It is known that the friends of the late distinguished palæontologist and naturalist, Hugh Falconer, established a Fellowship in memory of himself, and in connexion with the University of Edinburgh. This Fellowship is especially intended to encourage the study of palæontology. To give to botanical students who may devote their attention to the investigation of fossil plants a fair opportunity of securing a Falconer Fellowship, Professor Balfour intends, as he informs me, to devote more time in his lectures to vegetable palæontology, and he has prepared a carefully revised and enlarged edition of that portion of his Class-book devoted to this subject, which will be published separately, and will supply a long desiderated manual, not only to the students of his own class, but to students in all institutions in which botany is treated in a scientific method. Having obtained Prof. Balfour's permission to use one of the plates and some wood-cuts which have been prepared under my direction, to illustrate this separate publication, I now employ them for the purpose of recording some notes bearing upon the subjects figured, and which I have not yet published.

The method now adopted of working the lenticular deposits of pyrites occurring in the province of Huelva by open cutting and quarrying, is favourable to the examination of these singular masses of mineral. The latter run parallel with the strike of the beds; they are generally, but not always, in close proximity to greenstone, the greenstone often forming one wall or sahlband; they usually, but not always, decrease in width as they go down, and sometimes end in a boat form; they are generally, but not always, marked by oxidation on the surface, and generally, but not always, by a depression between the two walls. The latter phenomena, have been supposed to have been occasioned by the ancient mining for copper having worked away the upper surfaces and exposed fragments of mineral to oxidation; but the facts appear to be at variance with the causes thus assigned, inasmuch as there is extensive colouration where there have been no workings; and on the other hand, no subsidence in many cases where ancient workings exist.

In my first paper I gave the sequence of the Scottish Drift under three groups; but in order to compare these deposits more satisfactorily with the drifts of other countries, it is necessary to subdivide them more closely.

In vol. ii. of his Flora Fossilis Arctica, Professor Oswald Heer has treated of the Fossil Flora of Bear Island, and shown that it belongs to the Lower Carboniferous Formation, of which it forms the lowest beds (named by him the “Ursa” beds), close to the junction with the Devonian. The Yellow Sandstone of Kiltorcan in Ireland, the Grauwacke of the Vosges, and the southern part of the Black Forest, and of St. John in Canada, belong to the same group. In the summer of 1870 two young Swedish naturalists (Wilander and Nathorst) discovered this same formation in the Klaas Billen Bay of the Eisfiord in Spitzbergen, and brought home fine specimens of Lepidodendron Veltheimianum, and Stigmaria ficoides. It has also been found in West Greenland, for Prof. Nordenskiold tells us that the Swedish expedition, which went to Disco in the course of last summer, to fetch the meteorite, weighing 25 tons, which he discovered at Ovifak in that island, has brought home fossil plants of true Carboniferous age.

In the Geological Magazine for December, 1871 (Vol. VIII., p. 570), we reported the return of the Swedish scientific expedition from the coast of Greenland, bringing home a number of masses of meteoric iron, found there upon the surface of the ground, the largest of which was said to weigh 25 tons. In the Report of the meeting of the Geological Society, Dec. 20th, 1871, contained in our present number (see page 88), we give some further particulars relative to this interesting discovery, which has elicited a letter from the Rev. O. Fisher (see GeologicalMagazine for Jan., 1872, p. 47), and a lively discussion at the Geological Society. We are indebted to R. H. Scott, Esq., F.R.S., for obligingly calling our attention to the account of the original discovery, more than fifty years ago, by Captain (now General Sir Edward) Sabine, of meteoric-iron in Greenland, recorded in the Quart. Journ. of Science, 1819, vol. vii., p. 79, with the analysis of the same, previously published, which we venture to think will prove acceptable information to many of our readers.—[Ed. Geol. Mag.]

The Fossil Flora, by Lindley and Hutton, has been long known as the only general work containing figures and descriptions of the vegetable remains found in a fossil state in this country, and which must always be consulted by every scientific investigator of this subject. Since the completion of the third volume, more than thirty years ago, many important papers have been published on the Palæontological Botany of the British Islands, by Dr. Hooker, Bunbury, Prof. Haughton, Prof. Heer, Carruthers, and others, but no general work or continuation of the Fossil Flora has appeared, a desideratum very much needed, and which it is now proposed shall be supplied.