As some erroneous statements have appeared in the Press about this interesting event, it seems advisable that the true facts should be placed on record.

In sinking the caissons for the construction of the bridge over the Blue Nile near Khartum, a considerable number of bones have been found, from time to time, in the alluvial beds, at depths of 60–68 feet below the level of low Nile. These specimens were obtained by Messrs. Hinckley, Stephen, and Le Bailly, and are now deposited in the collection of the Geological Survey of the Sudan at Khartum.

The Iguanodon, as is well known, was discovered by Mantell, who in 1825 named it from odd teeth which had a resemblance to the teeth of the recent Iguana. Many isolated teeth and bores were subsequently found in the Wealden and Lower Greensand beds to which the names of I. anglicum (F. Holl, 1829) and I. mantelli (H. yon Meyer, 1832) were given. It was not, however, until 1851, when Owen described an associated group of bones on a slab of sandstone from the Kentish Hag (Hythe Beds, Lower Greensand) of Maidstone, Kent, which had been discovered by W. H. Bensted in 1834, that the genus was to any extent known. This specimen has become the type of I. mantelli. In 1878 occurred the historic discovery of the skeletons of a number of Iguanodonsin the Wealden beds of Bernissart, near Mons, Belgium.

Of late years it has become manifest that the igneous rocks of the Carboniferous in Central Scotland have a distinct alkaline facies. Such rocks as monchiquite, nepheline-basalt, mugearite, kulaite, phonolite, essexite, and teschenite have been described from the Lothians; whilst in the western counties nepheline-phonolite, theralite, mugearite, and teschenite are already known. There is abundant evidence, however, that in the West the alkaline phase is of later date than in the Lothians, and of late Carboniferous or Permian age. In Arran it probably extended into the Triassic, assuming that the stratigraphy which assigns certain rocks to the Triassic is correct. A general account of this connected suite of alkaline rocks, together with the lavas in the Mauchline Basin, to which they can be shown to be genetically related, is given in this paper, which deals only with rocks demonstrably later than the volcanics of the Calciferous Sandstone. The work on which this paper is based was commenced in 1908, and was assisted in 1909 by a grant from the Government Grant Committee of the Royal Society, for which grateful acknowledgment is made. An unfortunate breakdown in health, however, necessitated the postponement of the investigation for nearly a year. It is still incomplete owing to the difficulty of obtaining adequate chemical analyses, without which it is impossible accurately to determine the affinities of some of the rocks. Pending the completion of the detailed work it has been thought advisable to present this preliminary account of an igneous suite of extraordinary variety and interest.

Assuming that the Lizard Peninsula is a pre-Cambrian complex (Fiett), and that the Hornblende Schists of Pollurian have nothing to do with the northern sediments, it will be well to call attention at first to the extensive folding of the rocks at Pollurian, which, gradually loses itself as we pass northward in a series of lengthening S.E.–N.W. folds, finally dying away at Porthleven into more or less horizontal beds as we approach Trewavas. Minor contortion is ignored.

The next step is to see if the evidence of the Echinodermata coincides with and confirms that of the Cephalopoda. The Echinoderms will be tabulated in the same way as the Cephalopoda, beginning with those of Germany. The following table has been compiled from several sources, and may not be quite complete as regards the irregular forms, though it is practically so for the Regulares, this part being taken from Schlüter's monograph on that order:—

From this table it will be seen that there are two different Echinoderm faunas in Germany, just as there are two different Cephalopodan faunas, only two species passing from the lower three to the two highest zones. There is not, however, such a clearly marked line of separation; the fauna of the S. binodosus zone seems from the tabulated species to be linked as closely with the higher as with the lower zones, for it contains sixteen species, of which number ten appear to be restricted to the zone and three range both up and down, while one passes downward only and two range upward. This result, however, is deceptive, because the Emscher is so poor in Echinoderms that only six species have been recorded from it, and only eight have been found in the Marsupites zone.

In the Carboniferous Limestone of the Crich inlier in Derbyshire, there are numerous clay-bands or partings interbedded with the limestone which appear to throw considerable light on the geological history of the area.

In two previous papers in this Magazine (Hawkins, 1910 and 1911) I have dealt with some features in the comparative anatomy of the ambulacral and interambulacral areas of the Holectypoida. The only other structure of the test for a comparative study of which sufficient material is available is the apical system. The present paper deals with this structure. I intend to summarize the results of my researches in a scheme for the classification and evolution of the group in a paper already partly prepared.

