The most representative series of fossiliferous pebbles from the Birmingham district is that in the Evans Collection, which was acquired by the National Museum of Wales in 1937 and catalogued under the numbers 37.110 GR 1–316. For the loan of this collection I am indebted to Dr. F. J. North, and material for comparison from other collections was obtained from Dr. C. J. Stubblefield, Miss J. R. Harding, and Professor L. J. Wills, who has also corrected the typescript.

The rocks of the Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire were originally described by John Cunningham in 1839, as three series, two moderately resistant to the east and the west, separated by a central region of soft sandstones and marls, dipping uniformly eastwards. G. H. Morton noted this in 1872, as a good description of the strata, ignoring faults, and pointed out the significance of the faulting. Since that date the faults have been mapped in great detail, and most of the structural features ascribed to them. G. H. Morton was particularly accurate with his mapping of faults both in Liverpool (1899), and in Storeton (G. H. Morton, 1883, and H. C. Beasley, 1914). The folding finds its first mention in the Geological Survey Memoir of 1923, two elongated synclines being mentioned, one from Heswall northwards and the other from Storeton to Prenton. The former is undoubtedly an important synclinal feature, but the latter is made up of two folds, a north to south anticline at Storeton, and an east to west syncline at Prenton. The only other records of folding in Wirral are by F. T. Maidwell in 1920 and by T. A. Jones in 1937, who mention an anticline at Ellesmere Port. This paper is therefore chiefly devoted to a description of the folding in the area.

Nearly thirty-three years ago, in September, 1913, I searched the Harlech Grits for pebbles of the Mona Complex; and the search was a success: I obtained quite enough for a decisive demonstration. Still, their numbers were not great, and to obtain them had needed persistence; the search, indeed, occupied fully a fortnight. I sought a reason at the time in the horizons from which they came, for they were not from the Cambrian base. We shall presently discern a far more cogent reason: between the Cambrian and the Complex there is more than one formation. The surprise is not in their moderate numbers, but rather that there were any at all.

During an investigation of the upper part of the Sabi Valley made just before the war in company with my son, the late C. F. Mennell, two well-marked ring structures and indications of others were met with. Reference to these was made in a communication to the Rhodesia Scientific Association in 1938 before the investigation had been concluded or any of the rocks collected had been sliced. The suggestion was then made that they owed their remarkable features to the action of the enclosing granite on the limestone still forming their cores.

In recent years the stratigraphical position of the Craighead Limestone, as assigned by Lapworth (1882) and by Peach and Home (1899), has been questioned by such competent geologists as Ulrich (1930), O. T.Jones (1935), and Cowper Reed (1935); any new evidence having a bearing on the age of the limestone is therefore worthy of being placed on record.

Two specimens of Augitite (Nos. 64613–4) in the British Museum (Natural History) were collected during the voyage of H.M.S.Challenger (1872–6) and acquired by the Museum in February, 1890, through the Director of the Challenger Office, Dr. (later Sir John) Murray. The rock was briefly described by Renard,1 who noted the fibrous texture and unusual elongation of its pyroxene, as “related to the pyroxenites”.

Secondary silicification of country rock is commonly observed in many geological environments, and it is generally considered that this metasomatism was effected by hydrothermal siliceous solutions permeating the host rock. Silicification may be localized in comparatively narrow zones alongside the channelway used by the solutions, or it may result in a regional alteration of a large mass of rock. The former type of occurrence is commonly observed alongside veins of presumed hydro-thermal origin (1, 2) whilst the latter is sometimes seen in rocks, e.g. silicified limestones (1, 3) with no evidence of a path followed by the solutions. In such cases a mechanism of sub-capillary soaking must be assumed; the solutions may act selectively by favouring certain bands or types of rock.

Recent writings by Cotton (1944, 1945) and Richardson (1945) have drawn the attention of geologists in this country to the Pleistocene history of West China, and in particular to the river terraces and their mode of formation. Harland has now re-stated the problems of the physiographical history of Western Szechuan, and drawn attention to the gaps in our knowledge. This paper 1 is both complementary and supplementary to that of Richardson (1943; reviewed by Cotton, 1944). During the past two years I have had opportunity to study the geomorphology of the Border Ranges of north-western Szechuan, and this review is, therefore, accompanied by a discussion of certain points in the light of my own findings and the work of other writers.

The genus Cummingella was erected by Reed (1942, p. 653) with the genotype “Entomolithus (Oniscites) derbiensis Martin”; the accompanying generic diagnosis, however, was based, not on the description and illustrations given by Martin (1809), but on the concept of Phillipsia derbiensis Auctorum which has prevailed since, at least, the time of H. Woodward's 1883 account published in the Monograph of the British Carboniferous Trilobites. The purpose of this note is to indicate and to attempt to clarify the unsatisfactory nomenclatorial state of both Martin's species and Phillipsia derbiensis Auctorum.

During the war the Directors of the Netherlands Coal Mines had given to a number of young geologists the opportunity for geological studies at both Institutes of the Geological Foundation (Geologische Stichting), the Geological Bureau, Heerlen, and the Department of Geological Maps, Haarlem.