Baron Karl Ludwig von Reichenbaeh (1788-1869) was born at Stuttgart, ennobled in 1839 by the King of Wiirttemberg, and died at Leipzig. But he spent most of his life in Austria, where he had iron works and estates in Moravia and Galicia and a castle near Vienna. Earning a livelihood as a copyist in the state archives, he was able to obtain a university education, and he started his career as a works chemist. He produced many papers on the distillation products of coal, tar, oil, &c, and was the discoverer of creosote and solid paraffin. He gained considerable notoriety with his ideas and books on what he called 'od' or 'odylic force', a combination of animal magnetism, light, heat, force of crystallization, &c., capable of producing hypnotism. The fall in 1833 of a shower of meteorites, which he witnessed near his works at Blansko in Moravia, fired his intense enthusiasm for the subject of meteorites, on which he wrote 29 scientific papers (1835—65) and many newspaper articles.

The rocks of the lower and middle evaporite beds of the Permian, passed through by the D'Arcy Exploration Company's boring in 1938-39 (Lees and Taitt, 1946), have been described in earlier communications (Stewart, 1949, 1951). The present paper deals with the petrography of the upper evaporite bed (3655-3860 feet below surface).

Flint from the chalk of north-western Europe has long been an ingredient of ceramic 'bodies'. It is still widely used by British pottery manufacturers in glazed tries and in certain types of tableware. Continental manufacturers also have made some use of it.

Flint is more readily converted to cristobalite than are the coarsergrained varieties of quartzose silica. The presence of an adequate amount of cristobalite in the 'body' ensures that, at room-temperature, the glaze-film on the ware shall be under a compressive stress. Thus the development of 'crazing', i.e. of minute tension-fissures in the glaze, tends to be avoided.

In 1929 Väiyrynen discovered a chalcopyrite-bearing pyrrhotine deposit at the village of Luikonlahti, 30 km. NW. of the Outokumpu mine. This occurrence is associated with a complex of serpentine, quartzites, phyllites, dolomites, and diopside-tremolite-roeks, together with penetrating granites, aplites, and pegmatites. The rock association thus closely resembles that of the Outokumpu ore-field.

In a previous paper a description of a method was given which had been developed to determine the indicatrix of small crystals, both in orientation and magnitude, making use of the simple one-circle stage goniometer described by Bernal and Carlisle.

As was explained there, when a crystal is viewed in parallel polarized light, between crossed nicols, the two observed extinction directions are the axes of the ellipse determined by the intersection of the indicatrix with a plane through its centre parallel to the plane of the microscope stage.

During an examination of the mineral bayldonite, (Pb,Cu)7(AsO4)4(OH)2.H2O, for the purpose of obtaining standard X-ray powder data to compare with supposed single crystals of this species, it was found that a specimen purchased in 1948 as bayldonite from Ojuela mine, Mapimi, Durango, Mexico (B.M. 1948,267) gave a powder pattern related to those of members of the descloizite group and fairly close to but not identical with conichalcite, CuCaAsO4OH. It chanced that about the same time a specimen of a green botryoidal mineral from Brandy Gill, Caldbeek Fells, Cumberland, sent in by Mr. W. F. Davidson for determination was photographed and showed similar variations from the conichalcite pattern. Qualitative spectrographic comparison of the Mapimi and Brandy Gill materials with several conichalcites suggested that the differences in the powder photographs might be due to the presence of lead in the former.

In mid-1949 the London Natural History Society set up a committee to investigate and record temporary geological sections in the London area. Among the earliest to be dealt with was the excavation in flood-plain gravel for the foundations of the Concert Hall for the Festival of Britain (1951). Samples of 100-200 grams were taken from two sandlentieles for heavy mineral investigation, and material from one of these, passing 60 mesh and washed by laevigation, yielded, on separation by means of a bromoform-benzene mixture of density about 2"73, an assemblage with abundant garnet, tourmaline, zircon, and kyanite, very occasional staurolite, cassiterite, and fluorite, and moderately abundant collophane.