The Indian peninsula, though considered to be a very stable part the earth's crust and hence called the 'Indian Shield', shows in different parts evidence of formerly having sustained epicontinental basins, in which sedimentation occurred. These sediments are now found in detached prisms as crystalline gneisses and schists in different parts of India, e.g. in the Madras Presidency, Bihar and Orissa, Central Provinces, Central India, and Rajputana. They have been found overlying the ancient gneigses (Archaean), and belong to a division known in Indian geology as the Dharwar System.

It has long been possible to identify readily many minerals by means of density and refractive index determinations, and the chemical composition also can often be approximately deduced. Tilley has shown that it is practicable to determine any natural glass by this method and be succeeded in separating the natural glasses into groups characterized by certain limits of specific refractivity. As far as the author is aware, no such systematic method has been described for distinguishing the artificial glasses one from the other, and it is these glasses that we are concerned with in attempting to determine the approximate composition of an imitation gem-stone without the aid of chemical analysis.

The discovery of the meteoric stone near Lake Brown, County Avon, South-West Division, Western Australia, was recorded by Dr. Edward S. Simpson in the Annual Progress Report of the Geological Survey of Western Australia for 1921 (1922, p. 53). The following details concerning the meteorite are taken from that report and from a letter of September 25, 1925, sent by Dr. Simpson with the specimen, weighing 174 grams, which was presented to the British Museum collection by Mr. A. Gibb Maitland, at that time Government Geologist of Western Australia.

Some thirty-five years or so ago small quantities of free gold were found in calcite in or near a crush-breccia filling an east and west fault, in the patch of Middle Devonian limestone which forms that portion of the coast known as Daddy Hole Plain directly south-east of Torquay. The name of the actual discoverer I have been unable to ascertain, neither do any specimens appear to have been preserved ; but the late Mr. T. Harrison, the then proprietor of the Queen's Hotel, Torquay, and several other persons subscribed about s and a small amount of prospecting work was carried out, apparently with little result. The only reference to this discovery which I know of is a brief one in 'The geology of the country around Torquay' (Mere. Geol. Survey, 1903, p. 48). To Mr. B. W. Stedham of Torquay I am indebted for the additional particulars given and also for pointing out to me the exact spot, which is on the side of a fissure formed by a large pinnacle of rock standing away from the cliff below the old quarry.