Having read Mr. Reid's letter on the above subject in the Geological Magazine for June, referring to the Chudleigh district, I beg to offer you a few lines of my own, in hopes of clearing up some confusion that may exist on the subject.

Speculation having been rather freely applied to the identification of these rocks, I beg to offer a few notes upon the subject, the facts regarding which I have described in a paper already published.

We have surveyed the distribution of Mammoths' remains in Siberia, especially of those in which the soft parts have been preserved, and have found them distributed along its whole length from the Kara Sea to the peninsula of the Chukchi. We have seen that these remains are found in large numbers, and that the further north we travel, the more abundant do they become. That while in Central Siberia they are comparatively unfrequent, as we near the Arctic border-land, the river banks and tundras teem more and more with them, until in the Bear Islands and the islands of New Siberia the ground is largely composed of the bones of Mammoths and the associated animals. These very abnormal facts, which are now familiar enough, have naturally attracted a great amount of speculation, and the question has arisen on many sides, How came they here? As we have seen, the unsophisticated natives explain the presence among them of carcases of huge animals with their flesh intact, by the elementary theory that the animals are still alive and live underground, dying only when exposed to the sun light.

Having been favoured by Mr. T. M. Quill, who has of late successfully completed an artesian well at Wokingham, with opportunities of examining the specimens brought up from the well, and with his own notes on the progress and results of the boring, I have drawn up a tabular statement of the strata pierced on that occasion. The well was begun in May, 1879, in the London Clay, on the low ground at the foot of the hill of Bagshot Sand on which Wokingham stands, near the junction of the S.W. and S.E. Eailways. A 6-foot shaft was sunk for 264 feet, penetrating the London Clay; a 24-inch pipe, through 6½ feet of sand and clay of the “Basement Bed,” then reached a water-bearing sand of the same series; and a pipe (16-inch) and bore-hole were continued for 138 feet, down to 408 feet, at a level of 64 feet in the Chalk, where an abundant supply of water was obtained.

1. The granitoid (Dimetian) rocks of Anglesey pass down into an anticlinal of dark gneiss (above) and grey gneiss (below). The gneiss is also seen in the Menai anticlinal.

2. Low down in the granitoid series are bands of felsite, hälleflinta, and felspathic breccia, which can lay no claim to the rank of a distinct group (Arvonian).

3. The schistose series at Ty Croes is brought into contact with the principal quartz-felsite and hälleflinta band by a fault, and there is, therefore, no proof, from this section, that the schists are of Pebidian age.

In 1845 Dr. Dawson recorded the discovery, by himself, of Spirorbis on fossil plants from the Carboniferous sandstones of Tatmagouche, Nova Scotia.

In some notes communicated to the GeologicalMagazine last April (p. 152), attention was called to the fact that remains of the Glutton had been recently obtained from the “Forest Bed.” So much interest is attached to the discovery of an animal, which at the present day is restricted to the cold northern regions, along with Elephant and other remains, which seem to indicate a warm climate, that it has been thought desirable to give some account of the discovery. I am indebted to Mr. R. Fitch, of Norwich, to whom the specimen belongs, for his courtesy in submitting it to me for examination. It is a portion of a lower jaw with teeth, of a Glutton, Gulo luscus, Linn., a genus which, although known to occur in the fossil state, has hitherto only been obtained from Cave deposits.

Some repetition may be avoided in this note by roughly grouping the specimens, which have been forwarded to me by Dr. Callaway, as (A) Felsitic Rocks, or those resembling felstones; (B) Granitoid and Gneissic Rocks; and (C) Dioritic Rocks. The numbers attached correspond with the reference-numbers in Dr. Callaway's paper. I may mention that in examining the slides I was ignorant of their bearing on the views propounded by the author, and, in some cases, of the exact locality of the specimens.