The Carbonaceous or Black Shale or Richmond Formation of Jamaica is a deposit of considerable importance in connexion with the geological history of the Greater Antilles. R. T. Hill1 correlates provisionally the Richmond Formation, as he calls these beds, with the Scotland Series of Barbados, the oldest formation in that island, and also with certain of the Tertiary beds of Trinidad. In the present communication I shall endeavour to present some observations on the Carbonaceous Shale Series of Jamaica, together with a description of the fossils I collected in it. This series of deposits consists of a sequence of ferruginous sandstones both coarse and fine-grained, some of them very hard, others when weathered extremely friable; of impure carbonaceous limestones of a very unfossiliferous nature; of grey nodular friable shales often with carbonaceous plant-like remains in them, but scarcely any other fossils; and of coarse conglomerates which seem to occur chiefly in the lower part of the formation.

All students of the Thulean (Brito-Arctic) province of igneous rocks will be interested to learn of the landing effected on the islet of Rockall in June, 1921, by Dr. Charcot, of Antarctic fame, at the instigation of Professor A. Lacroix, of Paris, who has recently described the new material thus obtained. The writer believes that an account of the results so far achieved will be welcomed by British workers.

From time to time during the last fifteen years the specimens described below have been put into my hands for determination and description. In the hope of obtaining better specimens, which would explain more fully their structure and affinities, the publication of any notes on them has been repeatedly deferred, but further delay seems undesirable.

Since this subject is now again under discussion by geologists, it may be of interest to recall that in my original paper, published in the American Journal of Geology, 1907, vol. xv, p. 23, and republished and revised in Harper's Monthly, 1907, vol. cxv, p. 120, and in the Scottish Geographical Magazine, 1907, p. 523, this separation was attributed to the great convulsion that occurred at the time of the birth of the Moon, from the side of the Earth. This explanation of the origin of our Moon is at the present time almost universally accepted by astronomers. We see the same phenomenon occurring in many close double stars.