The Botanical Department of the British Museum possesses amongst its collection of fossilized vegetable remains, sliced for microscopic examination, a series of specimens of wood from Herne Bay and the Isle of Thanet. These exhibit a structure which has not hitherto been properly understood, but which proves to be quite comparable with what is to be found in some recent plants.

The Eruptions of Vesuvius naturally create a wider and deeper interest than those of any other volcano, owing to the mountain lying within sight and hearing of one of the most populous and frequented eities of Europe. And in these days of telegraphs and newspaper correspondence the mingled feelings of alarm and admiration which these phenomena excite at Naples are rapidly spread over the civilized world, tinged with all the exaggerations and embellishments that the imagination of writers, who, probably, witness an eruption for the first time, can bestow on them.

Paragraphs have appeared in several papers announcing more or less distinctly the discovery of fossils in the Crag which bear upon them marks of human work. Having had considerable opportunities of looking into this question, I venture to offer some reasons for believing that there is not the slightest evidence for attributing the phenomena in question to the agency of man.

The very fine series of fossil footprints which, at my request, Principal Dawson has kindly examined and described in the accompanying note, were discovered last summer, in Nova Scotia, under the following circumstances.

The principal specimens are several large slabs of brownish sandstone, bearing series of footprints in relief. Of the largest and most distinct series 40 to 50 footprints have been preserved, and are arranged in two rows, about inches apart. I may confine my attention in the first place to this series, as the most important of the whole.

In a former paper I referred very briefly to the succession of glacial deposits in Switzerland. It was stated that no interglacial beds like those of Scotland and America occur in the Swiss grundmoräne. But, as every geologist is aware, Professor Heer and others have shown that the lignite-beds of the Cantons of Zurich and St. Gall are really of interglacial age, since they not only rest upon but are covered by glacial deposits. There can be but one opinion as to the position in the series occupied by these lignite-beds; they are clearly intermediate in date between the accumulation of the old grundmoräne and the deposition of that “moraine rubbish” which marked the new advance of the glaciers. ‘This being the case, they cannot represent the beds that occur in the “till” of Scotland, but must belong to a later stage. If this correlation be correct, it seems to me that the Swiss beds will serve partly to fill up a great blank in our record, and help us to realize the condition of our country in the long ages that elapsed between the disappearance of the great confluent glaciers and the subsequent period of submergence, which gave rise to the “kames” and “esker-drift.” This will appear probable, as I hope to show, after we have taken a glance at the glacial deposits in the north of Italy.

In a paper on a comparison of the drift of Ireland with that of Lancashire, the author Prof. Hull states, that he recognized the equivalents of the English beds in the drift cliffs at Killiney, Co. Dublin, and in the Geol. Mag. for March, 1872, Mr. J. Geikie has quoted Prof. Hull: I therefore request leave to say a few words about the gravels of Ireland, more especially as Mr. Geikie seems to have mistaken my notes on the Irish drift, making it appear that I believe the “Esker Gravels” contain similar marine fossils to those characterizing the “Manure Gravel” of the Co. Wexford. Such a statement, however, would not bear investigation.

During a visit to Crayford in April, under the guidance of my friend Mr. Dawkins, I obtained a worked flint from Slades Green Pit. The discovery seems worth recording, on account of the presumed early age of the deposit in which it occurred. Mr. Evans has kindly looked at the specimen, and considers it decidedly to have been worked, so that there is no room for doubt upon that head. I picked the implement out of a band of rounded flint gravel, lying beneath the sandy stratum which contains abundance of shells, and among them the Corbicula (or Cyrena) fiuminalis and Unio litoralis, together with many mammalian remains.

At page 440, Vol. II., of the Geol. Mag., is a very careful and accurate description, by Mr. A. H. Green, of certain markings on an exposed rock near Matlock, locally named the Bloody Stone. These markings he refers, though not without some hesitation, to the action of ice. I have lately visited Matlock, and twice examined this spot. On the first occasion the surface was wet from recent rain, on the second it was dry.

Since the publication of my paper, entitled “Notes on the Genus Phaneropleuron, with a Description of a New Species from the Carboniferous Formation,” in the Geological Magazine for December, 1871, pp. 529–535, Sir Philip Egerton has kindly sent me for comparison a specimen in his collection of the Burdiehouse fish, named by Agassiz Uronemus lobatus, at the same time directing my attention to the resemblance which it bore to the fish which in the paper referred to I had described and figured as Phaneropleuron elegans. I am also indebted to the Earl of Enniskillen for an opportunity of examining another specimen of the same fish.