We are glad to be able to present our readers with a portrait of Sir Archibald Geikie, F.R.S., the distinguished President of the Geological Society of London, who, on account of his very large and important contributions to our science, was last year unanimously elected a second time President of the Society in anticipation of its centenary, which will take place on November 13th, 1907, he having been deemed the most fit and proper Fellow to represent the Society as its chief officer upon so important and memorable an occasion in its history.

The occurrence of plant-remains in the Lower Carboniferous rocks of England is so rare that the recent discovery of impressions in beds belonging to that series at Chepstow, by my friend and pupil Mr. M. P. Price, B.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, is worthy of record. Mr. Price has obtained several examples of a Sphenopterid frond and other plant fragments from a bed of sandy shale of about 4 feet in thickness, lying between a red sandstone below and lime-stone beds above, in one of the Pen Moel quarries on the left bank of the Wye, immediately to the north of Chepstow. This locality is mentioned in Dr. Vaughan's recent paper on the palæontological sequence in the Carboniferous Limestone of the Bristol area. That author informs me that he refers the beds in question to the lower portion of the Seminula-zone (S1 of his classification) on the evidence of the fauna.

In connection with the meeting of the Tenth International Geological Congress in the city of Mexico, an excursion, known as the Jorullo Excursion, was organised, of which the following is an account:—

Nevado de Toluca.

Pipe-Amygdaloids, although recorded in the Deccan Traps of India and in Tertiary Basalts from Mull, are rather uncommon, rocks except in South Africa. They were described by Professor E. Cohen, who obtained his specimens through Mr. J. Orpen from the Stormberg lavas (Lower Jurassic) of Basutoland, a formation in which they are very abundant. Since then they have been found in other volcanic formations, e.g., in the very ancient lavas of the Ventersdorp System in the Divisions of Kimberley and Barkly West, in the Bushveld Amygdaloid of the Transvaal and the Basalts of the Lebombo and Zululand (which all overlie rocks belonging to the Karroo System), and in the volcanic fissure of the Zuurberg in the Cape Colony (probably of post-Neocomian age). They have a striking resemblance to organic structures, and Cohen likens them to certain corals; in some exposures of lava the little pencils of white zeolite studding the surface remind one of the casts of worm burrows.

The occurrence of ‘submerged forests’ on the coast of co. Waterford has long been known, though no mention of them was made in the Survey Memoir published in 1865. The more recent discovery of pre-glacial beaches and raised wave-cut rock-platforms along the south coast of Ireland between Baltimore and Carnsore Point has thrown still further light on Post-Tertiary movements of the land-margin; and accordingly some new observations on these phenomena in a hitherto unmarked locality may be of interest.

Alecto dichotomoides was the name given by d'Orbigny in 1849 to a specimen figured by Michelin in 1841 from the Bajocian of Bayeux, or of Moutiers, Calvados, Normandy, and identified by Michelin as A. dichotoma, Lamouroux.

In the maps of the Geological Survey, Quarter-sheet No. 52, S.W. (Bedford), published in 1863, Upper Lias Clay is shown as bordering the Ouse Valley between Stoke Goldington and Olney, directly overlaid by the Great Oolite, that is to say, the maps indicate an entire absence of the Inferior Oolite (Northampton Sand).

The counties of Warwick and Worcester have yielded the majority of Keuper fossils recorded from England. The history of their discovery commenced about seventy years ago with a paper by Murchison and Strickland, where there is a description of the area. They distinguished two divisions, the lower of which they identified as Bunter, chiefly on the evidence of a plant, Echinostdchys oblovgus, Brongn. This division was found to be, for the most part, composed of sandstones, and contained in Worcestershire plant remains and in Warwickshire bones and teeth. The localities where fossils were found were Ombersley, Hadley, Elmley Lovett, all on the west side of the Droitwich basin, Bromsgrove on the east of it, and in the Warwick district.

In a recent important article in the “Records of the Albany Museum, South Africa,” vol. i, No. vi (1906), pp. 347–404, pls. vi–x, Professor Schwarz describes some interesting fresh material from the Bokkeveld Beds, and is able to add several new species to the steadily growing list. Incidentally he is led to criticise some previous work done by me on the Brachiopoda and Mollusca from the same beds. Whilst I welcome the new light he is able to throw on several of the obscure fossils with which I had to deal, I must demur to some of his conclusions, cspecially in the case of the Brachiopoda; and accordingly, as my opinion on his paper has been specially asked by other workers on this fauna, a few remarks appear to be requisite. It must not be forgotten that the specimens in all cases are poor and unsatisfactory, but Professor Schwarz has had the advantage over me of more abundant material.