Students of palæobotany, when concerned with casts and impressions of fossil plants as distinguished from petrifactions, have often to face difficulties in the course of their examination of such remains, some of which are peculiar to this branch of palæontology. Even when a large number of specimens of any particular type of foliage, or other organs, are available for comparison, it is often difficult to decide how far one set of casts and impressions can be regarded as distinct from another. Authorities differ in their ideas of the aggregate of differences necessary to constitute genera and species. This difficulty, although common to the systematist in the study of recent plants, is greatly intensified when dealing with fossils, on account of the fragmentary nature of the evidence.

The Charmouth district, situated in the south-west corner of Dorsetshire, consists of valleys in the Lias clays, separated by hills which are capped by Upper Cretaceous rocks, resting unconformably upon the Lias. Black Ven is the name of the cliff face bisecting one of these hills, which, lying between Charmouth and Lyme Regis, divides the valleys of the Char and the Lyme stream. of this cliff, the lower 350 feet consist of Lias clays and limestones.

In writing my little paper on vein-quartz I was particularly anxious not to introduce controversial matter, but to be strictly orthodox throughout. After the paper was published I was much perturbed to find that I had unwittingly come into collision with two incidental remarks in General McMahon's most interesting paper on the Satlej granite, which was the subject of his address to Section C at Belfast. My oversight arose owing to the said remarks being incidental, and no stress having been laid upon their paramount importance.

Reference to the Geological Survey map, Sheet 44, will show the exact position of the quarry: to the south of the junction of the road from Condicote to Scarborough with that leaving the main road opposite the lane which comes past Rook Pool Barn (now Kinetonhill Farm) and Rook Pool. The area in which the quarry is situated is thus indicated as being composed of Inferior Oolite rocks. The fauna contained in Bed 2, and especially the Rhynchonella and Terebratula, clearly shows that this is an error. I am indebted to Mr. W. H. Hudleston, F.R.S., for kindly examining the Gasteropods. Their state of preservation only allowed of their being identified approximately, but, as Mr. Hudleston observed, “they certainly wear a Bathonian facies rather than that associated with the Inferior Oolite.” Mr. R. F. Tomes, F.G.S., kindly determined the corals. The specimen of Trigonia obtained agrees with that figured by Lycett in his “Monograph of the British Fossil Trigoniœ,” pl. xxxiv, fig. 9, as T. pullus; but not with the T. pullus of Sowerby.

In the Geological Magazine for June of this year I proposed the new specific and generic names Anthracosiro woodwardi for a Carboniferous Arachnid represented in the British Museum by a single specimen (No. 1551) from Coseley, near Dudley, that formerly belonged to the collection of Mr. Henry Johnson. A further communication from Dr. Friĉ, of Prague, drew my attention to three additional specimens, with the same history, numbered 1554, 1555, and 1556, and ticketed Eophrynus, sp. nov. No. 1555 is the under-side of a scorpion, without the tail; the others are referable to the genus Anthracosiro.

Photography has now become so invaluable an accessory to every branch of science, that it is not surprising to find it has proved indispensable alike to the geologist and the palæontologist. One has but to turn back over the four decades of this Magazine and compare the number and quality of the illustrations, in the earlier with the later years, in order to realize the great advances that have been made by the application of photography both to process-plates and to illustrations in the text (especially in the last quarter of a century), which has so enriched and enhanced the value and interest of this and other scientific journals. That good half-tone process-blocks can be made from photographs of any geological subject taken in the field, is now well established; nevertheless, two points are absolutely essential to their success: (1) the photograph must be particularly clear and well-defined in its details; (2) the block, however good, may easily be rendered worthless by bad or careless printing; moreover, it must be reproduced upon paper with a finely finished surface, although it need not necessarily be the highly glazed kind (heavily loaded with kaolin) now so much in vogue for the illustrated Monthlies.