The Upper Carboniferous rocks of the Ingleton Coal-field in North-West Yorkshire present a difficult study, and at the present time they are very imperfectly known. As mapped by the Geological Survey, there is apparently a perfect succession, passing up from the Yoredales, through the Millstone Grits, to the Lower and Middle Coal-measures. The coal-measures are in part overlain hy a series of red rocks, which have been assigned to the Permian, as in the case of other of the Midland Coal-fields. In the index of the Survey map of the north-eastern portion of the coal-field, the Deep Coal is taken as the top of the Lower, and the bottom of the Middle Coal-measures.

With a view to showing that distortion under stress may take place in ice when several degrees below the freezing-point, Dr. Main made a number of experiments at St. Moritz in the Engadine during the winter of 1887. Although, as Main says, “The experiments are to be regarded rather as proving the existence of continuous extension under tensile stress than as determining its amount,” the records of his tests are sufficiently detailed to admit of the viscosity being calculated.

I Chanced a few weeks ago to see, for the first time, a short paper by Mr. J. Wilfrid Jackson, F.G.S., in the Geological Magazine (Dec. V, Vol. V, p. 266) on “Mottled Foraminiferous Limestone in West and North Lancashire”. In that paper Mr. Jackson thus describes specimens of mottled limestone from Silverdale: “The matrix is light-coloured and fine-grained, with irregularly shaped patches (? nodules) of a fine-grained dark-coloured limestone. The patches have no definite shape, being mostly very uneven in size, some of them being long cylindrical bodies with irregular contours.”

When writing a general account of the Upper Chalk of England for vol. iii of the Cretaceous Rocks of Britain (Mem. Geol. Survey, 1904), I stated the belief of Mr. W. Hill and myself that the British Tipper Chalk comprised more than one division of the value of a stage. We grouped the zones then recognized into two divisions, pointing out that the lower zones were essentially the Chalk with Micrasters and the upper zones the Chalk with Belemnites; but we did not systematically adopt these divisions as stages with definite names.

In re-arranging the large collection of Coal-measure fossils in the Manchester Museum I have had occasion to revise a number of species (notably in the Wild Collection) which have been recorded in the past under determinations which are now obsolete or erroneous. The object of this communication is to give a few critical remarks on these, as well as to place on record several hitherto unrecorded forms from the Lancashire Coal-field.

Professor peach's address, as President of Section C at the recent meeting of the British Association, concludes with some interesting remarks on the geographical conditions of Cambrian time, and these may be regarded as an amplification of the views which he had previously expressed to the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1886) and in the Geological Survey memoir on the Structure of the N. W. Highlands of Scotland (1907).

The discovery by Professor Reynolds in the Mendips strata representing the greater portion of the Silurian succession (Rep. Brit. Assoc. Portsmouth, 1911), showing no similarity to the slates of Mortehoe and the neighbourhood, has rendered it more difficult than ever to accept the attribution by Dr. Hicks of the latter rocks to the Silurian period (Q.J.G.S., vol. lii, p.254, 1896); and now an important fact has come to light which appears to afford decisive evidence on this question.

It is remarkable that in English geological literature and in our Universities so little attention is given to this important branch of geology. Probably it is because in this country petroleum occurs only in small quantity; nevertheless, in many parts of the British Empire petroleum mining has become a great and increasing industry, and is one of the chief directions in which geology is of practical use to-day. The writer therefore hopes that an orderly summary of present knowledge may be useful.

In the following notes I propose to chronicle a few works of early man other than chipped flints in this country, which during a long life have come under my own observation. They shall be arranged in order of antiquity, and, as might be expected, the earliest will be the most doubtful. Nevertheless, in anticipation of its being possibly confirmed by future discoveries it shall not be passed over.

In the early spring of 1910, while collecting in the Chalk quarry at Borstal, I found in a loose piece of chalk an impression of a small Gasteropod shell which probably belongs to the genus Lampusia. Shortly afterwards, while at the Borstal Manor Quarry, a workman brought me another small Gasteropod, which has since been identified as Turbo geinitzi, Woods. Both specimens were preserved as casts, showing part of the external ornament from near the apex to the basal whorl. Part of the zone of Holaster planus is exposed in the quarry, but the locality is not included in my previous list of exposures in the neighbourhood. The occurrence of these Gasteropods at such an horizon was almost conclusive evidence of the presence of the Reussianum fauna, so I again visited the quarry, in company with my wife, with a view to discovering the exact position at which these fossils occurred.

In 1911 Mr. E. J. Wayland, F.G.S., and the authors visited the Portuguese East African province of Mozambique in the interests of the Memba Minerals, Ltd. The country was very little known geographically, and except along the coast, it was a terra incognita to geologists. We hope in due course to publish a detailed account of our observations, but as it will be some time before this can be completed, it seems advisable to give a short résumé of the salient geological features of the territory. It is hoped that these resultswill prove of interest to students of East African geology, especially in their bearing on problems of theoretical interest concerning the geological history of that portion of the globe.