Some of the novelties presented at the lectures at the Royal Institution have, from the hour they were spoken, taken rank with the discoveries of the age and the data of science; amongst such are some of the most important results of the researches of Davy, Faraday, and Tyndall. Others, as might be naturally expected, have risen to no higher rank than that of hypotheses or an hour's amusement, and after exciting some discussion and comment, have passed away into that oblivion to which all but fundamental or practically useful facts are, sooner or later, consigned. Amongst those familiar voices which we are there in the habit of hearing, few are listened to with more pleasure, profit, or instruction, than that of Professor Frankland, especially when he restricts himself to those branches of chemistry in which he is so eminent. The Glacial period and the former incandescence of the earth are two themes that geologists are eternally dwelling upon—whether with profit to themselves or with any advantage to their hearers it would be very difficult to say. For once Professor Frankland has left those realms of chemistry within which he is a monarch to run a lance at the same time both for and against geologists. Basing a theory on the supposed existence of an internal molten mass constituting the core of our globe, is taking for it about as secure a basis as any one might be presumed to have who attempted to balance his body at the top of a mounte-bank's pole, the other extremity of which was held by infirm and trembling hands.

The “Irish Elk” has been hitherto only found in the shell-marl underlying extensive turbaries. It is a true deer, intermediate between the fallow and rein-deer. In England it has been found in lacustrine beds, brick-earth, and ossiferous caves (Owen). The subject of the present paper is a dorsal vertebra belonging to a skeleton quite as large, if not larger than the specimen in the College of Surgeons Museum, London, with which it was compared. It was found on the Shirly property, in a bed of gypsum, county of Monaghan, Ireland. This gypsum-bed is very extensive, being many square miles in extent, underlying the glacial drift, embedded in and. sometimes alternating with a fine ferruginous clay. The subjacent rock is the older or lower coal sandstone, which lies unconformably on the mountain limestone, which reposes on the Silurian, the latter forming hills of 500 or 600 feet elevation in the immediate neighbourhood. The surface-soil is formed of ancient drifts of different ages, the one containing enormous blocks of mountain limestone, the other, the older, more compact, and containing small fragments, very rare, of a limestone, which, from comparison, is supposed to have been brought from the counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh, by a current that denuded all the western aspects of the Greywacke ranges of hills, producing very markedly the phenomena of “crag and tail,” which are there to be seen in endless examples.

I send some drawings and a short description of a pretty little Brachiopod from the Lower Greensand of Godalming, of which, unfortunately, I possess at present only a few single valves, viz. 7 dorsal and 4 ventral valves. These are, however, sufficiently perfect to enable me partially to describe the shell, and I take the present opportunity of so doing, with the hope that, at some future time, better specimens may come to light. (See Pl. XII. Figs. 1–6.)

The species is apparently new, local in distribution, and, so far as I am at present aware, confined to the “Bargate stone” of Guildford and Godalming, the position of which is near the base of the ferruginous or upper division (of Fitton) of the Lower Greensand. From the partial outward resemblance of this shell to that of Terebratella Menardi, and from the fact of the hinge line and medial septum in the dorsal valve being of the same form in both, I am inclined to consider this species as a Terebratella: the peculiar form of the dorsal valve has suggested its specific name.

Terebratella trifida, n. sp. Shell (judging from a comparison of several single valves) as wide as long, in old specimens perhaps rather longer than wide; convex in both valves: dorsal valve moderately convex, and divided into three portions; a large, elevated, mesial fold, in the shape of an acute rib, occupying the entire central division, on either side of which, on the lateral divisions, there exist one or two ribs of small elevation, followed occasionally by a third of still smaller size;