In view of the interest lately shown by geologists and others engaged in the Malay Peninsula through Mr. H. F. Bellamy's discovery of Triassic Lamellibranchs in that area, a brief account of the principal works on the geology of that portion of South-Eastern Asia may prove of service. More particular reference will be made to the sedimentary rocks, purely mineral papers being excluded from consideration.

In the south-east of England considerable tracts are covered by sheets or patches of gravel. It is mainly composed of flints from the Chalk, has a thickness of, say, from 6 to 20 feet, is generally stratified, and rests upon an uneven surface of the older strata. The top is nearly always flat and inclined at a low angle.

Among the fossil fishes of the Talbragar Beds (Jurassic?) described by Dr. A. Smith Woodward in a memoir of the Geological Survey of New South Wales (1895), there is the ventral portion of the abdominal region of a Cœlacanth fish, having one of the pectoral fins well shown. The fin is shown in counterpart, and is thus described:— “It exhibits, as usual, the characteristic obtuse lobation and the large fringe of articulated attenuated dermal rays, and is unique in displaying some of the eudoskeletal supporting bones. These elements seem to have been well ossified, though with persistent cartilage internally. At the base of the fin there occurs a broken fragment of bone1 incapable of determination; but in the lobe of the fin itself there is a series of four well-defined, hourglass-shaped supports. Of these bones the anterior three are much elongated, and nearly equally slender, while the fourth is much more robust and expanded at its distal end. The four elements radiate from the anterior half of the base of the fin; and it seems very probable that some smaller cartilage behind and near the distal border of the lobe have disappeared from lack of ossification. The fin-rays gradually increase in length from the anterior border to the middle of the lobe, whence they decrease again backwards, and finally become extremely delicate.”

In his interesting paper on “The Origin of Coal,” published in the Geological Magazine for January, 1901, p. 29, Mr. Strahan says: “the Limestone Series generally consists of repetitions of small groups of strata, each group being composed of sandstone, followed by shale, shale followed by limestone.” It is not stated whether this is intended to be an upward or downward succession; but if the former is meant, as it seems to be, the sequence is very different from that which exists in many parts of the country. Amongst the Yoredale Rocks proper—by which I mean the beds in the valley of the Yore and in such parts of the neighbourhood as contain rocks of a similar type—the usual upward succession is sandstone followed by limestone overlaid by shale. That is to say, the limestones very often have basement sandstones, and are nearly always immediately overlaid by shale. There are some cases in which limestone is overlaid by sandstone, but these are quite exceptional.

It is uncertain whether Cheviot itself was overridden by extraneous ice, but striæ on Thirl Moor and Baker Crag, recorded by the Geological Survey, probably indicate that that portion of the watershed was overridden by ice from the Tweed Valley, and Professor James Geikie mentions the occurrence of till and striated stones on the tops of the Cheviot Hills at 1,500 feet. The transport of erratics shows movement along both sides of the axis of the range from S.W. to N.E. at some stage of the glaciation. Across the northern end and for at least ten miles down the eastern side, however, a distribution of erratics from the Tweed Valley, together with other indications to be mentioned, points to an ice-flow veering round through easterly to a north to south direction. Our observations go to confirm the above conclusions with respect to the area north and east of Cheviot.