Since the remarkable paper by Professor Lapworth “On an Improved Classification of the Rhabdophora” was published in the Geological Magazine for 1873, a great deal of fresh information has been gathered as to these interesting fossils; but the classification given in that paper, though to some extent confessedly artificial, is still generally adhered to. Observations made by the authors in recent years lead them to suppose that that classification will in the future undergo considerable modification; but in the present state of our knowledge it serves a purpose so useful, that it is not our intention to propose any immediate change in it. Our object, on the other hand, is to bring forward certain conclusions which we have independently reached, and which will, we believe, enhance the value of Graptolites to the stratigraphical geologist, and lead to results important to the biologist. Our conclusions are based upon an examination of a large number of forms generally referred to the family Dichograptidæ; but, as we propose very briefly to indicate, they affect the relationships of Graptolites belonging to other families also.

In the Museum of Practical Geology there is a specimen of Ceratiocaris (No. 4435), from the vicinity of Ludlow, which was not noticed by us in the “Monograph of British Palæozoic Phyllocarida” (Palæontographical Society), 1888. It is a squeezed carapace, evidently allied to the Ceratiocaris cassioides there described and figured, pages 59–61, pl. iii, fig. 9; pl. iv, fig. 7; and pl. vii, figs. 4–6. The specimen appears to have been bivalved. The contained animal matter has caused an irregular convexity (as seen also in figs. 4–6, pl. vii above mentioned), especially in the anterior third; and here it has been broken down, leaving a small rough cavity in some obscure organic material.

In recent years I have been disposed to attach more importance than formerly to the general form and macroscopical characters of Eozoön. The earlier examples studied were, for the most part, imbedded in the limestone in such a manner as to give little definite information as to external form; and at a later date, when Sir William Logan employed one of his assistants, Mr. Lowe, to quarry large specimens at Grenville and Côte St. Pierre, the attempt was made to secure the most massive blocks possible, in order to provide large slabs for showing museum specimens. More recently, when collections have been made from the eroded and crumbling surfaces of the limestone in its wider exposures, it was found that specimens of moderate size had been weathered out, and could, either naturally or by treatment with acid, be entirely separated from the matrix. Such specimens sometimes showed, either on the surfaces or on the sides of cavities and tubes penetrating the mass, a confluence of the laminæ, constituting a porous cortex or limiting structure. Specimens of this kind were figured in 1888, and I was enabled to add to the characters of the species that the original and proper form was “broadly turbinate with a depression or cavity above, and occasionally with oscula or pits penetrating the mass.” The great flattened masses thus seemed to represent confluent or overgrown individuals, often contorted by the folding of the enclosing beds.

One of us remarked last year in an article in Science Progress that “we may expect to find our Carboniferous deposits divisible into zones in a manner comparable with that which holds good among other … strata.” The same writer called attention to the fact that similar views had been expressed by Waagen (Salt Range Fossils, “Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India, 1891”), who considered that the Carboniferous fossils had not received the same attention as those of other rocks.

Mr. A. C. G. Cameron, of the Geological Survey of England and Wales, published in 1893 an account of a boulder of chalk so large that the village of Catworth has been built upon it, while springs arise between it and the clays which underlie the mass. Sir A. Geikie now reports the interesting discovery that “a cake or floor of chalk, lying at the base of the Boulder-clay, may be traced over an area of more than twenty square miles in the west and north of Huntingdonshire and in northern Bedfordshire. It crops out more or less continuously along the brow of the hills under the Boulder-clay and rests on the Oxford Clay. It probably consists of many large sheets of chalk which, at the beginning of the deposit of the Boulder-clay, were transported from the chalk hills lying to the east and north-east.”

I Describe some facts which have attracted my attention in my neighbourhood as bearing on the question of the East Anglian Boulder-clays, and I note the directions in which these facts would seem to lead our ideas. For the most part I limit myself to my own observations.

The history of every science may be compared to the ascent of lofty and diversified mountains, in which level benches and plateaux alternate with steep and rugged slopes. The first explorers, beginning at the base, toil upwards, hardly knowing which course to take, and having little idea of the country that lies before and above them. But they toil on, gathering information as they go, until, reaching a level resting-place, they can look back and form a more accurate conception of the country they have traversed. Still, they can see but a little way upwards, much less perceive the summit, but ascend they must, gaining an ever-widening view and grander and more just conceptions of the wide world below.