This form was first made known in 1897, by the late J. F. Whiteaves, in a paper entitled “Description of a new genus and species of Cystideans from the Trenton Limestone at Ottawa” (Canad. Rec. Sci., vol. vii, No. 5, pp. 287–92). This part bears on the wrapper the date “January, 1897”, which is obviously erroneous, since the author dated his own contribution “April 28th, 1897”, and copies of it were first received in London on July 31 of that year.

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.

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.

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).

The Speeton Clay of Yorkshire is of considerable interest, as it is the chief marine representative of the Lower Cretaceous formations in England. It has been the subject of important papers by Professor J. W. Judd, F.R.S., and Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, F.R.S., while the palæontology of the Cephalopoda and Lamellibranchiata has been respectively worked out by Professor A. P. Pavlow and Mr. H. Woods. Mr. C. G. Danford has also contributed to our knowledge of the beds. The Microzoa, however, have never been examined, and the present paper gives the results of an investigation of the Foraminifera of the deposit.