The teeth under consideration in this paper were derived from the Kargalinsk copper mines in the government of Orenburg, Russia. These mines are in the marls and sandstones overlying conformably the Zechstein or Magnesian Limestone, and were referred by Murchison to the upper division of the Permian. Other writers have regarded them as belonging to the Lower Trias, so that the question of their horizon is still sub judice. I have elsewhere explained my reasons for believing them to form part of the Permian formation, and wishing to avail myself of the latest Russian opinions, I have recently asked Dr. Trautschold, the esteemed palæontologist of Moscow, what is the state of opinion now, and he informs me that there are as yet no positive data on which to base a Triassic hypothesis. Dr. Trautschold has visited and examined the locality, an advantage not possessed by many of those who consider the series must be Triassic, because reptilian remains of a high grade are found in them.

Having in the autumn of 1878 arranged to make a geological excursion to the Eifel, with my friend Mr. John Edward Lee, F.S.A., F.G.S., of Torquay, we were so fortunate, when near Gerolstein, to meet Professor Dr. Ferdinand Roemer, of the University of Breslau, Silesia, who has made the Eifel region his special study, and who cordially joined our party, giving us the benefit of his great knowledge of this most interesting geological region.

On the 19th of last September there passed away from among us one of the most original and successful of the geologists of the century—Dr. Gustaf Linnarsson, the eminent palaeontologist of the Geological Survey of Sweden. His death was so sudden and so unexpected that his sorrowing friends have as yet hardly recovered from their grief and astonishment at the blow, and are not fully awakened to the magnitude of their loss.

I must refer to Memoir No. 1—Corallian Gasteropoda—for remarks with respect to the so-called Chemnitzias. The curious group, of which “Terebra vetusta,” Phil., may be regarded as the type, is also very doubtfully placed under Chemnitzia.

It was stated in the general introduction to these Contributions (GEOL. MAG. June, 1880), that the divisions to be adopted would be regarded more as a matter of convenience than from any other point of view. It might, perhaps, seem more philosophical to have treated the whole of the Lower and Middle Oolites as one section of the subject quâ the Gasteropoda. By commencing at the base of the series the true sequence in time would have been followed, and the various “species” or their derivatives traced throughout. Had all the collections examined by me existed under one roof, this might have been practicable, as it would certainly have been desirable.

The two Star-fishes represented in our Plate form part of a group of six specimens found associated together in the same mass of Chalk at Bromley, Kent, by the late well-known collector, Jeremiah Simmons, of whose persevering and successful labours in obtaining fossils from the Chalk formation abundant evidence may be seen in the beautiful series of Echinodermata in the cases of the British Museum of Natural History, some of which formed a part of the Dixon and Bowerbank Collections. He also collected for the Marquis of Northampton, and a fine Collection of Chalk Fossils made by Simmons is now preserved in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge.

A Considerable length of section of the river valley-gravel has recently been laid open in the grounds of St. Edward's School, Summertown. It is only 200 or 300 yards distant from the Suvnmertown brick-pit, where the same gravel is exposed, and which is there close on the edge of the Thames valley; nevertheless, this section presents features which have not been observed there or at any other place, numerous as are the sections of the superficial gravel and sand in the neighbourhood of Oxford.

Recent investigations appear to have shown that terra firma is a phrase indicating a condition of our solid earth which scientifically has no existence. The crust of the earth is in a state of constant movement. When these movements are sudden and violent, we call them earthquakes; transient shiverings, which require the aid of instruments to make them visible, we call earth tremors; movements of longer period and greater amplitude, causing large areas, like islands and continents, to rise and fall like rafts upon the ocean, are called oscillations. To express the study of the whole of these Earth-movements it would here be convenient to have a special term.

The recent retirement of Sir Andrew Ramsay from the post of Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, affords us a fitting opportunity to place on record in the pages of the Geological Magazine a short account of the career of this eminent living geologist.

The recent answer to the recent questioning of the hitherto accepted correlations of the beds of the Lower Fluvio-Marine Tertiaries in the Isle of Wight and South Hants does not seem to be universally accepted as decisive. It is obviously impossible for foreign geologists to institute useful comparisons between British and foreign subdivisions so long as we in England are quite at variance on the stratigraphical and palæontological facts of the beds in question. Yet these conflicting readings are what we have to offer them at present.

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.

