It is now twelve months since I had the pleasure to record, in the pages of this Journal, the discovery of Eophrynus Prestvicii, a new genus of Arachnides from the Coal-measures of Dudley. (See Geol. Mag., 1871, Vol. VIII., p. 385, Pl XI.) This remarkably perfect specimen is perhaps unequalled in the condition of its preservation by any Palæozoic fossil known. Although the fossil Arachnide, which forms the subject of this notice, cannot claim such distinction as Eophrynus, yet it is well deserving of being placed on record in the pages of this Magazine, as a new genus of airbreathers from the English Coal-measures.

The genus Cupressocrinus is very characteristic of the Devonian formation in Germany. In some parts of the Eifel it may be called common; and yet in England, though equally characteristic of the same formation, and though it has been found in several places, yet it is considered so rare that it is hardly mentioned by many of the writers on the Devonian fossils. In Morris's Catalogue the localities given are Plymouth and (somewhat strangely) Collumpton, where there is no Devonian limestone. For these reasons it may be worth recording that there is one small and somewhat insignificant quarry between Newton and Teignmouth, where fossils of this genus occur in abundance, though unfortunately generally in the state of casts.

In a paper on “The Permian Beds of Yorkshire”, Mr. Lucas maintains: 1st, that the present western edge of the Magnesian Limestone, at all events to the north of Ripon, marks the old shoreline; 2nd, that the iron and other salts found in Permian deposits were derived from the neighbouring grit and limestone land; 3rd, that the colouring-matter, as it was brought down, stained the rocks forming the bed of the inland sea, and hence the purple and red colour of the grit and other beds between Knaresborough and Leeds.

The first portion of this paper is devoted to a comparison of the Delta deposits of the Po, Mississippi, and Ganges, by means of the descriptions of the strata obtained from borings in their Deltas for water. The surfaces of these Deltas, and the alluvial plains above them, are compared together, with reference to their height above the sea and inclination, and it is found that a parabolic curve drawn through the extremities of each river, and through one point in its course, nearly represents its longitudinal section,-the greatest deviation being 30 feet in some of the largest Deltas. The Delta deposits are found to be coarser and more sandy near the bottom, and indicate more rapid rivers and greater rainfall at the earlier portion of their history.

During five and a half weeks' examination and study of the glaciated rock-surfaces and drifts of the south-central part of the Lake District, in June and July last, I was fortunate in meeting with many fresh and clear sections in diggings for house sites, drains, gravel-pits, tracks of unusually large rain-torrents, etc., which enabled me on some points to arrive at a more satisfactory classification of the drifts of the country than I had previously succeeded in devising.

This pit has already formed the subject of communications to the Society. In one read February 16th, 1863, and in a subsequent paper published in the GeologicalMagazine, Vol. II., p. 529, Mr. Seeley maintained, as I believe Professor Sedgwick had always held, that the singular juxtaposition of Kimmeridge Clay, Cretaceous rocks, and Boulder-clay, was due to faulting. In 1868 the Rev. O. Fisher communicated a paper, in which he accounted for the phenomena, by considering the Cretaceous beds as a huge boulderlike fragment, dropped into a valley which it had excavated in the Kimmeridge Clay, with the intervening space filled up with Boulderclay. Shortly after this had been read, Mr. Seeley published a paper in the GeologicalMagazine (Vol. V., p. 347), in which he attacked Mr. Fisher's view. The explanation of the phenomena may therefore be fairly regarded as still sub judice. During the last three years I have from time to time visited the pit, and purpose to lay before the Society the conclusions at which I have arrived, from repeated comparison of the rival theories with the sections exhibited during the progress of the works.

Before proceeding to give an account of these changes in the fauna of Greenland, I wish to draw attention to the possibility which exists in these parts of obtaining a comparison between the units of geological and historical chronology, that is—if by collecting observations and reports from many different localities, it be possible to determine certain limits for the velocity with which the border of the inland ice moves. One may arrive at the lower limit from the following considerations. The breadth of the slip of border-land at Auleitsiviksfjord is about 60 miles, or 350,000 ft. The annual retreat can, of course, never exceed the thickness of the covering that yearly melts, divided by the sine of the inclination of the icy surface, which in the places passed by us was nowhere less than 30°.