The Raibl period was the natural sequel of the variable and unequal movements which prevailed over Alpine areasinPermian and pre-Raibl Triassic time. Many basins formerly open were then enclosed; rauchwackes and beds of dolomite and gypsum were interbedded with fossiliferous deposits. Whereas,insome places, the dolomitic nature of the deposit is confined to special horizons, in the South Tyrol “Dolomites” it may almost be said to reign throughout. This makes it all but impossible to say when Schlern dolomite ends and Raibl beds begin. in the present incomplete state of our knowledge with regard to the heteropism of the Raibl series throughout the whole Alps, I have judged it best to begin the Raibl horizon at any particular place with the first appearance of a distinctly Raibl fauna, even although that fauna may not have been proved to correspond to the acknowledged lowest fauna of Raibl age in distant parts of the Alps.

To return for a moment to the succession of Schlern dolomite upon the Cassian beds of Enneberg, I found that, where Schlern dolomite rests on Cipit limestones, it has at its base a conglomeratic appearance, as if Cipit blocks had been imbedded in a beautifully fine white or reddish dolomitic mud, instead of the dingy brown and black tufaceous sediments. This is the case in several places, e.g. upon Pordoi and Sella Jochs, where there is no evidence of unconformity. Again, where the dolomite succeeds the thin-bedded marls and limestones of Cassian age, it does so conformably; but one and the same bed is at some parts calcareous and fossiliferous, at other parts dolomitic and unfossiliferous. Seeing that this holds good at various horizons in Lower as well as Middle Trias over the whole area of South Tyrol, we need f in d nothing remarkable in it from the point of view of the stratigraphical succession. Indeed, I have only mentioned these observations as an indication of the particular mode of transition from conditions of deposition favourable for the Cassian fauna to those in which the Raibl fauna was enabled to make an occasional appearance in the South Tyrol dolomites. At a very little distance above the base of Schlern dolomite all signs of Coral life disappear, and the deposit looks a homogeneous rock, although always retaining local variation in the degree of its dolomitism. At this stage the rock often shows typical Oolite structure. As regards the presence or want of stratification, it has as little to do with the question of the Coral Keef origin of the dolomite as the amount of magnesic salts in the rock—stratification is present and absent in one and the same “Keef.”

The extraordinary abundance of Bryozoa of the order Cheilostomata which occurs throughout the Cainozoic era,incomparison with their scarcity in earlier formations, has often been remarked. Interesting explanations of the suddenness of their appearance have, moreover, been offered by those who do not attach so much importance, as do some, to the imperfection of the geological record. Cheilostomata are not unknown from earlier deposits: the Cretaceous system has yielded a fair number, while even as early as the Silurian species have been found. Though doubts have been thrown on these early records, there seems no sufficient reason to discredit them. Even if Prof. Nicholson's Hippothoa inflata (Hall) should turn out to be a Stomntopora, which, if the figure be correct, is most unlikely, there remain many species in later Palæozoic deposits: such are those belonging to Prof. James Hall's genus Paleschara? which Mr. Ulrich accepts as Chilostomatons, though Prof, von Zittel includes it doubtfully with the Ptilodictyonidæ. Some of the specimens of Lichenalia, etc., figured by Hall, as well as the same author's Cystopora geniculata, may also belong to this order.

After this substance has been well observed in good occurrences, it is always recognized at once, even as isolated small patches in a slide. It has a very characteristic appearance among the other constituents. It is marked off, for instance, by its special refraction from anything else that occurs in these rocks, and has other characteristics not to be missed when once observed, but not very easy to exactly describe. As soon as it ceases to be quite inert in polarized light, as soon as the speckly polarization sets in, it has also a more or less granular appearance in ordinary light with lowered condenser, which is very characteristic.indifferent slides, and often in one and the same slide, various stages of development may be observed in it from the first speckled appearance in polarized light up to a point where flakelets of white mica are recognized as forminginit, lying “criss-cross”inall directions. It passes in this way in some cases almost wholly into mica, with apparently other substances which cannot be identified with certainty, the transition, and connection with the original substance, being all the time distinct and beyond mistake.

In the inner zones, the “hornfels-zones,“ this substance is usually present in smaller amount, as already stated; but examples of its abundant occurrence are not wanting, as for instance in a hornfels from Spitzenberg, in the Harz. There is a mosaic of quartz and felspar, with brown mica and some white mica. The yellow substance lies in amongst, and surrounds, the minerals of this mosaic. It has no definite form of its own, simply occupying spaces and taking the outlines of the other minerals. It is all either in the minutely-speckly stage or variously developed from this upwards to mica; and the impression made is that if it had all developed as far as some portions of it have done, the whole mosaic-grains of the slides would be mixed in with and surrounded by white mica, as may not infrequently be observed in these contact-rocks.

