I have lately had an opportunity of taking a hasty examination of the part of Yorkshire lying between Bramham Moor and Fountains Abbey for the especial purpose of examining the “Lower New Red Sandstone,” so elaborately described by Professor Sedgwick many years ago, and lately alluded to by Professor John Phillips, in a paper read before the Geological Society.

But little evidence has, hitherto, been had of the existence of large Sauroid fishes in the Kimmeridge Clay: indications by detached teeth had only, until now, reached me. The very useful “Systematic and Stratigraphical Catalogue of the Fossil Fish in the cabinets of Lord Cole” (now Earl of Enniskillen) “and Sir Philip de M. Grey Egerton,” 4to., did not include any species from that formation at the time of its publication (1837).

The great Valley of the Thames has long been known to contain deposits of gravel intermixed with freshwater beds; but the true Geological age both of the valley of its deposits was long in doubt. Latterly the view expressed by Mr. Prestwhich (in which he was of accord both with Professor Morris and Mr.Trimmer), that the whole was newer than the Boulder-clay, has met with acquiescence. The general structure of the deposits in this valley, although they form the most extensive of the Post-Glacial series in England, has not however yet been shown in any comprehensive manner.

As every part of the crust of the earth has at one time been the surface, it follows that all questions connected with the origin of the present “form of the ground” must be very impotant, and that on their issue the progress of Geology must in a great measure depend. But on this subject a very wide difference of opinion at present exists. According to one party, consisting of Professor Ramsay, Mr. Jukes, Mr. Geikie, Colonel Greenwood, Dr. Foster, and others, the more abrupt inequalities of the earth's surface have been produced by subaërial or atmospheric causes. According to the other school, embracing Sir Charles Lyell, Sir Roderick Murchison, Professors Sedgwick and Phillips, Mr.Edward Hull, etc., the sea has been the principal denuding or excavating agent.