Amongst the various interesting scientific events which this year has witnessed, none has probably been more heartily welcomed or more cordially honoured than the Jubilee of the Palæontographical Society, which was celebrated on the 19th June last.

In the present review of the Dinosaurs, I have confined myself mainly to the type specimens which I have described, but have included with them other important remains where these were available for investigation. The extensive collections in the museum of Yale University contain so many of the important type specimens now known from America, that they alone furnish an admirable basis for classification, and it was upon these mainly that I first established the present system, which has since been found to hold equally good for the Dinosaurs discovered elsewhere. In the further study of these reptiles, it was also necessary to examine both the European forms and those from other parts of the world, and I have now studied nearly every known specimen of importance. These investigations have enabled me to make this classification more complete, and to bring it down to the present time.

IN 1893 I described in this Magazine a group of quartz-schists which may be traced for many miles along the Alps—a group belonging to the series which appear to be the newest among the crystalline schists of that chain. I may refer to this paper for a description of their mode of occurrence, distribution, and structure, both macroscopic and microscopic, merely stating that, while considering them to have had a clastic origin—in other words, to be metamorphosed sandstones—I pointed out that they presented some material differences from ordinary quartzites, and that “original fragments [could not] be distinguished with certainty in any of them,” though “here and there a clastic structure,” of which I gave instances, “may be suspected.”

IT is not surprising that the earlier geological writers on the district north and west of the Silurian and other hills of Lakeland, and between the River Caldew and the Solway, should have arrived at diverse conclusions as to the affinities of certain sandstones and shales of reddish or purple-grey tint, which are now known to occur at various horizons in the Carboniferous series. For this district presents unusual difficulties to an understanding of the disposition of the rocks beneath the Glacial Drift.

In 1836, Prof. J. Phillips described and figured from the Carboniferous Limestone, Goniatites evolutus, and for this species D'Orbigny, in 1850, instituted the genus Subclymenia.

Two valuable pamphlets on Jurassic Ammonites have lately appeared. One of these is entitled “Cephalopodes nouveaux ou peu connus des Étages jurassiques de Normandie, par Louis Brasil.” This author, who has paid very considerable and successful attention to the Jurassic rocks in the neighbourhood of Caen, describes and figures (there are four plates) nineteen new species of Ammonites belonging to fourteen genera, viz.: Lytoceras, Phylloceras, Catulloceras, Zurcheria, Dorsetensia, Bajocia, Pæcilomorphus, Hammatoceras, Erycites, Oppelia, Cadomoceras, Strigoceras, Cosmoceras, Œcotyphius. Of these genera one is new, namely, Bajocia, founded on an unique specimen; and it must be confessed that the example is sufficiently distinct in every way to warrant this treatment. Although the author does not say so, it is evident the genus belongs to the subfamily Sonniniæ and M. Brasil practically admits as much when he states that it is very near to Dorsetensia. He further says that he considers it to be a branch from Haplopleuroceras, whose representatives have lost not only the two rows of spines, but even the keel and the furrows. We find ourselves unable to agree with this opinion, because the periphery is rounded and flattened; in our experience the keel and furrows do not disappear without leaving some trace of their former existence on the configuration of the periphery. We agree with the author that Bajocia is near to Dorsetensia, and we are inclined to think it is a late-surviving example of the stock whence Dorsetensia originated, and a “cousin” of Zurcheria.

The following notes refer to the fossils found by me, during the last two years, in the Tertiary strata of Burrard Inlet, British Columbia, and to the enclosing rocks themselves. These fossils were derived from beds outcropping within four miles of the city of Vancouver. The strata consist of sandstones, mudstones, shales, and thin, irregular beds of lignite, of which last-named material a typical analysis by me gave—fixed carbon, 36.10; volatile combustible matter, 41.25; ash, 15 40; and hygroscopic water, 7.25 per cent. These lignite beds usually are only about an inch in thickness, but sometimes they run into pockets a foot or more in depth. There has been a considerable amount of money spent in putting down boreholes in this district in search of workable coal-seams, but, so far, without success; and the opinion of the writer is that no workable coal beds exist there, unless they occur in the Cretaceous beds, which are the coal-bearing deposits of Western North America, and probably underlie these strata. Early in 1894 I found the bed from which my earlier specimens were obtained. The lower part of this contains aquatic plants; above these are palm-leaves; and, again, above these salix, populus, and juglans (willows, poplars, and hickory). In the highest part of the deposit are palms and a few other leaves. The whole bed varies from four to eighteen inches in depth, and is underlain by a few inches of black shales, which contain many leaves that are for the most part very difficult to distinguish. This shale thins out in a few yards, and it would seem that the fossil bed runs out at the same point where the shale vanishes. I think that probably there existed, at the time when these fossils were deposited, a cove at this point, where the water was slack. The second bed which I worked in produces fewer fossils, but the veining is much more distinct. This deposit was only found in May, 1895. Where it was first opened the total thickness did not exceed one inch, which contained leaves of angiosperms, underlain by about one inch yielding fern-leaves. Underneath it was a bed of black shale two inches thick. Where it is now worked the upper part is at least six inches thick. It is curious to note in this deposit how at one end the hickory prevails; in the middle, poplars and willows; and at the other end, poplars alone: which would seem to point to the fact that these leaves were not carried any distance, but lie where they fell from trees overhanging the bank.

During the last few months two spines, or Ichthyodorulites, belonging to the genus Listracanthus, have come under my observation. Since both are well-preserved specimens, and not hitherto recorded from the English Coal-measures, some information as to their appearance and stratigraphical position may be of interest.