The number of fossil species of Fusus is considerable, but they do not date back from a very high antiquity. None are enumerated by Tate and Blake from the Lias of Yorkshire. Certain forms from the Upper Lias of Normandy, referred by Deslongchamps to Fusus, have not been accepted as such, and the first of the genus admitted by D'Orbigny is Fusus nodulosus, Desl., from the Great Oolite of Langrune. Even this almost comes within the genus Brachytrema of Lycett (Ool. Moll. p. 24), instituted to include some small turbinated forms with highly ornamented whorls and a short oblique canal.

Various theories have been advanced to explain the origin of the Loëss of Europe, Asia, and North America, the latest having been that of Mr. Howorth, in the pages of this Magazine.

Although possessing no knowledge of this formation, outside of England, beyond that derived from the descriptions of those personally acquainted with it, I have for some time thought that the Loëss has originated from an agency of which I detect evidences unong those phenomena of the Newer Pliocene period in England which I have endeavoured to trace in detail in a memoir on that subject laid before the Geological Society of London; but as the loëss in general is not discussed by me in that memoir, I venture to offer a few observations on the subject of it for the consideration of the readers of the Geological Magazine.

In Cardiganshire and the neighbouring counties of Central Wales there are abundant traces of the action of the great accumulations of ice and snow which covered all the mountains of Britain in the Glacial period. in the valleys lie thick sheets of Till and morainic formations, the hill sides are rounded and polished by the friction of the moving ice, and erratic blocks are strewn in abundance over hill and valley throughout the district.

“Having often been puzzled to comprehend the manner in which,insome instances, large numbers of marine animals, such as Cuttlefishes, Crabs, Lobsters, and even Fish and Reptiles, have in past ages suddenly perished in their own element and been entombed, probably on or near the very spots where they had been hatched out, and which they had frequented all their lives, it has occurred to me that any suggestion as to causes now in operation which might have produced then, as now, the same result, will not be unwelcome to the geological student. in the ‘Principles of Geology’ (7th edit. 1847) Sir C. Lyell mentions (p. 743), among other causes, the shifting of currents which might result in the carrying away of banks of sand and mud, habitats of vast colonies of cockles and other molluscs; and the effect of a stormintearing up and casting ashore from their more solid bed great heaps of the edible oyster in the estuary of the Firth of Forthin1831, and numbers of living whelks.

Two years ago if a Palæontologist had been asked to mention a region in Britain most barren of fossils, he might well have ected that great area of Central Wales which is marked by a sombre grey in the maps of H.M. Geological Survey. And even now, after my laborious search in that country, it cannot be said to be anything better than very poor in organic remains.

[The following communication, although addressed to the Editor in the form of a letter, is of such importance that we need make no apology for treating it as an Original Article, feeling sure that our readers will be as much interested as ourselves in the observations of so eminent a geologist, who has spent many years in actual study of these vast deposits, as to the origin of which he is consequently able to speak with such profound knowledge and mature judgment. —Edit. Geol. Mag.]

Remains of birds from the “Forest Bed” were known to Mr, Green in 1842 (History of Bacton), and they are mentioned by Mr. A. Bell (Geologists' Assoc. 1871), in his list of “Forest Bed” Vertebrata, as bones of indeterminable species. These appear to be the only published instances in which Avian bones from these deposits are referred to, and hitherto no closer determination has been made. This is not very surprising, for the bird bones which have been found, although in some numbers, are either in a fragmentary condition or else they are not characteristic parts of the skeleton. Portions of vertebræ, scapulæ, coracoids, and limb-bones probably indicate the existence, at that time, of at least half a dozen different forms; but at present only two genera have been identified, and one of these is very doubtful.

It must be admitted that first impressions are to a certain extent instinctive, and need not, therefore, be taken for more than they are worth. To do any really valuable work in such a troubled district as Assynt would require a considerable length of time. Still, after having been nearly a fortnight in the place—a fortnight in which the rainy days and the dry ones were about equally balanced —it is almost impossible to avoid forming some idea as to the respective merits of the interpretations which have been put forth. And this one is all the more apt to do in order to be able to institute comparisons with other districts of the North-West already visited in previous years.

The remains of the genus Spermophilus have been so rarely found in Britain that an account of another example could not but be of interest to geologists; but the specimen described below is especially noteworthy as it has been obtained from a deposit only recently discovered, and from which no vertebrate remains have as yet been recorded. The deposit referred to is the “Arctic Freshwater Bed,” discovered near Mundesley, by Mr. Alfred Nathorst (vide Journ. of Botany, vol. iii. 1873, p. 225), and investigated by my colleague, Mr. Clement Eeid, during the survey of the Norfolk coast (GEOL. MAG. for Dec. 1880).