During the last six years the sea has continued to encroach on a part of the Norfolk coast, near Trimingham, which has been the subject of much controversy. Our last visit (prior to this year) was in April, 1906, when the most noted of the chalk masses had been reduced to an arch with one pier of chalk and the other of boulderclay. That was described (with a diagram), and another account, with a photographic illustration, was given in the same volume by the late Mr. W. H. Hudleston, who apparently had not seen our paper.

Zoarium always encrusting, with a very strong tendency to linear and in particular transversely linear arrangement, the great regularity of occurrence and the smallness of the avicularia being unsuited to the quincuncial arrangement usual among the Escharidæ.

Among a series of fossils collected in Southern Nigeria by Mr. A. E. Kitson, and submitted by him to the authorities at the British Museum, are some small Echinoids. Dr. Bather has kindly allowed me to examine them, and, as they appear to belong to a new species, I have drawn up the following description. For reasons stated below I ascribe the forms to the genus Fibularia, Lamk., and consider all the specimens to belong to the same species. Ten individuals have been used for the purposes of the description, but, to prevent possible confusion, I select that numbered A as the type-specimen.

In the arid region of the goldfields of Western Australia a knowledge of the conditions under which a search for water is most likely to be rewarded is of prime importance to the prospector who may find himself away from the beaten tracks. There is, in the summer, little hope of finding fresh water in the long narrow bands of goldbearing greenstone-schist that run from N.N.W. to S.S.E. through Western Australia, for both the surface and the deep-seated waters of this rock-formation are then salter than those of the sea. When unprovided with ‘condensers’ for the distillation of these waters, the prospector must therefore turn towards the neighbouring granitic areas, and search either for ‘soaks’ or for the remarkable ‘gnamma’ holes of the bare rocky ridges. The first and most reliable of these sources of fresh water—the ‘soaks’ —presents nothing abnormal and requires little description. They are found in the sandy hollows at the foot of granite slopes. A well is sunk in the sand, and the water is baled as it slowly percolates into the bottom of the hole. The supply may vary from a mere trickle to several hundred gallons in twenty-four hours, according to the catchment, to the season, and to the permeability of the sand that has protected the water from evaporation since it was collected in the rock-hollow.

When writing a general account of the Upper Chalk of England for vol. iii of the Cretaceous Rocks of Britain (Mem. Geol. Survey, 1904), I stated the belief of Mr. W. Hill and myself that the British Tipper Chalk comprised more than one division of the value of a stage. We grouped the zones then recognized into two divisions, pointing out that the lower zones were essentially the Chalk with Micrasters and the upper zones the Chalk with Belemnites; but we did not systematically adopt these divisions as stages with definite names.

In the December number of the Geological Magazine, 1911, pp. 539–49, appeared an article by Professor James Park, F.G.S., on the Lower Tertiaries and Upper Cretaceous of New Zealand. As the author indicates, this article is largely a criticism of a paper on the the Younger Rock Series of New Zealand, written by Mr. R. Speight, Lecturer on Geology, Canterbury College, Mr. C. A. Cotton, Lecturer on Geology, Victoria College, and myself. You will doubtless understand from this statement that with the exception of Professor Thomas, of Auckland, with whom we had no opportunity of collaborating, all of those who are at present engaged in teaching geology in the University of New Zealand are co-anthors.

Among the fossil Cirripedia the species ‘Brachylepas cretacea’ is of extreme interest, since it affords an important connecting link between the pedunculate and sessile forms. Records of its geographical distribution, moreover, show it to have an exceedingly wide range, but up to the present its vertical range appears to be restricted to the zone of Belemnitella mucronata in the Upper Senonian. We owe our knowledge of Brachylepas to Dr. H. Woodward, F.R.S., who in 1868 founded the species B. cretacea on a single valve under the genus Pyrgoma, and in 1901 on a further and more complete specimen established the genus Brachylepas and the family Brachylepadidæ. Attention is now drawn to this species mainly on account of the fortunate find of the remaining valves of the capitulum.