It has frequently been asserted that the “born geologist”—as distinguished from the geologist made by education and training—owes his conception chiefly to the formation on which he happens to be born. Nor is it the beauty of the scenery and the attractiveness of firth and fell, mountain and glen, that usually give the impulse in the making of the geologist. It comes in most cases from the fossils he sees strewn around him in quarry or hillside—things that can be collected and fascinate the youthful mind even more than the rocks themselves. But whether the strata or the fossils are the stimulus required, it is beyond dispute that Yorkshire—in which both are conspicuous — takes a leading place in England as the birthplace of so many eminent geologists in the past century, and amongst them the subject of our present sketch worthily deserves to find a place.

Twenty-One years ago Dr. Flett in a valuable paper (Trans. Edin. Geol. Soc, vol. vii, 1897) described an exceedingly beautiful hypersthene andesite from the volcanic series of the Lower Old Red Sandstone at Dumyat in the Western Ochils. In the following brief communication I propose to give a short petrographic account of a strikingly similar rock that has occurred to me in the field in a more easterly portion of the same range of hills and which is of the same geological age.

In 1908 Dr. Rowe published an account of the Chalk of the Isle of Wight with a zonal map in which the zone of Belemnitella mucronata was shown as entirely absent at some points but generally present in substantial thickness. At the two ends of the island actual measurements were made, of 150 feet at Culver Down and 475 feet at the Needles. How much of the latter thickness was measured in the cliffs and how much is made up of somewhat less satisfactory measurements at low tide on weed-covered reefs is not clear, but at any rate there must be well over 300 feet in the cliffs. This figure is sufficient to show how great a ravining of the pre-Tertiary surface of the chalk would be required for the repeated disappearances of the zone as mapped. It seems justifiable to pay some critical attention to the evidence on which such a state of things is alleged.

Some years ago I was allowed to publish in the Geological Magazine some papers on the recent geological history of the Baltic, in which I tried to bring before English readers the very important discoveries of the Northern geologists as affecting the general geology of the north-west of Europe and to extend their deductions. I was obliged to interrupt them for other work. Perhaps you will allow me to continue them some steps further, as we had reached a stage of some interest.

At the present time a large proportion of the world's supply of tungsten ores comes from secondary (detrital) deposits of various kinds, formed by the normal denudation and redeposition of primary ores exposed at the surface to the agents of weathering and transport. It is impossible to form any idea of what fraction of the world's output actually comes from these sources, since the published statistics do not draw any distinctions in this respect', but the amount is undoubtedly large. Although of such great economic value, the secondary deposits do not show any features of special interest, and a lengthy description is unnecessary.