So far back as the year 1820, Schlotheim described in his Petrefactenkunde, vol. i. p. 37, certain Oolitic Crustacea from Solenhofen, which he called Macrourites; but forms belonging to more than one genus were included by him under this name.

We are indebted to M. Desmarest, in 1822, for the earliest description of the genus Eryon from the Lithographic Stone of Solenhofen

Near the village of Hoxne, close to the northern border of Suffolk, and about five miles east of Diss, lies the well-known lacustrine deposit from which Palaeolithic implements were obtained more than 90 years ago. This deposit has been so well described that it may seem presumptuous to imagine that there is still anything new to be said about it. But it so happens that every observer up till now has studied the deposit either from an archaeological or from a geological point of view. No one has paid special attention to the character of the associated plants, or to the climatic conditions which these plants indicate.

In the year 1884 a paper of mine, entitled “The Geology of Monte Somma and Vesuvius,” was published (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soo. vol. xl. pp. 35 to 119), in which I proposed a new explanation for the peculiarities in form of this volcano. An endeavour was made to show that the truncation of Monte Somma by the series of explosive eruptions, especially of Phase VI., had occurred around an eruptive axis different from that which belonged to the period of vesuvian activity, by which the original Somma cone had been built up. Furthermore, a law was enunciated, which is applicable to a very large number of volcanoes, of which, even in Italy, the following examples may be taken in their order of perfection, viz. Eoccamonfina, Mt. Vultura, Etna, Stromboli, Vulcano, and some of the Roman ones. The following are some of the words used: “There is very good reason to deny the concentricity of the great, crater of the Atrio with the original cone of Monte Somma. If within a cone we scoop out an inverted conical hollow around an axis eccentric, but parallel, to that of the solid, we shall have the included space bounded by an annular ridge, not horizontal, but sloping down in the direction of the axis of excavation, and inclined proportionally more, the further the axis of excavation is removed from that of the solid.

In writing Part I. of the British Museum Catalogue of Fossil Reptilia, in which a large number of forms are known solely by disjecta membra, I was fully prepared to find that many of my determinations, which are frequently provisional, would subsequently need correction. It is, moreover, highly probable that there are really more species represented in the collection than I have indicated, as in some cases, in my desire to avoid the introduction of new specific or generic names which could not be fully substantiated, I have provisionally included under generic or specific headings specimens which may prove to indicate distinct forms.

In the Museum of Practical Geology, London, is a remarkable specimen, marked , which the late Mr. J. W. Salter referred to, in the ‘Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc’ vol. xix. 1863, p. 92, as “a huge bivalve Crustacean,” … “with a carapace 7 inches long,” giving it the name “Dithyrocaris pholadomya.” It is in a dark micaceous sandstone, from the “Carboniferous Shales” (or Lower Limestone of the Carboniferous-Limestone series), of Berwick-upnn-Tweed. In the “Catalogue of the Collection of Fossils in the M.P 6.,” 1865, p. 116, it is referred to as “Dithyroearis pholadiformis”; but whether or no this specific name was an alteration made by Mr. Salter himself is doubtful.

In the short description of the Mynydd Mawr rock given in the May Number of this Magazine (p. 221), I drew attention to a remarkable blue hornblende, which I was unable to refer to any known variety. In the character of its absorption and pleochroism it differed widely from both glaucophane and arfvedsonite, although allied to them in some of its properties, such as its extreme fusibility, splinters melting easily in the flame of a candle.