For several years careful study has been given to numerous lake basins in England and elsewhere, with the result that many previously considered as rock basins have not survived the ordeal. Professor Bonney, who has always opposed this hypothesis in the case of large lakes, has described four authentic examples from the Lepontine Alps, three of which I had the advantage of visiting with him; and some few weeks before, Mr. Brend described others from Caernarvonshire.

The bones of Pleistocene mammals and birds, a list of some of which is given below, were found in a small cave in an outlying part of the Forest of Dean, close to the river Wye, where it is flanked by steep and wooded hills that rise abruptly from either bank. At short intervals along the sides of these hills limestone cliffs and boulders stand out bare and white among the surrounding trees. The slopes below are strewn, and in places completely covered, with pieces of rock of all sizes that are continually becoming loosened and fall from the outstanding crags above, in which are numerous cracks, holes, and caves, the last, as a rule, being only of small size.

There are six specimens of this variety in the Woodwardian Museum, all of which come from the Woolhope Limestone, of Littlehope, and were labelled by Salter. Five of them are more or less perfect head-shields, and the other is a pygidium in a good state of preservation.

Not much has as yet been done in the way of cataloguing the fossil fishes of the Lower Carboniferous rocks of Eastern Fifeshire. A few species and localities were noted by the late Rev. Thomas Brown in 1860 and by Mr. Kirkby in 1880, and the late Mr. Robert Walker published a paper in 1872 in which he described what he supposed to be a new species of Amblypterus (A. anconoœchmodus) from the Oil-shale works at Pitcorthy, near Anstruther. In this paper Mr. Walker drew attention to the abundance and variety of fish-remains in the oil-shale and ironstone worked at that locality, promising to describe them in detail afterwards—a promise which he was never able to fulfil. After his death in 1881, his important collection of fish-remains from this and other localities in East Fife was acquired by the Edinburgh Museum, and largely forms the basis of the present list. I myself have also done some collecting in this region; and a good many years ago the Museum acquired a number of specimens collected by Mr. W. T. Kinnear at Ardross, some of which are of great interest.

II. (8) Kent.—1862. Mr. W. H. Bensted, in the Geologist, vol. v (1862), pp. 449, 450, states: “The Druid Sandstone, of which Kit's Coty House, Stonehenge, and many other Druidical remains are composed, is found scattered in great blocks over the surface of the Chalk Hills, or buried superficially in beds of clay retained in the hollows on the summits of the escarpments.” These stones, he added, are the same as the Greywethers of Berks and Wilts; and are occasionally pebbly, like the Hertfordshire Puddingstones.

Professor J. Joly, in his interesting paper estimating the geological age of the earth from the amount of sodium contained in the sea, mentions in an appendix seven possible errors which may render his estimate a minimum, and seven others which may render it a maximum. Neither among the former errors guarded against in the appendix, nor in the body of the paper, does there appear any reference to the possibility of sea-water being absorbed by the surface rocks of the globe, either by capillary attraction, as maintained by Daubrée, or by means of fissures, as contended by De la Beche.

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 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.