We have sifted the evidence furnished by the Loess, by the loams and brick-earths, and by the valley terraces which are such sonspicuous features in the surface geology of Europe, and we have found them furnishing a perfectly consistent and perfectly reasonable story. We have still left for consideration the most eloquent for aur purpose of all the surface deposits, namely, the great sheets of angular gravel which many of us have examined with curious interest for many days, and which mantle so much of the land on either side of the English Channel.

It will no doubt be remembered by some that as far back as the year 1858, in“The Geologist,” Vol. I. pp. 480 and 509, I published a paper upon the Chloritic and Fossiliferous Marls, with some remarks on the Upper Greensand, of the Isle of Wight, my object being to point out the difference between these deposits, and their organic remains, with the view to their separation; stating as a reason that the fossils and deposits of the upper beds which intervene between the Chalk and the Upper Greensand were a distinct formation, and contained distinct fossils from those of the beds below.

But like much that has been written upon the subject, both before and since, the paper was no doubt defective, especially in the nomenclature of the fossils. Still, the main facts remained.

The specimen which forms the subject of this note has been kindly placed in my hands by Professor G. Dewalque for examination, and is of extreme interest and importance to me in my researches upon the Fossil Crustacea. It is not, as was at first supposed, the metastome of Eurypterus or of Pterygotus; on the contrary, it represents an almost entire carapace of a new genus and species of Phyllopod Crustacean allied to Peltocaris

Dr. Divers has drawn attention to two Japanese meteorites, the property of a gentleman, Mr. Naotora Nabeshima, formerly Daimiyo of Ogi or Koshiro, in the province of Hizen, Japan. They are heirlooms in his farnity, and used to be in the care of the priests of one of the family temples in Ogi, called Fukuchi-inGomado. After the revolution the temple was closed. in the family archives there is a record of these stones having been entrusted some years after their fall to a priest named Jishobo, which is dated December 10th, 1744, and his receipt for them is also preserved; they must therefore have fallen about 150 years ago.

In Two papers, read in 1881, before the meeting of the British Association at York, Prof. Prestwich has discussed the structure and distribution of certain deposits which he has called “The Mundesley and Westleton Beds.”inhis opinion they occupy an horizon “between the Chillesford Beds and the Lower Boulder-clay.”

My work on the Geological Survey in Norfolk has, however, led me to conclusions that differ in important particulars from those of Prof. Prestwich, and chiefly in the correlation of beds in several localities. As his papers have at present been published only in brief abstract, it is not possible to criticize them with justice to the author; but as a year has now elapsed since the conclusions were made known, I may be pardoned for submitting my own views for discussion at the present time.

In England the ice seems to have been heaviest in Wales and the N.W., and lightest on the East and S.E., where it appears to have thinned off altogether, and the evidence of depression corresponds with this. If we draw a line from Dover to Anglesea, we find proof of great submergence in Wales, decreasing to zero as we approach the English Channel. and Prof. Hughes of Cambridge, in a recent paper “On the Evidence of the Later Movements of Elevation and Depression in the British Isles,” read before the Victoria Institute, says: “As we trace these movements north to the borders of the mountains, we find evidence of greater sinking and greater elevation.”

Since the British Eocenes, especially of the Hampshire Basin, were mapped by the Survey, a portion of them have been separated by several writers as Oligocene. The utility of the change is not apparent in our country, where the break is seen to be purely artificial; but in other parts of Europe the Oligocenes, which embrace formations previously known as Lower Miocene, are of great importance. This change, absorbing the entire Upper Eocene fromation of the Isle of Wight, would seem alone to necessitate a reconsideration of the classification of the remainder. But the classification of the Eocene formation, invented and often modified when the beds composing it were imperfectly known, is throughout arbitrary and artificial, and scarcely yet on a scientific basis. Most of the present divisions comprise under one name the very distinct deposits formed by river, sea, or estuary, though these have been brought from quite opposite directions, and are perhaps by no means contemporaneous.