Professor H. G. Seeley, in his well-known paper on Pariasaurus Baini, incidentally mentioned that the Beaufort Beds, in which it was found, could be divided up into zones on the evidence of the reptiles they contained.

The receipt of a grant from the Trustees of the Percy Sladen Fund in 1911 made a return to the Balearic Islands possible in the latter part of the same year. Majorca was visited for the third time while a search for Pleistocene ossiferous remains was undertaken for the first time in Menorca and Ibiza, from which no Pleistocene mammalian remains had previously been recorded. No success attended the search in Ibiza. The deposits discovered in Menorca yielded remains of Myotragus balearicus, those of a gigantic land tortoise, and of a large Eliomys, which proves to be a hitherto undescribed species.

The highest beds of the Carboniferous rocks of Wensleydale are found on the summit of Great Shunner Fell, which is situated on the watershed between Wensleydale and Swaledale, and forms the high ground to the west of the Buttertub Pass on the road between Hawes and Muker.

The inclusions to be described in this paper occur in the Whin Sill at Snook Point on the coast of Northumberland. This is the most northerly exposure of the whin in the coast-section which stretches from Cullernose Point, through Dunstanburgh, to Beadnell Sands; and it is here that the outcrop leaves the coast and sweeps out to sea, to reappear further north in the Fame Islands and, on the mainland, at Bamburgh.

Whilst looking over the private collection of fossil fishes made by the late Dr. R. H. Traquair, I found a small tetrapod femur. This bore no label of any kind, but was included in a series of remains of Dipnoi from the Lower Carboniferous of Scotland. The texture of the bone is not unlike that of Ctenodus, and was no doubt the reason of its place in the collection.

The very small piece of matrix which is preserved is identical with that of some of the fish from the No. 2 Ironstone, Loanhead, and differs from any other fish-bearing matrix that I know in Britain. [Any one with experience of Carboniferous fishes will recognize that it is usually fairly easy to identify the important localities (the Loanhead ironstones, the various Staffordshire ironstones, etc.) by inspection of the matrix.] Despite the fact that it was not localized, I think that the probability of its being from the Loanhead ironstones is sufficient to justify a description.

MR. Bailey has very kindly permitted me to see his manuscript, and also to examine a specimen and slice of the rock which he regards as a volcanic breccia underlying the pitchstone. Since he attaches some importance to this rock, I will consider it first.

The natural base of the thick pitchstone sheet is made by a band of more glassy aspect, almost like an obsidian. The microscope shows that this, apart from the usual enclosed crystals, is a light-brown glass, free from the crowds of crystallites found in the ordinary pitchstone. Another feature is that it encloses numerous little fragments of basalt. These indeed, with occasional larger pieces, pass up for some feet into the pitchstone, but they are most abundant near the lower surface. Such inclusions, picked up from the contiguous rocks, may occur both in lava-flows and intrusive sills, but, so far as my experience goes, are more frequent in the latter. The obsidian-like band is well seen, fresh and intact, at places on the northern side of the SgÙrr; but elsewhere it is much brecciated, and usually much decomposed in addition. The brecciation is of such a kind that pieces of the normal pitchstone have become mingled with the debris of the more glassy variety. Mr. Bailey has quoted part of my description of this brecciated basal band as it is exposed, in a decomposed state, on the southern side of the ridge. That it is a part of the pitchstone sheet, not a separate underlying deposit, is there clearly demonstrated: see fig. 6 on p. 60 of my paper.

Cumberland Bay Series: Upper Division.—This consists largely of hard, coarse, compacted crystal tuffs, dark-grey or black in hand specimens, and resembling coarse grey wackes. In thin section they contain fragments of trachytic lavas, and detached crystals of orthoclase and oligoclase in a paste of minutely crystalline material mixed with much indeterminate matter. Iron-ores and ferromagnesian minerals are rare. In some of the rocks andesitic and latitic fragments are dominant, and occasional fragments of yellowish glass enclosing euhedral orthoclase are seen. Many of the rocks have suffered some degree of scapolitization. The tuffs pass into siliceous grey wackes still with some recognizable volcanic material, and are interbedded with fine banded mudstones which appear to represent volcanic muds. Radiolaria have been recognized in these rocks as well as in the tuffs. The mudstones occasionally become somewhat laminated and pass into black shales. An imperfect cleavage traverses many of these rocks at a high angle to the bedding. These tuffs doubtless represent the interbedded ‘diabas - schalstein’ of Thürach.

