and described two forms from the Permian of Durham.