One of D'Orbigny's subsidiary methods of classification was to create separate genera for those species which heap layer upon layer of zoœcia by prefixing ‘Mult’ or ‘Multi’ to the name of the genus to which they would but for this habit of growth be referred. It is rather surprising that he did not have occasion to create a genus Multeschara, as there are two species in the English Chalk which he could only have dealt with in this way. They are of interest in their bearing on the question of the admissibility of methods of growth in classifying the Cheilostomata, as they are linked together by a most adventitious peculiarity in growth and one which does not involve any zoœcial modification. They offer therefore a case in which, if those who will not allow to zoarial growth and measure of classificatory value are right, it might be anticipated that species so linked together would be a heterogeneous assembly and not even consistent in this habit of growth. Such an anticipation would hardly be borne out in the case of the English Chalk. The Multescharine habit is practically confined to the two following species, which are most distinctly homogeneous, and neither of which, as far as my experience goes, ever adopts any other mode of growth (except for occasional specimens of Rhagasostoma palpigerum of purely Escharine habit, which may fairly be regarded as cut off prematurely in the Escharine stage, through which every ‘Multeschara’ must pass).

Thanks to the descriptions published by visiting mining engineers and the more detailed work of the Geological Survey of the State, the general geological features of those parts of Western Australia in which mining is carried on are now well known. A surprising degree of uniformity of geological structure and mode of gold occurrence is revealed over an extent of country unparalleled elsewhere in the world. And yet it is safe to assume that to the casual reader who has not visited the country the above publications present little else than a mass of bewildering detail.

“For reasons which can be readily understood, geological inquiry in Western Australia has up to the present consisted chiefly of a series of unconnected observations to the co-ordination of which we must look to the future.”

Most people who have lived in strongly glaciated countries are familiar with the topographic features known as drumlins. They are more or less elongated hills of boulder-clay with their long axes parallel to the direction of ice-motion. The literature dealing with them is extensive, but for the most part rather unsatisfactory. Their mode of formation is entirely a matter of speculation and is likely to remain so. There is every reason to believe they are deepseated products of the ice, so that observation of the process in modern ice-sheets is impossible. The only available means of getting at the truth is by careful observation of the peculiarities of form and structure exhibited by these features in the areas where they are most characteristically developed.

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.

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.”

The great interest excited by the recent announcement in the Times and elsewhere of the alleged discovery of a skeleton of “pre-Boulder-clay man” renders it desirable that the geological evidence should be carefully examined.