Since the famous expedition of the late F. L. and W. James, of E. Lort - Phillips and G. P. V. Aylmer, in 1884–5, opened the Somali plateau to European exploration, the country has been repeatedly traversed. A valuable series of geographical memoirs, hunting journals, and bluebooks has described the main features in the topography of the country, and given many suggestions as to its geological structure. The collections of Dr. Révoil and Prof. Keller have proved that Neocomian beds occur there, and thus have shown that it is of greater interest than most of the monotonous unfossiliferous wastes of East Africa.

Mrs. E. Lort-Phillips, during her journey in Africa, collected some well-preserved Arca-like shells from a riverbed at Bihin, in Somali-land, which have been entrusted to me for determination. The specimens, belonging to one species, are of various sizes, quite black in colour, and covered in places with a lightish-brown matrix.

All the fragments appear to be referable to the same species. There is not a complete specimen among them; some show the alveolar region, but the majority exhibit only the post-alveolar part, and there is not an example with the apex preserved.

I Propose in the following paper to continue and complete the story which I have partially printed in the Geol. Mag., Feb. 1896, p. 58; but first, a few words about the Yorkshire evidence, which I had overlooked.

In pursuance of my studies of clays, shales, and slates, I have recently been examining some specimens to which a good deal of interest attaches. Some of them are Carboniferous shales from deep collieries in South Wales. Another, also a Carboniferous shale, is from a deep boring in the Isle of Man.

Owing to the absence from England of any marine fossils of Triassic age—except the few obscure shells described by Mr. R. B. Newton—the Lias yields the first English representatives of the Neozoic Echinoidea. The fauna is not rich in species, and as a rule the specimens are small; but it is of interest, as its members are primitive in character, and as they foreshadow many of the main lines of evolution followed by the rich Echinoid faunas of the Oolites. Some months ago Mr. Beeby Thompson showed me some specimens from the Upper Lias of Northamptonshire, which form an interesting addition to the primitive types of Liassic Echinoidea; they belong to a new genus, which is the simplest known form of the Diadematinæ, and occupies the same relation to the remaining members of that subfamily that Eodiadema occupies to the Orthopsinæ.

Besides his numerous papers intended for experts in geological science, Professor Bonney is to be congratulated on the lengthening list of his more popular writings on the subject. A general notice of his recently-published volume on “Ice-Work” has already appeared in these pages. The present writer desires, with all respect, to add a few notes on some points in which Scottish readers are more particularly interested.