At the suggestion of the British Minister at Athens, Sir Edwin H. Egerton, K.C.B., the Trustees of the British Museum recently undertook a series of excavations in the well-known bone-beds of Pikermi, in Attica, and I was honoured by being entrusted with the supervision of the work. The owner of the estate, Mr. Alexander Skousés, former Minister of War, most cordially assented, and gave every possible facility for the undertaking; while Sir Edwin Egerton's unflagging interest and zeal combined to ensure the greatest success. My wife and I went into residence at the farm of Pikermi early in April, and we continued to occupy the simple but comfortable room which Mr. Skousés had kindly placed at our disposal, until the cessation of digging in the middle of July. During much of the time we were accompanied by Dr. Theodore Skouphos, Conservator of the Geological Museum in the University of Athens, which claims some share of the results of all such excavations made in Greece. We have to thank him for much help in dealing with the workmen, who spoke only a language with which I was at first unfamiliar.

It is, I regret to say, some long time since my friend Miss Caroline Birley placed in my hands the series of Crustacea which she had, with the assistance of Miss L. Copland, collected from the Upper Cretaceous of Faxe, Denmark.

In the 22nd Report of the Committee appointed to investigate the rate of increase of underground temperature, read this year before the British Association in Glasgow, some remarks previously made by me are animadverted upon; and as the Secretary, Professor Everett, has invited me to discuss the matter with him, I take the opportunity of entering somewhat more fully into the question of conductivity than has hitherto seemed necessary. We read in the Report “… . in view of the fact that the President of Section C last year characterised the variation in the British Isles ‘from 1° in 34 feet to 1° in 92 feet’ as ‘a surprising divergence of extremes from the mean,’ it is well to emphasise the connection between gradient and conductivity. If there is anything like uniformity in the annual escape of heat from the earth at different places, there must necessarily be large differences in geothermic gradients, since the rate of escape is jointly proportional to the gradient and the conductivity.”

In the Geological Magazine for August I gave the major limit to the period of time we can assign to the geological age of the Earth by the solvent-denudation method, when it is assumed that all the chlorine of rivers is derived directly from the ocean, and that all such chlorine (falling, as assumed, in rain) carries its full complement of sodium from the ocean. The major limit with these assumptions is 141 million years. A second estimate is given on the more moderate assumption that one-third the amount of chlorine in rivers is derived from the sea and brings with it its full equivalent of sodium; this affords 105 millions of years as the age. Finally, there is the original estimate based on a 10 per cent. deduction from the chlorine of rivers as rain-borne, affording 96 millions of years.

This communication is the outcome of work carried out during the years 1895–1901 in the service of the Geological Survey of Scotland. Although this systematic work has been confined to the Isle of Skye, information incidentally acquired, and the published literature of the British Tertiary rocks, indicate for the conclusions arrived at a much wider application. In this place the results must be set down without the detailed observations upon which they are based.

Writing from the Station Hospital at Ladysmith, Dr. Henry Exton, F.G.S., has communicated his observations on the geology of the country near Ladysmith, in the northern part of Natal, in letters to Professor T. Rupert Jones. A very noticeable geological feature is the prevalence of an igneous rock (intrusive andesitic diabase) on all the hills from Umbulwana, four miles east by south from Ladysmith, to the famed Spion Kop, sixteen miles west from here.

In the south-east of England considerable tracts are covered by sheets or patches of gravel. It is mainly composed of flints from the Chalk, has a thickness of, say, from 6 to 20 feet, is generally stratified, and rests upon an uneven surface of the older strata. The top is nearly always flat and inclined at a low angle.

It is uncertain whether Cheviot itself was overridden by extraneous ice, but striæ on Thirl Moor and Baker Crag, recorded by the Geological Survey, probably indicate that that portion of the watershed was overridden by ice from the Tweed Valley, and Professor James Geikie mentions the occurrence of till and striated stones on the tops of the Cheviot Hills at 1,500 feet. The transport of erratics shows movement along both sides of the axis of the range from S.W. to N.E. at some stage of the glaciation. Across the northern end and for at least ten miles down the eastern side, however, a distribution of erratics from the Tweed Valley, together with other indications to be mentioned, points to an ice-flow veering round through easterly to a north to south direction. Our observations go to confirm the above conclusions with respect to the area north and east of Cheviot.

In a paper by Messrs. J. R. Kilroe and A. M'Henry, M.R.I.A., which appeared in vol. lvii of the Q.J.G.S., published last August. the following statement concerning the above rock is made: “In parts they [the rock masses] consist of brecciated slate or brecciated granite and felsite, the fragments being embedded in a scanty andesitic matrix.” Now this description is quite erroneous, the great and almost unique characteristic of the Forkill agglomerate being that the greater portion is made up of non-volcanic materials—in some places of granite pieces for the most part, in a groundmass of finely comminuted material of the same rock, and in others of Silurian slate fragments in a correspondingly derivative base. This I have described long ago in the official memoir to accompany Sheet 70 of the Geological Survey Map of Ireland, as also in the following papers: “On a Remarkable Volcanic Agglomerate near Dundalk” (J.R.G.S., Ireland, new series, vol. iv, pt. 4) and “On the Ancient Volcanic District of Slieve Gallion” (Geol. Mag., Dec. II, Vol. V, October, 1878).