The effects of Evaporation on Temperature have often been considered, yet much remains unknown. I am not aware that any one has called attention to the rapidity of its growth as temperature increases, and the consequences that follow.

About twenty years ago, two fossil animals of great interest were found in the lithographic slates of Bavaria. One was the skeleton of Archæopteryx, now in the British Museum, and the other was the Compsognathus preserved in the Royal Museum at Munich. A single feather, to which the name Archæopteryx was first applied by Von Meyer, had previously been discovered at the same locality. More recently, another skeleton has been brought to light in the same beds, and is now in the Museum of Berlin. These three specimens of Archæopteryx are the only remains of this genus known, while of Compsognathus the original skeleton is, up to the present time, the only representative.

This fine specimen, which has been so faithfully rendered in two views by Miss G. M. Woodward, was thund by me, together with portions of other individuals of the genus, in some red finely-sandy or silty beds, interstratified with grits, in the Cutting of the new road on the eastern side of Lincombe Hill at Torquay. The beds are traversed by a coarse cleavage dipping south, which usually ignores the hard grit bands. We may call them for the present the “Lincombe, Warberry, and Smuggler's Cove grits,” and their probable equivalents will be considered shortly.

The fossil, which forms the subject of our Plate, is a most welcome addition to our list of Middle Devonian fossils, and I am much indebted to my friend Mr. Arthur Champernowne, F.G.S., for the opportunity of describing it.

Cranial structure typically palæoniscoid, with wide gape and oblique suspensorium; teeth conical, sharp, incurved, of different sizes, larger alternating with smaller. Fins palmæoniscoid, fulcrated; dorsal nearly opposite the interval between the ventrals and the anal; caudal powerfully heterocercal, deeply cleft, inequilobate. Body-scales thin, rounded, but seldom symmetrically so, deeply imbricating; their external free or ganoid areæ distinctly marked off, and sculptured with closely set ridges which are apparently tubular internally. Scales of the caudal body-prolongation of the usual pakæoniscoid contour.

Irish land, which has so long puzzled our statesmen, proves to be equally perplexing to our geologists. The metamorphic rocks have excited much controversy, and new problems are emerging. Prof. Hull claims to have found Laurentians in Donegal, Gaiway, and intermediate localities, while Mr. Kinahan, in this Magazine, sums up the evidence for the old opinions. As I have recently studied one of the areas referred to by the latter, I submit a few comments on a part of his paper. I am much indebted to him for the very kind and courteous manner in which he abridged my work by indicating the most important sections, and regret that I must ungratefully repay the obligation by differing widely from his conclusions.

The genus Purpuroidea was described by me in 1848 from three species in the Great Oolite of Gloucestershire, and published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, accompanied by woodcuts representing one of the Species. Before that period M. Buvignier had described and figured three species of the same genus from the Coral Rag of France, Mem. Soc. Philomath. Verdun, 1843, accompanied by plates illustrating the Species, which he assigned to the genus Purpura; these figures were for the most part insufficient for the purposes of generic discrimination, and founded upon specimens more or less imperfect; one of them was believed by me to be identical with the species figured in my woodcut, and was accordingly named by me Purpuroidea nodulata, the name of the Species having been adopted from the Murex nodulatus of Young and Bird, which was also believed to be identical with the Gloucestershire species.

In a paper in the Phil. Mag. for March, 1864, “On the Formation of the River and other Valleys of the East of England,” I endeavoured to show by the aid of a rough map that the whole of the hill and vale system of that part of England which lies east and south of a line drawn from the Humber to the Cotteswold Hills originated in a series of concentric arcs spreading from two centres, one of which was near Canterbury, and the other just south of the western end of the Isle of Wight; the features thus produced having been rendered more apparent by the denudation to which the disturbances gave rise, and to which both at the time, and subsequently also, these gave direction.

In a valuable series of papers which have lately appeared in this Magazine, Mr. Howorth has brought together a mass of information illustrating the life history of the Mammoth. But while we must thank him for the labour he has undertaken in collecting these facts, many from little known authorities, I venture to suggest that some of his conclusions ought not to be allowed to pass without a strong protest.