The interpretation of the sands and gravels intercalated in the glacial drift is one of the most interesting problems in glacial geology. Do they, on the one hand, represent the deposits of one or more mild intervals alternating with periods of intense cold; or were they, on the other, laid down during one continuous cold period marked by such slight oscillations as can be shown to occur in connection with existing glaciers and ice-sheets?

In the year 1874 a letter signed by Messrs. Feilden and Maxwell appeared in the Maltese Journal “Il Barth,” in which attention was drawn to a Post-pliocene deposit, said to have been found in the vicinity of Cala Dueira and II Kala, in Gozo.

I have lately been favoured by Dr. W. Dames with a separate copy of a communication made by him to the Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, etc., dated Berlin, 18th December, 1890, in which he points out that in my Catalogue of Fossil Cephalopoda, British Museum (Nat. Hist.) part i. (1888) I have (following Eichwald) wrongly referred a certain “smooth” species of Endoceras from Reval in Esthonia, to the Orthoceratites vaginatus of v. Schlotheim,—a ribbed species.

It is needless to recapitulate, for the information of the readers of the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE, all the incidents which are known to accompany the formation of new land by rivers, or to repeat the descriptions which have been given of the more remarkable instances of them, such as those of the Nile, the Mississippi, the Ganges, the Rhone, the Po, and the Danube. These have been scientifically discussed long ago, by Lyell in his Principles. The object of this paper is rather to suggest how a careful collation of such facts as may be learned in connexion with the formation of modern deposits at the mouths of great rivers, or in great estuarine areas (such as the Wash), which receive a number of streams from widely-extended inland catchment-basins, may throw light upon the history of older formations of the same kind, and more especially of those of Tertiary times, during which many important changes were wrought in the physiography of the continent of Europe.

Time of occurrence, 13 h. 58 m.; Intensity, about IV. Epicentrum, probably not far from Ben Nevis.

I am indebted to Mr. E. T. Omond, Director of the Ben Nevis Observatory, for the only information I have been able to obtain with reference to this earthquake. “It was,” he says, “sufficiently strong to make part of the wooden roof creak, but was, as far as I know, not noticed in any other part of the country.” The few inquiries that I have been able to make confirm this remark, and I think we may therefore conclude that the epicentrum cannot have been very distant from Ben Nevis. The great fault, which crosses Scotland from Inverness in a south-westerly direction, passes at the surface within a short distance from Ben Nevis; and being, in other parts of its course, closely associated with recent earthquakes, may possibly, by a slip, have given rise to the Ben Nevis shock.

I Regret that I cannot accept as unquestionable the evidence brought forward by my friend Mr. Howorth in favour of the recent elevation of other mountain ranges in Asia besides the Himalayas. I dealt with the latter alone, because I have a slight I acquaintance with parts of them, and some knowledge of the observers whose opinions are quoted. But I argue from the known to the unknown, and if I find reason to reject the evidence on which Mr. Howorth relies to prove the absence of extensive glacial markings in the Himalayas, I am disposed to be sceptical as to that on which he founds his argument in the case of other ranges. I decline to be drawn into a discussion about the latter.