In the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History’ for October, 1853 (2 ser. vol. xii. p. 272), there appeared a short memoir on the Lias at Fretherne (Gloucestershire) by the Rev. P. B. Brodie, and to it is appended a Note by Mr. T. Rupert Jones relative to certain Foraminifera which had been obtained from that formation. One of these Foraminifera, an organism of some interest and importance in a palæontological point of view, was partillay described by Proffessor Jones in the Note alluded to, with the provisional name Nummulites liassicus. The general from of the sheel is similar to that of the Nummutlite, though its average size is somewhat less than even the smaller fossil varieties of that genus; and the way in which the specimens are crowded together in some portions of the strata, as though the rock was almost composed of them, may have suggested by its appearance an analogy to the Nummulites in the Nummulitic limestone.

We are indebted to Mr. David Page for having first pointed out two very well marked genera of Palæozoic Crustacea of the family Eurypteridœ, namely, Slimonia and Stylonurus. I gave a description of Silmonia in the ‘Intellectual Observer’ for November, 1863; and I now propose to point out the characters of Stylonurus.

The Laurentian Group is as complex in its composition as the younger fossiliferous metamorphic rocks; silica, alumina, lime, and carbon compose its beds, together with phosphorus, fluor, barytes, &c.; and it develops the same accidental minerals—staurotide, garnet, pyroxenx, metallic compounds, &c. Why then should there not be in it the buried forms of life? It is found that, as we descend in the great sedimentary column, the organic remains gradually lose substance and form, until they wholly disappear, so that in the group with which we are now concerned (the very earliest we know of) not only has the original substance of the animal and its habitation vanished, but, for the most part, the very form also: and we have the residuary elements of the organisms—lime, phosphorous, &c., in masses sometimes extraordinarily large, corresponding with the extent and thickness of this great group, at least 30,000 feet in Canada (Logan), and 30,000 feet in Norway (Durocher).