Just half a century ago, the Geological Society was engaged in passing through the press a very remarkable memoir—a memoir that was destined to revolutionize one of the branches of the science which the Society had been founded to promote. Yet on its appearance this memoir, “On the Microscopical Structure of Crystals,” was met with ridicule on the part of some, with scepticism by others, and by a neglect that was almost universal. Nevertheless, its author, Mr. Sorby, lived to find Microscopical Petrography recognised all the world over as one of the most important branches of geological science, to see appearing year by year an enormous mass of literature devoted to this branch of science, and to be himself hailed by the geologists of all lands as the pioneer in this new and fruitful field of scientific research.

In 1840 Mr. H. B. Mackeson discovered a group of bones of a large reptile in the Lower Greensand near Hythe, Kent; and in the following year the specimen was briefly noticed by Professor (Sir Richard) Owen, who provisionally referred it to the genus Polyptychodon. The fossil was presented by Mr. Mackeson to the British Museum, and ten years later the bones were described in detail by Owen, who recognised that they agreed most closely with those of the Jurassic Cetiosaurus, but still thought they might belong to the ‘crocodile’ whose teeth were known as Polyptychodon. Subsequent discoveries proved that Polyptychodon was a Pliosaurian, with limb-bones quite different from those of the Hythe fossil reptile, and Owen eventually realised that the specimen represented a species of Dinosaur, to which he gave the undefined name Dinodocus Mackesoni. Without adding to our knowledge of Dinodocus Lydekker placed it in the family Cetiosauridæ, while Marsh agreed that it was truly a Sauropodous Dinosaur, though of uncertain affinity.

I have occasionally drawn attention to the effect produced on the relative level of sea and land by variations of pressure on the surface, such as would be occasioned, for example, by the increase or diminution of the loads of ice which existed during the Glacial period. I argued that the position of the surface must be always tending to an exact equilibrium between the upward and the downward pressure, and that any variation in the superincumbent load must result in some change, however small, in order to rectify the balance. For if the balance was not perfert, motion must necessarily ensue, either up or down as the case might require.

During the last few years several papers have been published which throw much light on the early history of the whales, a matter about which there have been great doubt and difference of opinion. Two important points appear to have been settled: first, that the Zeuglodonts (Archœceti) are descended from the primitive group of land-carnivores, usually known as the Creodonta, and, second, that the Toothed-whales (Odontoceti) are really derived from the Zeuglodonts. On this second point there may still be room for doubt, although in the opinion of the present writer the evidence brought forward by Professor Abel in several papers, is at least sufficient to demonstrate the extreme probability that the Archæoceti are really ancestors of the Odontoceti. The origin of the Baleen-whales (Mystacoceti) is still obscure, but the fact that numerous true teeth are found in the unborn young, points to the probability that these animals also may have originated from the same, or a closely related stock as that from which the Odontoceti have descended.

The requirements of towns, and even of camps, in the matter of water supply are so great nowadays that surface waters are avoided as likely to be contaminated, and there is consequently a great desire to rely on deeper sources. Quite an official literature has sprung up of late years, and important memoirs have been issued by the Geological Survey on the “underground sources” of several counties. So far as I am aware there has been no official memoir relating to the county of Dorset, and this probably arises from the circumstance that the artesian principle has not been made use of to any great extent until recently, although the Dorset syncline would seem to bo eminently suitable for artesian wells.

Most geologists who have had anything to do with the ironstone nodules in the Coal-measures have been struck by their perverse and refractory behaviour under the hammer. How one nodule will refuse to break under the most well-directed blows, and another, though breaking easily, will exhibit to the disappointed collector a clean bright surface of clay-ironstone, without a trace of that organism that he hoped, and almost had a right to expect, was there. It seems therefore necessary to find some other and perhaps less violent method of breaking them.