Verminculum globosum, Montagu, 1803: Test. Brit., p. 523.

Entosolenia globosa, Reuss, 1862: Sitzungsb. d. k. Ak. Wiss. Wien, vol. xlvi, p. 318, pl. i, figs. 1–3.

Lagena globosa, Burrows, Sherborn, & Bailey, 1890: Journ. Roy. Mier. Soc., p. 555, pl. ix, figs. 1, 2, 4.

Remarks.—This species has been recorded in rocks as old as the Wenlock Limestone and shale (Brady), and is stll living in almost every depth of water and in all latitudes.

Horizon.—Present in C1, C2, C10. One specimen from each bed.

The specimen dealt with in this paper was obtained some years ago by Dr. L. Moysey, of Nottingham, and was sent by him to Dr. Henry Woodward, who has been so kind as to entrust it to me for examination.

Although educated Europeans have never carried the art of ‘spooring’, or tracking, to the perfection with which it is employed by the Australian and African natives, it is possible for us by applying a little common sense and certain experience of the tracks of living beasts to the fossil footprints so commonly found in terrestrial deposits laid down under arid conditions to find out many features of the animals which made them.

In a recent number of this journal I advocated the systematic employment of a certain criterion in connexion with the classification and nomenclature of igneous rocks, that criterion being the ‘saturated’ or ‘unsaturated’ character of the minerals constituting a given rock. The terms saturated, unsaturated, and their derivatives oversaturated, undersaturated, and partsaturated, were not used in a strict chemical sense, but in a special mineralogical sense which was fully explained.

Though ecology has been studied for a long period on the Continent it is only within the last ten years that it has become an important branch of botany in this country. Now, however, it is one of the most ardently pursued sciences, and has made great progress. That branch of it which deals with soil factors, or the distribution of plants upon different soils and a knowledge of the nativity of plants upon particular soils, has received considerable attention, and sufficient data have been accumulated to state the principle that each rock-soil supports a characteristic flora: so that the type of soil may be regarded as an index to the type of vegetation of any district where that rock-soil is dominant; and in the same way it is possible to state by a recognition of the type of vegetation the character of the rock-soil.

The majority of the numerous papers that have already been published on the petrology of Kalgoorlie have dealt with the subject only in a more or less general way. Few investigators have hitherto devoted their energies to the study of one portion of the field, and even Larcombe, whose main thesis seems to have been the study of the Golden Mile, has chosen an area in which owing to the magnitude and depth of the lode formations, and the consequent chemical and thermodynamic alterations, definite clues as to the original rock types could hardly be expeoted to remain, since there can be no doubt that in petrology, as in stratigraphy, much light can occasionally be thrown on the most difficult portions of a field by the study of the outlying portion. It has therefore been with considerable interest that the investigation of the North End has been begun.

The physical history of sedimentary rocks is written in charácters which sometimes baffle the skill of geologists to interpret. This may be because geologists are prone to devote too little time to the study of rocks in the making, and too much to the finished products of sedimentation. It is well to remember that the most unpromising pool or bit of lake shore may hold the key to the most perplexing of these hieroglyphics.

A brief review of the history of the various attempts to explain certain curious impressions found on the Niagara dolomites of Western New York will illustrate the need of closer observation and study of some of the phenomena of our ponds and lakes resulting from the interaction of wind and water.

In the summer of 1911 I discovered numerous wind-worn stones in a gravel-pit near to Ramsdale, and situated at the side of the Old North Road 6 miles out of Nottingham. Samples of these were exhibited at the Geological Society's conversazione in 1912. During the next few months a trench for the water-main from the Derwent valley to Nottingham was opened along this road, and passed for a distance of over a mile through similar gravels, which in one place were at least 10 feet thick. Throughout this distance ‘dreikanter’ were common in the top 18 inches of soil and subsoil.

In 1888 the late Professor H. G. Seeley pointed out for the first time (Rep. Brit. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1888, pp. 698–9) that Owens' order ‘Dinosauria’ should be divided into two great natural groups, especially on account of their pelvis. He called them Saurischia (=‘Theropoda’ + ‘Sauropoda’) and Ornithischia (=‘Orthopoda’). He maintained his, classification until his death in 1909, but nobody followed him. Only in 1907 did the present writer accept this classification and gave new evidences for it, but still was of opinion that these two groups only were ramifications of one natural unity, the ‘Dinosauria’. But now, for several years, the writer has come to the conclusion that the ‘Dinosauria’ are not of monophyletic origin, but have developed from different points, and should therefore be considered as two distinct natural orders. Superficial similarities have been valued too highly, such as general form and size of the body, bipedal locomotion in two large groups, certain similarities in the formation of the foot, the femur, the humerus, and the shouldergirdle.

