The late Dr. Carpenter had undertaken an elaborate series of investigations of Eozoon, based on all the material collected by myself and others in Canada, with the view of preparing a complete and exhaustive memoir on the subject. In consequence of this arrangement the new facts obtained for several years have remained unpublished. Unhappily the work was left at his lamented decease in a very incomplete state.

When preparing my address to Section C in 1886, I had much need of information as to the amount of rounding which takes place in rock fragments when transported by rapid streams. Useful information and references are given in Dr. A. Geikie's Text Book and in De Lapparent's “Traité de Géologie,” and there are the experimental researches of Daubrée in his “Géologie Experimental”; but from neither these nor other sources (so far as known to me) could I obtain what I wanted. I must, however, admit that I am less familiar with the talus heap of geological literature than I should be, and prefer making observations in the open air, to hunting for records of them in a library. So, as I had some opportunities of doing the former during my journey last summer, I record the results in the hope that they may be useful to others; first heartily thanking my companion, the Rev. E. Hill, for constant co-operation and assistance.

I Have read with great pleasure Mr. R. D. Oldham's interesting article in this Magazine, for October, 1887, on the gneissose rocks of the Himalayas. Mr. Oldham concurs with me in assigning an eruptive origin for the more or less gneissose rocks at Dalhousie, the Chor, and for almost all those in the Satlej Valley; and as I have in my published papers expressly intimated “my belief that some of the crystalline rocks of the north-western Himalayas are metamorphic gneisses” (Records Geol. Surv. India, vol. xviii. p. 110), I see no grounds for dissenting from his observations regarding the latter class of rocks.

In Mr. Sorby's presidential address at the anniversary meeting of the Geological Society in 1879, attention was drawn to the fact that the carbonate of lime in calcareous organisms is in certain cases in the form of calcite, in others of aragonite, and various genera of such organisms were classed according to their mineralogical constitution. It was also shown that aragonite fossils are of greatly inferior stability to those formed of calcite, in many deposits casts only of aragonite fossils being preserved, whilst those of calcite remain unaltered. In the same address Mr. Sorby insisted on the importance of this difference of stability as affecting the trustworthiness of the geological record.

The crystals of felspar are found to be most numerous in those rocks which lie in the closest proximity to the gabbro and serpentine; they have their long axis at various angles, and are mostly small, except at Parn Voose, Cavouga, and Green Saddle. The felspathic and hornblendic lines often circle round the crystals.

Such is a brief statement of the bare facts of our observations in this particular direction. Without discussing any theory as to the true nature and origin of the whole of the schists, we think that the porphyritic structure, so prevalent in the dark bands of the “Granulitic Group,” in many of the micaceous and other rocks, as also in the later intrusions cutting the serpentine, indicates an igneous origin for many rocks hitherto regarded as schists.

Dr. Davidson, assisted by the writer, gave a provisional sketch of the classification of the spiral-bearing Brachiopoda in the volume of the Palæontographical Society for 1883. As Dr. Davidson then, said, our design was “to assist those palæontologists who might feel inclined to continue the subject.” The following notes have been written by me for the same end, and I think that if they are carefully read and compared with the figures in Dr. Davidson's Carboniferous, Devonian, and Silurian Supplements, they will give a tolerably clear idea to the student of a very complex and difficult subject. I have perhaps some claim to write upon this subject from the years of close and continuous investigation which I have devoted, to it, and from the fact that I have discovered a large proportion of what is now known concerning the spirals and their connections.

The teeth known as Cladodus (type C. mirabilis, Ag.) have a flattened, transversely elongated, sub-elliptical or reniform base, the anterior margin being straighter than the posterior and often slightly excavated in the middle. Anteriorly the base is thick, and generally shows a groove separating the truly basal from the coronal portion, while the posterior margin is thin owing to the downward and backward slope of the ripper surface. From this upper surface anteriorly spring a number of cones or denticles, of which the median is the longest; it is flanked by lateral denticles, of which an outer one on each side is longer than those intermediate. The larger denticles, at least, are flattened antero-posteriorly and have lateral cutting margins.