It is well known that the slates of the Borrowdale series in the Lake District furnish beautiful illustrations of faulting on a small scale; but so far as I am aware, no description of them, from this point of view, has as yet appeared. The accompanying Plate has been produced in Autotype from one of these slates, the surface of which was first most carefully smoothed and afterwards varnished. Every detail of the faulting is shown in the most perfect manner, and the general tint of the slate is also reproduced. The specimen was purchased at the village of Rosthwaite in Borrowdale; but I was not able to learn the exact locality from which it was obtained. I have little doubt, however, that it came from the Honister quarries. Mr. De Rance tells me that similar slates occur at Tilberthwaite, near Coniston. The plate is of the natural size. The face represented is a cleavage plane, and neither the bedding nor the fault planes are at right angles to this face. The bedding planes make with it an angle of about 40°.

The deficiency of our knowledge of the organization and configuration of the Palaeozoic Selachii is an unfortunate fact too well known to biologists to render it necessary for me to dilate upon here. Immense numbers of genera and species have been founded upon detached teeth and spines; but as yet very few specimens have occurred, which threw any light upon the general organization and configuration of the ancient possessors of these now scattered relics.

The labours of Mr. Jex in the Eskdale fish-beds have brought to light another beautiful new fish, now in the British Museum. This is a Ganoid of the genus Elonichthys, and though represented as yet only by a single specimen, this is fortunately a very perfect one.

Next to Ananchytes ovata, there is probably no fossil Echinoid which is so well known to geologists and so common in collections as Galerites albogalerus, Lam. Described by Lamarck, studied by Forbes, and puzzled over by almost every naturalist who has classified the Echinoidea, this common yet most variable form has received a number of synonyms, and has been made to belong to four genera besides that in which it now rests.

Recently, when examining some weathered fossiliferous limestone shale from the Lower Carboniferous strata of East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, my attention was attracted to some fragments of the valves of Spirifera trigonalis, Martin, in which I noticed, on the hinge-line of the dorsal valve, a row of small, round, hollow pits, and on the hinge-line of the ventral valve, a corresponding row of small, projecting, rounded denticles. These characters I had not noticed before, and on searching further, I found other fragments of the valves showing the same thing. This led to an examination of more perfect specimens of this Spirifera, contained in my own collection, and that of Dr. J. R. S. Hunter, of Braidwood, Carluke, and in one example, where the valves had slightly opened through pressure, on clearing away the shale, I found, on the outer edge of the ventral valve, a distinct row of small projecting denticles, that had evidently fitted into hollow pits or sockets in the dorsal valve, but from the way the valves had shifted in this specimen these were not seen. These denticles, when looked at externally, are nearly as numerous, and much of the same size, as those seen in many of the hinge-lines of shells of the genus Area, only in this genus, the teeth are the same in each valve, and lock into each other.

In walking along a stretch of very fine smooth sandy shore at Blundellsands, I was very much struck at finding a portion of it studded over with numerous bosses of sand from ½ in. to 3 inches in diameter. Wondering what could be the cause of this singular phenomenon, I dissected some of them with my knife, and found in all cases a cavity below corresponding in extent and height to the external form of the boss or tumescence. The perfect regularity and smoothness of these protuberances was very remarkable; they appeared to be in all cases segments of spheres connected with the plane of the shore by reflex spherical curves. The largest I dissected measured 3 inches in diameter rising half an inch. The thickness of the dome was ½ an inch and the cavity below was 3 inch diameter also. The following is a section—

Although the Carboniferous Trilobites are but few in number, and are all included in four genera, they have not escaped the usual trouble arising from incorrect determinations.

One of these occurred in reference to Phillipsia gemmulifera. Phillips, sp., better known by the name of “Phillipsia pustulata,” Schlotheim species, a name first applied to this form by Professor de Koninck in 1842–44 (see Descr. Anim. Foss. Terr. Carbonif. de Belgique, p, 603, tab. liii. fig. 5).

This Trilobite, first known by a pygidium only, was very carefully figured in " Brongniart′s and Desmarest′s Histoire Naturelle des Crust. Foss. 1823, p. 145, pl. iv. fig. 12, 1822," where it is called “Asaphus” from the black limestone in the environs of Dublin.

It was next figured by Phillips in his Geology of Yorkshire, 1836, vol. ii. pl. xxii. fig. 11, p. 240, who named it Asaphus gemmuliferus.

Buckland again repeats the figure later in the same year, and follows Phillips′s name of A. gemmuliferus.