In a recent issue of this journal, Crampin (1998) suggested that analysing seismic shear-wave splitting along appropriate ray paths can be used to monitor the build-up of stress before earthquakes. If the source and recording geometry are suitable, this procedure, known as stress-forecasting, allows the approximate time and magnitude, but not the location, of future large earthquakes to be estimated.

The Bail Hill Volcanic Group (Caradoc) represents the largest, single volcanic complex exposed within the Ordovician turbidite succession of the Northern Belt in the Southern Uplands of Scotland. The group comprises a heterogeneous sequence of submarine lavas, volcaniclastic and intrusive rocks (up to 2 km thick), and crops out in a small area (c. 4 km2) around Bail Hill, north of Sanquhar. The Cat Cleuch Formation (older) is dominated by a sequence of autobrecciated basaltic lavas which contain large, zoned diopsidic clinopyroxene. The overlying Peat Rig Formation comprises a more mixed sequence of plagioclase-amphibole-phyric lavas, volcaniclastic rocks and contemporaneous volcaniclastic sedimentary rocks. The Cat Cleuch and lower part of the Peat Rig formations are cut by a vent breccia, the Bught Craig vent breccia, which formed part of the feeder to the upper part of the Peat Rig Formation. The Bail Hill volcanic rocks are alkaline in character, ranging from alkali basalt to trachyandesite in composition, possessing trace element characteristics and enrichment patterns typical of oceanic within-plate basalts. The Bail Hill Volcanic Group, although geochemically distinct, forms part of a mixed assemblage of tholeiitic and alkaline withinplate lavas within the Southern Uplands which are of broadly similar age, some of which are intercalated within the greywacke sandstone sequence. This assemblage clearly indicates that a period of extension and within-plate volcanism occurred during the early stages of the development of the Southern Uplands sedimentary basin.

Specimens of Kerygmachela kierkegaardi Budd are described, from the Lower Cambrian Sirius Passet fauna of N Greenland. The cephalic region is characterised by a pair of stout unsegmented appendages each bearing long spinose processes, and an anterior mouth. The trunk shows alternating rows of tubercles and transverse annulations along the axis, to which are attached 11 pairs of gill-bearing lateral lobes and lobopodous limbs. The caudal region is small, and bears two long tail spines. There is some evidence for circular musculature arranged around the trunk and a dorsal, longitudinal sinus, and several details of the muscular pharynx have been preserved.

The combination of characters found in Kerygmachela allows it to be allied with the lobopods, represented in the extant fauna by the onychophorans, tardigrades, and possibly the pentastomids, and in the Cambrian fossil record by a morphologically diverse set of taxa, some of which are not assignable to the extant groupings. It also shares important characters with the previously problematic Burgess Shale forms Opabinia regalis Walcott and AnomalocarisWhiteaves, and the Sirius Passet form Pambdelurion Budd. These taxa together form a paraphyletic group at the base of the clade of biramous arthropods. The position of the so-called ‘Uniramia’ remains unclear. It can be demonstrated from the reconstruction of the arthropod stem-group that full arthropod segmentation has a different derivation from that of the annelids. In line with other recent analyses, this suggests that the ‘Articulata’ of Cuvier should be dismantled, and the arthropods considered to be a group of protostomes which are phylogenetically distinct from the classic spiralians. Arthropod affinities may rather lie with the other moulting animals, in the so-called ‘Ecdysozoa’.

Both textural maturity and structure acquired by gravels on beaches are largely a response to the interaction between beach surface and wave-backwash energy. The turbulent energy driving the processes of particle rejection andselection at the surface of growing gravel sheets is partly controlled by the grain size of the sheet itself, so the process is to a large extent self-regulating. Beach surfaces are seen to comprise many discrete sheets of gravel competing for growth at their boundaries, but each characterised by a uniform or uniformly gradational texture.

There are two main types of gravel sheet: (1) selection pavements which occur on low beach slopes, showing little areal grain-size or grain-shape variation, and (2) turbulence shadows which occur on steeper slopes and produce assemblages of clasts which may show perfect lateral shape and size gradation.

The clasts which make up these various gravel sheets are termed ‘clast assemblages’, and such assemblages are the fundamental units from which beaches are constructed. Clast assemblages are classified in terms of their textural maturity—the degree to which they exhibit uniformity in clast size and shape. In beach sections they are, either singly or in combination, bounded by planes of discontinuity (bedding planes) to form beds.

Repeated combinations of either clast assemblages or beds in a genetic association are regarded as sedimentary structures, many of which are diagnostic of the gravel beach environment. Growth of beaches involves the stacking of sedimentary structures, and four growth patterns have been identified. The beach structure is, therefore, classified in a hierarchy comprising clast assemblage, bed, structures and growth form, and it is the growth pattern which may be related to tidal range. P.ecognition of the processes which generate beach gravels through the structure of the gravels permits an analysis of the internal structure of major gravel bodies such as barrier beaches. It adds another set of criteria which may further lead to an understanding of the processes responsible for the generation and evolution of these large gravelforms.

Three types of gravel lithosomes have been identified. (1) Regressive barrier bars which form a series of gravel ridges separated by lagoonal deposits. Barriers are built initially by swash bars which grow in size and coarsen through time to become wave-resistant forms. They form as a response to times when the sediment, unable to be evenly distributed and sorted on the beach surface, forms a discrete bar seaward of the active beach. This is the result of a punctuated or continuously high sediment supply compared with the wave energy available to disperse the sediment, or a falling sea level which shifts the locus of sediment accretion. (2) In contrast, regressive (prograding) gravel sheets form as a response to a continuous supply of sediment to the beach surface, allowing it to build seaward by the uniform accretion of sediment which is sorted and retained on its surface. (3) Gravel sheets produced in transgression are characterised by an abundance of spherical clasts and are often overlapped by the sand beaches which occur seaward of them.