It is so easy these days to overlook recent advances of science that I venture to draw attention to two particularly important papers on Indian tectonics by W. D. West, published in 1939 and 1936, both carrying self-sufficient maps. The 1939 paper deals with Alpine tectonics displayed in the Shali Window of the Himalayas, north of Simla; its partner, with a recumbent fold and slide in the Nagpur district of Peninsular India.

The genus Hartwellia was founded by the late Dr. F. L. Kitchin (1926) for the reception of the well-known species from the Hartwell Clay which J. de C. Sowerby (1845, pl. Dcxlv, figs. 4, 5) had figured under the name Astarte hartwellensis. Kitchin was able to study specimens in which the hinge had been very clearly prepared and published excellent figures and a very detailed description of the internal as well as of the external characters of the shell.

This paper is an endeavour to demonstrate a development in the fringe of the Trinucleidae, which attained its acme in the Upper Ashgillian as exemplified by the Girvan species Tretaspis cerioides (Angelin) var. sortita Reed.

Nowhere in Yugoslavia has the science of geology progressed more than in Croatia. This statement applies not so much to the period between 1918–1941 as to the years before 1914 when Croatia was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The collection of Upper Devonian trilobites which Whidborne studied and described or figured is a small one, but most of the figured specimens are in the Sedgwick Museum, and though generally they are in poor preservation he was able to determine the species to his satisfaction. However, since his Monograph appeared (1896) a considerable amount of work on Devonian trilobites has been published, and the whole question of the Devonian or Carboniferous age of part or all of the beds from which they came is still unsettled. The evidence of the trilobites is somewhat contradictory, the genus Phacops and its subgenera being usually considered to range up no higher than the Devonian, while Brachymatopus has been regarded in the past as restricted to the Carboniferous. Whidborne recorded also a species of Phillipsia from the Upper Devonian, but as will be pointed out in this paper the evidence of the specimens is against this generic reference. The precise horizon and exact locality unfortunately were not given by Whidborne in the case of his figured specimens, the name of the town, village, or road only being stated, and this is unsatisfactory, particularly in those instances where it is of great importance to know the definite horizon or bed from which they were obtained, for the lithological characters of the matrix or mode of preservation is usually insufficient to determine it.

In 1942 (p. 21) the author described the occurrence, petrological characters and origin of fourteen rounded boulders found in and associated with coal seams in South Wales. Recently W. D. Ware discovered another two boulders or erratics as they are sometimes called, amongst coal on the picking belt, probably derived from the Dulais Seam, at the Cefn Coed Colliery. Three specimens have already been noted at this colliery (1942, pp. 27, 28), one found in situ in the bottom coal of the Dulais Seam and the other two in coal probably derived from this seam.

The recent reinterpretation of the structure of Rum presented by E. B. Bailey (1944) involves a revision of the age of the gneisses of that island. Harker's description of these banded and foliated rocks had referred them to a late date in the Tertiary igneous sequence of the plutonic centre (Harker, 1908). This interpretation had been arrived at in face of the earlier belief of Geikie that they formed part of the Lewisian Series and it is now known that Harker's contemporaries on the Geological Survey who had opportunity of examining his collections dissented from his conclusions though this opinion had until recently not been committed to print (Flett, 1944).

Until quite recently only a few specialists, even in the Soviet Union, knew about the Poltava and Bredin anthracite deposits in the Southern Urals. Under the stern conditions of war, however, this coal basin in the east of the Soviet Union has sprung to economic life. A new power base has been set up, new shafts sunk, all of them working and with reserves of coal before them sufficient for many years. Many of the Bredin pits contain coking coal, and the Poltava-Bredin coal district will soon be able to supply many of the large Urals works with high-quality fuel.