RECENT reconnaissance surveys in south-west Persia have brought to our notice many examples of enigmatical structures preserved in massive limestones beautifully exposed in the naked mountains of that region. Application of many hypotheses involving faulting and thrusting proved impossible to satisfy the facts we had observed. We were at length forced to explain some of the structures we encountered as being produced by collapse of great sheets of limestone after removal of their original supporting cover accompanied by unsticking from their basement. Gravity alone provided the motive force. Simple folds, erosion, a shaly substratum, and gravity have induced massive beds of limestone to behave in an entirely unexpected manner. Examples are described below with sketches.

THE sudden movement that causes a great earthquake must alter the conditions of strain in the surrounding crust. The strain may be increased in some regions and decreased in others and the changes may be great enough to precipitate or prevent the occurrence of what Mr. Oldham has called “sympathetic earthquakes”. It thus becomes of some interest to ascertain how far the influence of a great earthquake may extend from its source, and the present brief note is an attempt to examine this point in the case of one well-known and well-studied earthquake, that of Mino-Owari in Japan on 28th October, 1891.

THE theories of earth-formation and earth-structure of which the seventeenth century was so prolific, are illustrated in the works of Woodward and Burnett, of Ray and Steno, and others who are usually cited when the history of geology is being discussed, but occasionally one meets with a cosmogony that seems to have remained unnoticed by subsequent writers. In such cases the neglect is, no doubt, to be attributed to the fact that some of the views put forward were too preposterous to command serious consideration even in days when speculation and credulity were more rife than observation and common sense: and if a book was not discussed by contemporary writers it would, in all probability soon join the limbo of things forgotten. This seems to have been the fate of a little pamphlet entitled The Anatomy of the Earth, written by Thomas Robinson, Rector of Ousby, in Cumberland, and “printed for J. Newton, at the Three Pigeons in Fleet Street” in 1694.

THE Pre-Cambrian Association (Association Internationale pour l’Étude du Précambrien et des Vieilles Chaînes de Montagnes) was founded through the efforts of the late Professor J. J. Sederholm. It held its first excursion in Finland, 1931. Officers were elected, including Professor Sederholm as President and Drs. C. E. Wegmann and E. H. Kranck as Secretaries, but no definite policy was adopted. Since then about 130 geologists from many different parts of the world have expressed their interest in the enterprise. At the International Geological Congress in Washington, 1933, two meetings of the Association were held, and Professor E. B. Bailey was asked to organize an excursion to Scotland. This invitation he accepted for 1934, with Dr. W. J. McCallien as local secretary. In anticipation of the Scottish excursion Professor Sederholm and Dr. Kranck, in the absence of Dr. Wegmann, drafted provisional by-laws, and these were circulated.