During some excavations which have lately been carried on by Mr. J. J. Colman, M.P., at Corton Cliff, Suffolk, a number of Mammalian teeth were dug out of the “Forest Bed,” and these specimens, at the suggestion of Mr. James Reeve, of the Norwich Museum, Mr. Colman has very courteously allowed to be sent to me for examination and description.

Professor Hughes in a brief but very valuable paper in the July Namber of this Magazine calls attention to a class of breccias of so much importance to the geologist that I am tempted to make a summary of notes that have been accumulating for some years and present it by way of a supplement. These breccias, produced in situ by mechanical forces, and subsequently modified by chemical, are very liable to mislead the student, andit is on this account (having myself been so misled in former, and often puzzled in recent years), that I call attention again to the subject—of what perhaps sufficient notice is not generally taken in text-books of geology.

The gravel mounds and ridges known as Eskers or Kames are, though conspicuous where they do occur from the variability of their outlines, very irregularly distributed in the districts in which they are found. Having been familiar with eskers in Cumberland, I was asked by Mr. H. B. Woodward to visit him at Fakenham this spring for the purpose of seeing whether certain ridges and mounds in the neighbourhood of Glandford and Blakeney were such as are called eskers in the north. And I found that Mr. Whitaker had also met with ridges of doubtful character a little west of Great Massingham. Having just had, accordingly, the advantage of visiting both the localities mentioned, in the company of Messrs. W. Whitaker, H. B. Woodward, and J. H. Blake, this seemed a good opportunity of introducing the subject of eskers to the Norwich Geological Society. The extreme irregularity of their distribution is well illustrated by the fact that not one of the gentlemen named had hitherto met with any esker-like ridges in East Anglia. As eskers are far more numerous and varied in Cumberland than in Norfolk, I will first give some description of those of Cumberland and afterwards refer to the ridges of Norfolk.

Having published in the Palæontographical Society’s Volume for the current year the first part of my Monograph on the Trilobites of the Carboniferous Limestone, it occurred to me that a brief account of the species described might prove useful to some of the readers of the Geological Magazine.

It frequently happens that in questioning the occurrence of remains in any deposit, we have to point out that they may have been derivative from older beds, or, on the other hand, may have been introduced at some later date into that in which they are actually found. In such cases various hypothetical explanations are offered with a view to proving that sources of error still remain, which must be investigated before the unexpected association of remains can be accepted as a fact. Such difficulties frequently meet us in investigating the contents of caves, beds of gravel and sand, etc., more frequently in connexion with the history of the newer formations, and especially in criticizing the evidence for the association of human relics with the remains of extinct forms of life. It becomes of importance therefore to place on record any well-authenticated case in which objects in the same deposit and in the same state of preservation can be shown to belong to totally different times.

I have been urged so strongly to state what is the result of my researches, with respect to the presence of Elephas primigenius in the Forest-bed series, that I am induced to offer the following remarks for insertion in the Geological Magazine.