Although unwilling to admit that in the history of our Earth special and peculiar conditions have prevailed at any period since the first advent of organic beings, yet we cannot doubt, that during particular eras, circumstances favoured the development of special groups of organisms which, in consequence, flourished in greater perfection and numbers than the rest.

The question as to the probable existence of a Coal-field on the south side of the Mendips having lately been prominently brought before the public in the Report of the Royal Coal Coal mission (vol. i.), it may not be uninteresting to offer a few remarks on the present aspect of the question.

Having had my attention drawn to a communication from H. W. Bristow, Esq., F.R.S., District Surveyor of the Geological Survey of England and Wales, which appeared in the Wells Journal of 12th October, and which relates how he came upon a shaft (with steam-engine, etc., in full operation) that was being sunk for Coal about three-quarters of a mile North of Easton, in Somersetshire, and which shaft penetrated the Old Red Sandstone to a depth of 112 yards, starting at a point from 3,000 to 4,000 feet below the horizon of the lowest strata of the true Coal-measures, I think it not undesirable to make known the fact of an as unwise and hopeless search for Coal in Northamptonshire, at a point probably more removed vertically, but in the opposite direction, from any strata in which Coal wonld be likely to be found.

The Second Edition of Prof. Morris's “Catalogue of British Fossils” appeared in 1854, and in the same year was published Dr. Chr. G. Ehrenberg's “Mikrogeologie,” containing the figures of numerous Foraminifera found by that eminent German mioroscopist, in specimens of Chalk from Gravesend, Kent. A preliminary notice, indeed, of these had been given in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy of Sciences for 1838 (1839), pp. 92, 133–135, 146, pl. iv., fig. IV.; and some of the species were quoted in the “Catalogue;” but a more matured consideration was subsequently given them; and, together with many others from other sources, recent and fossil, they were most carefully figured and enumerated in the abovementioned magnificent work on Microzoa. In its fine folio plates, so richly illustrating the Foraminiferal faunæ of many localities, and of many geological horizons, the artistic work is of high order in the zoologist's eyes; it is faithfully correct as to form, aspect, ornamentation, colour, and all details, modified, however, by the specimens being mostly seen as transparent objects, with the thickness of the walls rather too much pronounced at the edges; the objects, too, are some-what in perspective. It being difficult to combine transparency and perspective in a drawing, especially with the attending minutiæ of pores, tubercles, ridges, internal septa, septal apertures, and other characteristics of Forminifera, the result is that the task of recognizing the real zoological place of the figured forms is difficult, or imposible, except to those who have long studied similar hosts of microzoa, similarly mounted in Canada-balsam. Having had such advantages, we feel called on to add to the list of British fossils, with our own nomenclature, the Cretaceous Foraminifera of Gravesend, figured by Ehrenberg.