In our route we shall pass several brick-pits dug into a stiff brown clay or ordinary brick-earth, which must in no way be mistaken for gault, as this fresh-water or marshy stratum, for such the abundance in its lower part of the small white shells of Helix, Succinea oblonga, and Pupa prove it to be, skirts the chalk downs for many miles, apparently into Surrey. At the time when it is extensively dug for brick-making, bones of Bos primigenius, Cervus elephus, Bos urus, and horse are met with. The specimen figured is from one of these pits belonging to Mr. Kingsnorth, of Broadmead.

In his address to the Geological Society of London, Prof. Phillips has stated that “very slight and trifling, if not mischievous, is that minute industry which, unguided by philosophical reflections, busies itself only with differentials of specimens and abandons the true integration of species, the work of the real naturalist” and from so just an assertion who could dissent; for although it may be necessary to study the characters by which species may be distinguished, still, if an undue importance is given to certain features, or that these are arbitrarily restricted within preconceived limits, and that the more important questions in connection with the distribution and zoological characters of the class in general are overlooked, then, as Professor Phillips so justly observes, but very little good and much harm may be the result of the minute industry of some would-be palæontologists.

During the past year my attention has been directed to some ourious tube-like cavities in the magnesian limestone near Sunderland, which I believe to be perfectly analogous to the sand- and gravel-pipes of the chalk districts of the south of England and France. And as our knowledge of such pipes has hitherto been almost confined to their occurrence in the chalk, I deem it advisable to describe these in the magnesian limestone; not that they add much to what we already know, or that they afford grounds for a new theory of the origin of sand-pipes, but because it is well that the occurrence of such as are found in other calcareous rocks than chalk should be recorded, and especially when in rocks which differ from the latter in general structure and greater hardness.