The Rev. Peter Bellinger Brodie was born in London in 1815. His father, Mr. P. B. Brodie, was an eminent conveyancer and barrister-at-law, while his uncle, Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, Bart, the celebrated surgeon, was President of the Royal Society from 1858 to 1861.

The extent of the glaciation in the Western-Midland Counties of England during the formation of the Chalky Boulder-clay has yet to be determined in detail. No accurate survey has at present been made of the various Drifts that are scattered over the country from Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire on the east to Worcestershire and Gloucestershire on the west; but the observations of Strickland, Brodie, Lloyd, Lucy, and others, have made known the characters of the superficial deposits at numerous localities in and around the vale of Evesham, while the probable limit of the action of land-ice during the period of maximum glaciation has been delineated on a small map by S. V. Wood, jun.

Although not strictly in the order of the title, we may describe of first a specimen from the so-called “melaphyre,” which forms a great sheet high up in the group through which the diamondbearing pipes have been driven. This, which bears the label “No. 5, Melaphyre,” is nearly 5″ in length. Macroscopically, it may be described as a compact dark basalt, showing slight signs of decomposition, and containing rather sparse amygdales of irregular size and shape (the maximum length being about half an inch), filled mostly with calcite and spotted occasionally with dark-green.

During an examination of the complicated series of Lower Palæozoic rocks in County Waterford, with which I am still engaged, I have had the opportunity of collecting largely from the few fossiliferous beds in the neighbourhood of Tramore, and a study of the fossils throws considerable light on the vexed question of their age. It is not my intention in this paper to discuss the relations of the igneous and sedimentary rocks, nor to attempt to explain the structure of the district.