I have when travelling, so often wished for some little indication of the scientific features of the country, beyond the meagre information of the guide book, that it occurs to me to suggest collaboration amongst mineralogists for mutual information.

With a view to this, could we not agree to take some localities and work out their details, spending our holidays in un-hackneyed districts, at quiet inns and in fresh air, each reporting his results succinctly in the Mineralogical Magazine, with a sketch map where wanted ?

As a little-worked-out place, I for my part nominate the Val d' Anniviers or Einfischthal, leading from the town of Sierre, in the valley of the Rhone, at nearly right angles to it, into the very heart of some of the suhlimest scenery of the Swiss Alps, and, as it will be seen, affording great facilities for meteorological, botanical, geological and mineralogical studies, economical quarters, warmhearted people, and excursions and scrambles of every grade of length and difficulty.

A few years ago, while inspecting some iron ore deposits at Smallacombe, near Bovey Tracey, in Devon, I noticed the occurrence of certain brightly colored green, red and brown clays in considerable quantity. I took several specimens of the green clay at the time, and on my return home laid them aside in a lumber closet, where they became buried with other specimens, from which they have only lately been disinterred. After so long a stay in a tolerably dry situation I thought they might be regarded as in a normally hygrometric condition, and it was in this state that I subjected then to examination and analysis, with the following results.

A defence of Turner’s method seems at first sight to be quite unnecessary, for his test has been used over and over again, for upwards of fifty years, and, as far as I am aware, its usefulness has never been questioned till quite lately. Great was my surprise a few days ago to read a paragraph “On the uselessness of Turner’s flux as applied to the detection of boracic acid.” Professor Chapman speaking of Turner’s method, says:— “This test is much quoted in blowpipe books, and works on chemical analysis generally; but it is altogether superfluous. With borate of soda it fails entirely, or yields very unsatisfactory results ; and although it answers for most other borates, and for borosilicates, it is uselessly applied to them, because these bodies colour the flame equally well per se.” He quotes from Buzengeiger (Annales des Mines, 1829, tome v.p. 36), in support of these statements.

At the last meeting of the British Association, Dr. A. yon Lasaulx, who has recently been appointed Professor of Mineralogy in Breslau in succession to Professor Websky, exhibited two new minerals which he has described in the Neues Jahrbuch. A brief notice of these minerals may fitly find a place in the Mineralogical Magazine, although the original descriptions are too lengthy to be translated in extenso.

There are found scattered up and down our Mineralogical and other literature, a great many names of Minerals which do not appear to have been satisfactorily determined, or of which very little is actually known.

Many of these minerals have been called Doubtful. The following list, I hope, will be inserted in the Magazine, so that the members of the Mineralogical Society and others interested may be able to supply more definite information concerning them.

Obviously, it is not my object to impugn the general accuracy of any of the authorities appearing in this long list; but the accumulation of the most reliable mineralogical data attainable, and the focusiug of it, so to speak, where it may be seen by anybody interested.

At the foot of the terminal and almost inaccessible cliff of the hill—name unknown—which towers immediately to the south west of the harbour of Waii or Hoiwig, in Bordöe, Faröe, the writer obtained the specimen—a single one—of which the following is an analysis:

The island of Bordöe, like the most of Faröe, is built up of strata of bedded trap with mural cliffs, which alternate with terraces of grass clad debris. At this part of the island, the terraced trap consists of a wackenitic “claystone,” which is very friable, light in colour, easily disintegrated, and in places tufaceous in aspect. Its amygdaloidal druses are very few and far between.