All the Selachian teeth hitherto obtained from the English. Crags referable to the genus Oxyrhina are much compressed antero-posteriorly, and are thus slender in proportion to their size. They are now commonly regarded as representing a single extinct species, Oxyrhina hastalis of Agassiz, and the same form of dentition is abundant in the Pliocene of Italy, besides occurringinother Tertiary deposits in various parts of the world.inItaly and Belgium, however, these comparatively slender teeth are accompanied by a few others of the same genus of very robust proportions; and some of these have received the names of O. Benedeni, O. gibbosissima, and O. Forestii, while others have been identified with O. crassa and O. quadrans. So far as the present writer can judge, none of these robust teeth are capable of being satisfactorily distinguished from the species O. crassa of Agassiz, originally described from the Miocene of the Rhine Valley; and it is under the last-mentioned name that they are recorded in the British Museum Catalogue.

In a cutting of the Seacombe Branch of the Wirral Railway at the present moment is to be seen a deposit which cannot be other than a glacial shore. It is about 18 inches thick, covered by a bed of Boulder-clay some 8 feet thick, and has been exposed by the cutting for a distance of 16 chains running south-east and north-west, to the south-east of the point of intersection of the Railway with Poulton Road. The rise is 16 feet in this distance at a regular up-grade towards Poultou Road, and the average level about 60 feet above O.D. Transversely to the Railway it is about level, and over the whole of the area—1056 feet by 30 feet=3520 superficial yards—the deposit occurred and was excavated by the steam navvy. The bed is composed of pretty clean sand with some small gravel, and is crowded with shell fragmentsinall stages of decay. It is precisely like a modern beachinconstitution, extent and slope, but what renders the fact more certain is the great quantity of clay balls or boulders mixed with the sand. These balls are covered over their surface with small gravel, shells and sand, picked up as they rolled about on the beach, just like the mud balls we find on the shore at Crosby at the present day. On being cut into with a knife these clay balls are seen to be formed of ordinary compact brown Boulder-clay, and they are pretty hard. The contractor, Mr. Davies, who is much interested in the geology of the cutting, tells me that these clay balls are found all over the area in great profusion, and as far as I tested the bed, which I did in at least half-a-dozen places, I found the statement correct. He also informed me that the bed is underlain by silt, but it has not been tested more than a few feet deep. I picked up and brought away about twenty clay balls varyinginsize from 3 inches down to ¾ inch diameter, some of them being spherical and others ellipsoidal inform.

The relative position of post-Glacial Man to post-Glacial geology has been a rather neglected field of research. This borderland between the domains of the Archæologist and the Geologist appears to have been treated as neutral ground, yet entombedinit are the relics of Neolithic Man and the first evidences of the dawn of civilization. It may be alleged that the splendid results of cave exploration have given us a better idea of man's evolution from a savage to a civilized existence than could have been obtained from any other source. Whilst this must be admitted, cave research can furnish very little evidence of the great physical changes which went on outside such abodes. If for instance man can he proved to have been an inhabitant of Western Europe during the Glacial epoch, the gradual change of the climate from frigid to temperate may have had a powerful influence in modifying his habits and thereby assisting his development from the state of a rude savage to that of a civilized man. Deposits in caverns aid very little in this work. They are for the most part choked-up subterranean watercourses, and it follows that any deposits found therein may have been subjected to much disturbance. The most slender evidence derived from cave deposits is even by such distinguished geologists as Prof. Hughes and Prof. Boyd-Dawkins thought quite sufficient to determine the momentous question whether Palaeolithic Man was Glacial or post-Glacial. Prof. Boyd-Dawkins decides the matter in his “Early Man in Britain,” p. 192, in the following very summary manner:—

In the abstract of the proceedings of the meeting, on November 8th, of the Geological Society of London, I notice that on the reading of Dr. G. M. Dawsou's “Notes on the occurrence of Mammoth-remainsinNorth-West America” the author cites the presence of Mammoth bones in a layer of clay resting on the “ground-ice” formation of the northern coast of Alaska and other areas.

I drew attention to this position of the Mammoth bones above the solid ice bothinNorth Siberia and Alaska, as proved by several explorers,inmy paper on “The True Horizon of the Mammoth” (GEOL. MAG., NO. 345, p. 107, March, 1893),inwhich I claimed for the Mammoth an existence long after the period assigned for its extinction by Sir Henry H. Howorth.

I see that Sir Henry, in the discussion of the paper, very naturally disagreed with the conclusion of Dr. Dawson as to the age of what is called by American geologists the “ground-ice” formation, and was of opinion “that this ice has accumulated since the beds were laid down in which the Mammoth-remains occur, and that the ice was not there when the Mammoth roamed about in the forests where he and his companions lived.”

Furthermore, he is reported to have said that “humus and soil cannot accumulate upon ice, except as a moraine,” both of which statements are controverted by the explorations of recent and competent observers who have examined these regions.