It will, no doubt, be admitted by all, that it is highly conducive to the advancement of any science, that some one of its votaries, more courageous than his colleagues, and endowed with a more generalizing turn of mind, shall, by the comprehensive and exact study of accumulating observations, endeavour to elevate himself above the level of the more plodding but invaluable collectors of facts, by attempting the arrangement and organization of such data, and the deduction therefrom of the laws which regulate their existence and govern their movements.

I obtained, the other day, on my way into South Devon, another peep at the Bristol Channel, and the gorge of the Avon, at Clifton, which I had long been wishing for. It showed me, as I anticipated, that the hypothesis of atmospheric erosion, which I was compelled to adopt, a year or two ago, to explain the formation of the river valleys of the South of Ireland, is applicable to the Clifton gorge as to all other similar places.

For some years geologists have more or less agreed in the view that the present features of the earth, whether hill, valley, or plain (with some small exceptions, as volcanic outbursts) have been formed directly by denudation; though indirectly disturbances, whether faults upheavals or sinkings, have of course had their effect in determining the flow, so to speak, of the denuding agent.

In my paper published in the July Number of this Magazine I gave a list of the Terebratulidæ from the Upware deposit; since then I have further examined them, especially with regard to the shell I named Terebrirostra neocomiensis. There are clearly certain well-marked differences between the Upware species and that fossil. The shell I called T. hippopus also proves to be a new species. Some of the specimens of the small variety of T. oblonga closely correspond with T. Fittoni of Meyer, which was described in the first volume of this Magazine; it was found at Godalming in Surrey. I have also some specimens of T. Dutempleana from the Upware bed; and I have no doubt the affinities of that shell with T. prœlonga (a species not uncommon at Upware) will be able to be determined. (See Cretaceous Brachiopoda, by T. Davidson, page 59).

The coarse ferruginous sands at the base of the Cretaceous series, in the countries of Bedford and Cambridge, have of late years attracted considerable notice, not only as sources of iron ore, but also of phosphatic matter. To these deposits the attention of geologists has been directed, and among other valuable papers, may be mentioned some by Messrs. Seeley and Walker,1 who have treated of their general physical characters, and also of their interesting fossil contents. It may be useful to some of the readers of the Geological Magazine, who are interested in tracing out the range of this deposit, and the peculiar conditions under which it was accumulated in some parts of the area, to point out briefly its characters and contents in the adjoining county of Buckingham; i.e., around Aylesbury: more especially so, as these sands have been considered to be partly equivalent in time, or the marine conditions of the Wealden and Purbeck strata.