Among the many interesting issues raised by the discovery of Mammoth remains in large numbers along the Arctic borders of Eastern Asia, one has, I think, ceased to be polemical. So far as I know, there is no serious student who now contests the fact that the Mammoth and his companions lived where their remains are found. The rooted trees upon which they fed, and the southern river-shells which were their contemporaries, both of which are found with their remains (both being incapable of migration), prove incontestably what a score of other arguments show, that the fauna of North-Eastern Siberia in the Mammoth age, like its flora, must be explained by some other theory than migration. This I have urged in many ways in my work on the Mammoth.

Some time ago the writer was favoured by Monsieur A. Houzeau de Lehaie with the opportunity of studying his extensive collection of teeth and other remains of fishes from the Bruxellian Eocene, near Brussels, and the “Craie brune phosphatée de Ciply,” near Mons. Monsieur Houzeau has generously presented a fine series of these fossils to the British Museum, and the following notes are based upon the collection.

Among the vertebrate remains discovered by M. Houzeau de Lehaie in the “Craie brune phosphatée” of Ciply, is the crown of a large tritoral tooth, of unusual form and somewhat difficult of determination. A study of the reptilian teeth from the New Jersey Greensand in the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences has, however, suggested to the writer a plausible explanation of the specimen; and a brief notice of its characters may perhaps lead to the discovery of more satisfactory evidence of the animal to which it pertains.

Some specimens of Cherty rock forwarded to England for determination some years since by Mr. H. Y. L. Brown, F.G.S., Government Geologist of South Australia, have lately been submitted to me for examination by my friend Dr. H. Woodward, F.R.S., and their structure, as shown in thin sections, seems to me sufficiently interesting to be recorded. The specimens in question are of a light or yellowish-grey tint, with a waxy lustre, in some portions compact and in others minutely porous, which makes them light to the feel. The rock is hard, scratching glass readily, and there is no reaction with acid.

In 1887 a quadri-radiate Echinoconus (Galerites) subrotundus from the Lower Chalk of Shudy Camps, Cambridgeshire, was presented to the Woodwardian Museum by J. Carter, Esq., F.G.S. The specimen is in a good state of preservation, but it has been subjected to a slight amount of crushing, and this has caused (1) the apex of the test to be pushed backwards to a very small extent, and (2) an abrasion of the antero-lateral border. It has the subconoidal form of the normal examples of this species, but is subquadrate in section, and this is due to the fact that only four ambulacral and four interambulacral areas are present, the fifth area of both kinds being completely wanting.

My attention was directed last Christmas to the cellar of the King's Head, in Moscow Road, Bayswater. Some enlargement of the premises was required, and the base of the cellar was to be lowered. About, a couple of feet beneath the old floor, the workmen came upon a block of stone, which resisted all their efforts to dislodge it: and no wonder! The stone proved to be a huge Greywether, of irregular quadrangular form, measuring 9 ft. 6 in. in length and also in breadth, and as much as 2 ft. 8 in. (possibly more) in thickness. A portion of one side appeared to be a joint-plane; otherwise the mass exhibited the ordinary contours of a concretionary block of sandstone. The rock itself was purely siliceous, and presented the familiar saccharoid aspect of a Wiltshire Greywether. Clean sand was found here and there in hollows on the surface of the stone, tending to prove that it had never been disturbed by human agency. It had evidently found a natural resting-place in the basement-portion of the Thames valley-gravel, close upon its junction with the London Clay ; the lowest bed reached in the cellar being “stiff loam.” These facts I was enabled to observe under the guidance of Mr. B. J. Capell (architect and surveyor).

Since visiting the Volcanic region of Central and Southern Italy in the autumn of last year, I have been much exercised from time to time as to some of the conditions which produce, and sustain volcanic activity. It seems to be an undoubted fact that water coming into contact with highly heated rock is one of the most important requisites to produce, and sustain a volcanic eruption. The difficulty has been to explain how water is introduced.