In those parts of Britain upon which all geologists are agreed with respect to the natural order of their ascending series of rock-formations, the stratigraphy is of a comparatively simple character. The beds are either gently inclined, or but slightly convoluted. The rules by which the original sequence of the strata is worked out have been settled by common consent. The nature and effects of those physical accidents which have affected the rocks subsequent to their deposition have long since been almost exhaustively worked out. The rules and conclusions thus developed are now-a-days part and parcel of the working material of every field-geologist worthy of the name.

In my brief paper published in this Magazine for 1880 (Decade II. Vol. VII. p. 404), I mentioned that pebbles of felstone were not uncommon in the Bunter conglomerate on the northern part of Cannock Chase. Since that time, as opportunity has occurred, I have been making a more special study of these pebbles, and think it may be worth while publishing a description of some of the commoner varieties, as a contribution to the lithology of this interesting deposit and a help to the determination of the question of the origin of its material. I believe that I have observed most of the varieties, which commonly occur in the district, but do not pretend (for circumstances have not allowed of this) to have made anything like a complete collection. Many of my specimens have been derived from the broken materials spread upon some roads newly made over the portion of the Chase in the vicinity of Rugeley, but several of them were obtained in a large pit in the Bunter itself, by the side of the railway on the road to Hednesford, and I was able by a careful search in it to identify most of the varieties that I had collected elsewhere. I cannot say that erratics are absolutely unknown in this district, but they are extremely rare, and there is practically no danger of making a mistake as to the source of the pebbles. These pebbles of felstone (to use an inclusive term) appear to be by no means rare. I think one could hardly search a couple of square yards of a newly “metalled” road without picking up a fragment. Now and then specimens are found with a dark ground-mass, and occasionally one which seems to be an indurated felspathic breccia; but in the majority there is a certain common character, though there are many varietal differences. These have a compact ground-mass, varying from a pale brick-red (the commonest) to some tint of pinkish-grey.

It is not every controversialist who has the good fortune to persuade two such distinguished warriors as Baron Richthofen and Dr. Nehring to buckle on their armour and do battle with him; and if there were room for vanity in the shifting panorama of Science, I might at least claim to have stated my case with sufficient point and clearness to make it necessary for more than one elaborate reply. There is no room for vanity however. It matters not who wins, so far as I am concerned, if we only get our difficult problem more sifted and get closer to the truth. If there be no room for vanity, there is less for irony; and I am not surprised that Dr. Nehring should feel hurt if he thinks I have openly or covertly had the indecency to sneer at himself or his work. In referring to Cuvier, it was not to minimize what Dr. Nehring has done, but to do justice to an old philosopher, whose memory I reverence, and whose claims had been overlooked by Baron Richthofen. It was he, I must emphatically repeat, if it needs repetition before such an audience as that reached by the Geological Magazine, who first proved the fauna of the European Loess and its correlated deposits in its broad features to be identical with that found under the Siberian tundras. Cuvier was followed by a great crowd of diligent and close students of this subject, especially in France and America, without naming England.

The country between Market Weighton and the Humber is characterized geologically by the reappearance of the Oolites along an outcrop of ten or a dozen miles, after having disappeared under the Cretaceous beds further north at Acklam Brow, near Malton.

Like many other geologists at the present time, I have been engaged in reading Mr. Clement Reid's Memoir on the Geology of the Country around Cromer—reading it, I may say, with mingled feelings of pleasure and pain;—pleasure, at the amount of interesting and valuable matter which he has assiduously unearthed; and dissatisfaction at his attempts to destroy one of the cherished convictions of childhood—faith in the Cromer Forest Bed! Mr. Reid evidently does not believe in the Cromer Forest Bed; but then what would a Manual of Geology be without it? This either he or his superior officers have felt, and the name “Forest Bed” has therefore been retained for a bed which, according to his own confession, “least deserves the name.” This course, though illogical, is no doubt a concession to popular geological prejudice.

It must be sufficiently obvious to the readers of the Geological Magazine that any modification of the original meaning of a descriptive term that may serve the purpose of enabling us to convey a specific idea with less chance of ambiguity is a distinct gain to both author and reader. This is especially the case when other specific terms are forthcoming to fill the vacancies in descriptive terminology caused by the restriction in meaning of the term in question, and when it is possible at the same time to supply a suitable generic term sufficiently comprehensive in its meaning to embrace the common characteristics of the whole.