1. The Speeton Clay of Yorkshire contains abundant Foraminifera in the beds named by Mr. Lamplugh B (base), C10, and C2; but the specimens examined from the other subdivisions of F, E, D, and C either do not contain any Foraminifera or they are present in small numbers only.

2. Two new species, Cristellaria chapmani, Pulvinulina lamplughi, and a new variety, Lagena apiculata, var. danfordi, occur and are described. Forty-four species belonging to sixteen genera have been found.

3. The characteristic of the Foraminiferal fauna of the Speeton Clay is the great predominance of Pulvinulina caracolla (Roemer) over all other species.

4. Twenty-five per cent of the species of Foraminifera occur also in the Hils of North Germany, 35 per cent in the Red Chalk of Speeton, 40 per cent in the Bargate Beds of Surrey, and 58·5 per cent in the Gault of Folkestone.

5. Dimorphism is clearly shown by P. caracolla (Roemer). Previously it has been stated to occur among the Pulvinulinæ in P. partschiana, d'Orb., but no case has been described.

6. Notes are given on the microscopical characters of the sediments.

The SgÙrr of Eigg first attained to geological prominence in 1865, when Sir Archibald Geikie in his delightful account of the Scenery of Scotland offered a novel and altogether captivating theory to account for its origin [1]. According to Geikie, as all well know, the precipitous ridge of pitchstone, which culminates at its eastern extremity in the SgÙrr, is the inverse of an ancient valley sunk by a winding river in the basaltic plateau of the west. Before the development of this river channel, so the theory runs, the sources which had supplied the basalt lava of the plateau had already become extinct; but volcanic activity was not yet entirely banished from the region, and presently a great outpouring of acid lava, entering the valley, flowed for miles along its course, gradually choking it, perhaps even to the brim. The resulting pitchstone has stood the test of time much more securely than the neighbouring basalts, for while these latter have wasted to a level in general lower than that of the old valley floor, the pitchstone itself still remains in large measure unaffected, and thus furnishes a somewhat battered cast of the erstwhile hollow.

MR. Bailey has very kindly permitted me to see his manuscript, and also to examine a specimen and slice of the rock which he regards as a volcanic breccia underlying the pitchstone. Since he attaches some importance to this rock, I will consider it first.

The natural base of the thick pitchstone sheet is made by a band of more glassy aspect, almost like an obsidian. The microscope shows that this, apart from the usual enclosed crystals, is a light-brown glass, free from the crowds of crystallites found in the ordinary pitchstone. Another feature is that it encloses numerous little fragments of basalt. These indeed, with occasional larger pieces, pass up for some feet into the pitchstone, but they are most abundant near the lower surface. Such inclusions, picked up from the contiguous rocks, may occur both in lava-flows and intrusive sills, but, so far as my experience goes, are more frequent in the latter. The obsidian-like band is well seen, fresh and intact, at places on the northern side of the SgÙrr; but elsewhere it is much brecciated, and usually much decomposed in addition. The brecciation is of such a kind that pieces of the normal pitchstone have become mingled with the debris of the more glassy variety. Mr. Bailey has quoted part of my description of this brecciated basal band as it is exposed, in a decomposed state, on the southern side of the ridge. That it is a part of the pitchstone sheet, not a separate underlying deposit, is there clearly demonstrated: see fig. 6 on p. 60 of my paper.

One of the drawbacks of working in a distant land is that the valuable help of the friendly critic is rarely available, and that, therefore, however strongly the truth of conclusions arrived at may be felt by oneself, it is impossible to expect readers in England to accept without reserve statements that may with perfect justice be said to require corroboration by other observers. I have felt the force of this consideration particularly in the case of the clays of the Malayan Gondwana rocks, which I have described in more than one publication; and as the conclusions in those descriptions are so far removed from what was to be expected in a country where recent alluvium was until quite lately believed to be the most important formation, it is, I think, advisable to place on record in some detail any corroborative evidence that may be brought to light. An additional reason for this course is the constant change in the mine-sections owing to mining operations, and also to the rapidity with which sections weather.

The fossils which form the subject of this notice were obtained from the slates exposed in the excavations for the foundations of the “Pengelly” Lecture Hall, which was added to the Museum of the Torquay Natural History Society in 1894. They were collected by Mr. W. J. Else, the late Curator of the Museum, and were examined by the late Rev. G. F. Whidborne, who published some account of them in the Geological Magazine for 1901, p. 533.

When Mr. Whidborne's paper was published I was not specially interested in the details of the geological structure of Torquay, but since then I have paid much attention to these local details and have collected fossils from all existing exposures. I was consequently surprised to find on reference to the note published by Mr. Whidborne that he had regarded these fossils as a Lower Devonian assemblage, in spite of the fact that the Museum is in close contiguity to a tract of Middle Devonian Limestone, as shown on the map of the Geological Survey published in 1898. Moreover, he quoted a statement made by the late Mr. A. Somervail regarding the stratigraphical position of the slates which is entirely incorrect. It is not true that in ascending the Torwood valley from The Strand one passes over a descending series of rocks. The beds underlying The Strand are shaly slates, which dip northward under limestone, and the same slates run up the valley to and a little beyond the Museum; they are then succeeded by limestone which crosses the valley in a south-east direction, and about 100 yards higher up this is faulted against slates which are believed to be of Lower Devonian age.

In a recent paper Professor Shand put forward a pleafor the more careful consideration, in rock classification, of the saturated or unsaturated state of the constitnent minerals. The criterion of saturation which is assumed is the capability of co-existence with some form of free silica, as shown by the “observed facts of distribution”. By means of this criterion, the rock-forming minerals are divided into two groups—the saturated minerals and the unsaturated ones. The former group includes the felspars, amphiboles,pyroxenes, micas, and most of the so-called accessory minerals, as well as those of pneumatolytic origin; while the latter group comprises the felspathoids, olivine, the spinels, corundum, and the garnets (except spessartite, which is put into the first class). Rocks are divided into three classes, according as they are made up wholly of saturated minerals, partly of saturated and partly of unsaturated ones, or wholly of unsaturated ones.

Some very important criticisms of the wider generalizations of modern petrology were made by Henry S. Washington in a paper read before the International Geological Congress in 1913 on “Volcanic Cycles in Sardinia”.

The Sardinian volcanoes belong to three different volcanic cycles. A careful study of the sequence of the various lava-flows brings out the following points. The sequence as a whole is discontinuous but recurrent. The close of one magmatic cycle is simultaneous with the ending of one volcanic phase, and the recurrence of a new one coincides with a change in the intensity or character of the vulcanicity. In the several successive cycles there is a progressive decrease in differentiation; thus the earliest cycle comprises rhyolites, trachytes, andesites, and basalts; while in the latest felspar-basalts are the only lavas which have been extruded. Each cycle closes with the extrusion of felspar-basalt. The sequence here observed is not in accordance with the ‘law’ of divergence from an average magma. Harker would, however, regard such exceptions as due to the suppression of one of two divergent lines.