In recording the regret which the world of science feels at the loss of Sir Richard Owen, we seem to stand in a more intimate and personal relation to him than many others, from the fact, that he was not only one of the early and frequent contributors to the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE, but also was the official colleague of the writer during a quarter of a century.

Of the fossil fish now described I know only two specimens, of which one is in the Manchester Museum, Owen's College, the other in the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, London.

In 1887 and 1888, Sir J. W. Dawson discoveredindark carbonaceous shales of the Quebec group, exposed at Little Métis, on the north shore of the Lower St. Lawrence, some thin bands of rock largely filled with the remains of siliceous sponges, and similar fossils were found to be sparsely scattered in adjacent beds through a vertical thickness of forty feet. This discovery of an abundant sponge fauna at so low an horizon,inrocks previously considered

About one quarter of the Island of Jersey is occupied by argillites or fine grits, often of a greenish grey colour referred by French geologists to the “Phyllades de St. Lo.” They are, therefore, if not equivalent to the Lower Cambrian beds of Britain, slightly more ancient.inclose association with these, but according to Prof, de Lapparent, belonging rather to the upper part of the group, occur certain more or less porphyritic rocks, as to the origin of which different opinions have been entertained. M. Nouryinhis useful “Geologie de Jersey ” describes them under the name of “spilites.” While admitting that in many respects they exhibit the characters of an eruptive rock, he concludes, after an elaborate discussion, that they are metamorphosed argillite, the change being primarily due to the “poiphyres pétrosiliceux;” the felspar crystals, however, he thinks, may be attributed to the action of the diorite.

In the Burrow Collection of fossils from the Carboniferous Limestone of the neighbourhood of Settle I have recently found a form of the genus Cyclus which seems to deserve notice. From a careful comparison with the figures and description of C. Harhiessi (Woodw.)inDr. Woodward's Monograph on Fossil Crustacea, to which we owe the greater part of our knowledge of the genus, I should consider it to be a new form allied to that species.

The labours of the late Admiral Spratt, R.N., and of the late Professor Leith Adams, F.B.S., in the cavern deposits of the Maltese Islands were rewarded by the finding of a unique and interesting land fauna, among which were Elephants, Hippopotami, Land-tortoises, gigantic Dormice, and aquatic Birds, the presence of whichinso limited an area was incompatible with the present existing physical conditions of the Islands. While carrying on his work of investigation in a cave in the Zebbug Gorge, Uied el Kbir,in1859, Spratt noticed that many of the remains of Elephants that were exhumed presented the appearance of having been fiercely gnawed, and later on when Adams was excavating the Mnaidra gap it was observed that many of the elephantine remains were in a similar condition.