Old bones, that would be worthless to anybody else, become valuable to the geologist. There may be nothing picturesque or strikingly singular in their appearance. They may be too rotten or too fragile for the manufacturer; too sapless for the agriculturist; nay, too few or too far between to be of any commercial value at all. And yet bits of bones may be inscriptions of much value to the palæontologist. As every letter in the few lines incised on the famous Rosetta stone was a key to some passage in a forgotten language of the past, so every new bit of bone may be the key to some passage in that greater history of a greater past which geology unrolls. Many years ago—how time flies past—I met with a little patch of mammaliferous drift at Folkestone; I gathered every fragment of bone, every tooth, every shell, which the workmen's picks and spades exhumed, and most of what I could not determine myself at that time, Professor Owen, and my then living and active friend, Mr. Turner, looked over and named.

Amongst the bones I then collected were two of form to me before unknown, and which I often since brought back to mind. Two—both fragments of horns—flat at the basal part, perfectly round towards the tip; no goat, nor antelope, nor deer, that I knew, had horns like them; and so those fragments were laid aside (not carelessly) for future thought and comparison. Shortly since in walking through the gallery of the British Museum, I visited the cases containing deers' remains, and there, at once I saw, not the counterparts, but what seemed to me the fac-similes of my bits of horns.

Some other memoranda which I find among my papers relating to this work (for a section of which, with particulars of shaft-sinking, see “Geologist” of last month) may not be unacceptable to your coal-mining readers.

The spot where the shaft was sunk was 476 feet above the level of the Severn Valley Railway at Eymoor, and about 510 feet above the ordinary height of the River Severn, from which it was distant about two miles. The coal seam met with and worked at the depth of 176 yards, has in other parts of the coal-field a thickness of four feet. The colliers regard it as a Flying Reed (red?) coal. Two of the thin coal-seams afterwards sunk through were entirely made up of the remains of Sigillariæ; the coal, in consequence, was “long grained” and slaty. These Sigillarian coals have a considerable range through the Wyre Forest field, and in common with most of the other seams, crop out along the western border. At the Baginswood pits, in the north-west corner of the coal·field, the upper coal, two feet four inches in thickness, worked by hand-draw, being only ten yards from surface, is a most interesting seam, made up entirely of compressed Sigillariæ.

One of the greatest and most significant laws which modern palæontology has unfolded to us, is that principle by which it is definitively ascertained that, as a general rule, the animals of the Post-Pliocene, and indeed all the later Tertiary ages, were restricted to the same great geographical provinces as their representatives in the existing fauna. Amongst the Pliocene Mammalia of South America, we find the same preponderance of the Edentata, the same family of prehensile-tailed Monkeys, and the same typical Llamas and Vicuñas, as we find in the present pampas of La Plata, forests of Brazil, or elevations of the Andes.

But we also find animals which, from all our previous pre-conceived associations, we had considered peculiar to the old world. The Elephants, of which one species (E. Africanus) now exists in Africa, a second (E. Indicus) in India, and a third (E. Sumatranus) in Sumatra and Ceylon, apart from the extensive and widely-distributed evidences which we find of their fossil remains in Europe, India, China, and Australia, extended their geographical province in the later Tertiary age over the whole of North America. The species of elephant which we find in Siberia (E. primigenius) has also been found over the whole of the space lately marked on our maps as the United States. South of the 30th degree of N. Iatitude it however gives place to a totally different species of true Elephant (Elephas Texianus, Owen, E. Columbi? Falconer), the molars of which, by their less degree of complexity, were more adapted to triturate the soft succulent herbage of Texas and Mexico. Besides these true Elephants, there existed in North America many individuals of the genus Mastodon, to which the present communication more particularly alludes.

Monsieur Delbos, after much research, has determined that the cliffs at Bidart consist of the cretaceous rocks, and that these cease going northward towards Biarritz, and are succeeded by beds of the Lower Eocene. The very lowest of these, however, does not appear on the coast, namely, that which he designates as “Marnes à Terebratules.” The first, which is found to the north, beyond the chalk formation on the coast, is a calcareous rock, containing a species of serpula. Mons. Delbos writes as follows:—

“I now propose definitely the following divisions for the nummulitic deposits of the basin of the Adour.

M. Delbos then gives an explanation of his section of the coast, starting from the point a, and going northward.

“North of the mass of siliceous limestone, of which I have already spoken, and which belongs incontestably to the chalk formation, there is an extensive depression, occupied by sands blown in from the shore, and which interrupts the continuity of the escarpment for the distance of rather more than a quarter of a mile. Beyond this depression the cliff recommences, and from the point where it first appears abundant specimens of fossils characteristic of the nummulitic formation may be collected from a large fragment which lies detached at the foot of the cliff. (Nummulina, Serpula spirulæa, Vulsella falcata, &c.)

As the geographical distribution of fossils is always an interesting subject, it has occurred to me that a few words on the Oolitic fossils of this part of England, not much visited by geologists, may be acceptable to, at least, some of the readers of the “Geologist.” It will not be my intention in this paper to treat so much of the geological features of the country, as to give complete lists of the organic remains which have been found by myself and a few others in the various strata of this district. The Oolites of North Bucks and Northampton, though of course presenting, for the most part, the usual character of the system as represented in other Oolitic districts of England (being, as they doubtless are, merely a continuation of those of Oxfordshire, &c.), yet possess several points of interest peculiar to themselves. The identity of the “Northampton Sands” (formerly classed with the Lias) with the Stonesfield Slate of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, and constituting the Lower Zone of the Great Oolite, the importance of these “sands” as an iron ore; the occurrence of land-plants similar to the Stonesfield specimens in the Forest-marble of the neighbourhood of Wolverton; the extensive development of the Kimmeridge Clay at Hartwell; and of the Great Oolite further north;—all these facts combine to invest these beds with much interest, both to the geologist and the palæontologist.

Many years before Darwin's celebrated theory came to light, the question whether the repeated changes in animal and vegetable creation were the effects of changes in the external conditions of organic life, had been discussed among many palæontologists.

The solution of this question having to be sought for only within those deposits the Fauna of which is so nearly allied to that of present times that we can hope for a rather clearer idea of the condition in which these extinct forms were living, I have, a long time ago, been gathering a store of materials for the history of the Vienna Tertiaries, intending, in obedience to Bacon's precept—“Non disputando adversarium, sed opere naturam vincere.”

I have now to treat this matter,—first, in its stratigraphical aspect, describing the changes in external physical circumstances, then as a question of palæontology, inquiring into the action of those changes on the organic being coeval with them. I have previously had occasion to publish some result of my investigations in both these directions (see Acad. Proc. 1860, vol. xxxix. p. 158-166); and among the most important of them I may number the separation of the Vienna tertiaries into an Alpine and Extra-Alpine basin; the statement of repeated upheavings, of coevality of the apparently different deposits of Nussdorf, Grand, Baden, &c.; and lastly, the distinction of several successive Faunae of terrestrial mammalia.