The subject of the derivation of the materials which form the Bunter Pebble-beds has given rise to wide differences of opinion and to a voluminous literature. These it is not my intention to recapitulate, as an excellent summary of the subject will be found in Mr. O. H. Shrubsole's paper of 1903. Mr. Shrubsole then gathered together the known evidence, added some new facts of his own, and came to the conclusion that the Midland Bunter pebbles were brought from a southerly direction. This opinion may be said to have held the field until recently, when the question was again taken up by Mr. Jukes-Browne in the third edition of The Building of the British Isles (1911). After reviewing the whole evidence and taking into consideration the results of an investigation by Mr. E. C. Martin, which tended to show that the direction of transportation in Somersetshire in Bunter times was towards the south, Mr. Jukes-Browne abandoned the view he had taken in the second edition (1892) of that work, and now, adopting in the main the conclusions of Professor Bonney, considers that the bulk of the pebbles of the Midland Bunter came from the north-west, though he agrees that the fossiliferous quartzite pebbles could not have come from that direction, and he suggests for these a south-easterly derivation (Suffolk).

Summary.—(1) The reptiles Gordonia, Geikia, and Elginia are shown to be slightly later than those of the Upper Permian Pariasaurus beds of Russia, or those of the equivalent Cisticephalus zone of South Africa. They therefore represent the extreme top of the Permian. (2) The remaining Elgin reptiles are Middle Triassic (? = Lettenkohle of Germany). (3) The Elgin footprints are widely distinct from Triassic forms and from those of the Lower Permian, while agreeing exactly with the group associated with the Magnesian Limestone of England. They therefore represent the extreme top of the Permian. (4) The discovery is recorded of one of the typical footprints in close proximity with the Permian reptile quarry. (5) The Permian rocks occupy the west of the ‘Triassic’ area, the true Trias the east. (6) It is suggested that the area was a landsurface during Permian and Triassic times.

The characters of the lateral furrows of the glabella and of the pits which occur in the axial furrows of the head-shield have not had sufficient attention paid to them, and a comparative study of their development in various British species reveals some interesting and important features.

It has heen commonly assumed that lateral furrows are absent in some species, and at any rate the omission of any notice of their occurrence in certain cases is difficult to understand. Frequently, moreover, it has been stated that only two pairs are present, even in those species in which the presence of any lateral furrows has been recognized. The nature of the so-called stalk or neck of the glabella has been also generally misunderstood. Mccoy's division of the genus Trinucleus into two genera, Trinucleus, sens, restr., and Tretaspis, was largely based on the presence or absence of this stalk and of lateral furrows; for he says the furrows at the base of the glabella distinguish Tretaspis from Trinucleus, the latter being stated to be without lateral furrows, though the presence of the ‘eye-line’ on the cheek was chosen as the primary distinctive feature of the former. Nicholson and Etheridge, while rejecting Tretaspis as a sub-generic division, mention an additional third pair of furrows at the sides of the anterior swollen portion of the glabella in Trinucleus Bucklandi, though they do not seem to regard them as segmental furrows.

The Cover-plates of the radial grooves are preserved here and there in specimen, notably over the oral centre (Pl. X, Figs. 1, 2, 5, 7, 8), but in B they are preserved over the whole of the grooves and the mouth, though pressed down on to the floor of the grooves and into the peristome (Pl. XI, Fig. 1). Cover-plates are also present in the British Museum specimens, and are almost complete in E 16054.

Each cover-plate corresponds in position with a floor-plate; so that, like the floor-plates, the cover-plates form a double series of alternating plates meeting in a zigzag median suture. The almost straight or slightly rounded outer margin of each cover-plate fits into a bevelled facet just within the rounded edge of the radial groove where the floor-plate begins its downward slope (Pl. X, Figs. 5, 7). This feature is well shown in specimen B, and there the floor-plate also shows, on each, side of the facet, and distinct from the peripodium, a slight depression, possibly for the insertion of a muscle or ligament, or possibly for the reception of the accessory cover-plate shortly to be described.