Matthew's provisional classification of the freshwater Tertiary of Western America in 1899 was succeeded ten years later by a detailed correlation of the American Tertiary Mammal horizons with those of Europe, published by Osborn and himself in 1909. At that time these authors placed the Pikermi horizon of Europe (Pontian) in the Upper Miocene and the Val d'Arno horizon (Villafranchian) in the Upper Pliocene. They in common with many later writers subsequently adopted a Lower Pliocene and Pleistocene age respectively for the two horizons named. Allowing for this change of view, Osborn's and Matthew's correlation has been substantially followed, with a few modifications due to individual opinion, by all later authorities. The reasons for it were somewhat elaborated by Osborn in his Age of Mammals (1910). It is evident that the Equidae formed the basis for it. The appearance of the genera Anchitherium (as species of Kalobatippus and Hypohippus were then named), Hipparion and Equus in North America were assumed to be approximately contemporaneous with their appearance in Europe. That North America was at any rate the main, if not the exclusive radiative centre for the distribution of the Equidae has been universally acknowledged. Hence Osborn's and Matthew's choice of this group as a standard of age seemed to be fully justified. In accordance with it the first Hipparion beds of North America were regarded as Pontian.

Scarcely any information has been published regarding the palaeontological sequence in the Coal Measures of South Staffordshire. Some marine bands have been recorded (summarized in Whitehead, 1927, p. 31) and there are isolated records of non-marine lamellibranchs, including a number which were figured by Wheelton Hind (1894–6). Practically nothing is known, however, concerning the zonal succession of either the shells or plants in that area. Recently, through the kindness of Dr. C. J. Stubblefield, the writer has had an opportunity to study a small collection of shells obtained in South Staffordshire by the late H. W. Hughes and now in the Museum of the Geological Survey. The specimens have been collected from known horizons and have proved to be sufficient to enable the writer to fix zonal boundaries and thus to make some suggestions regarding the correlation of the marine horizons.

Fuller's Earth was first recorded at the surface in the core of the Weymouth anticline by Damon (1860, p. 12). It was mapped by the Geological Survey in a semi-elliptical area south of Langton Herring, having a sea coast of about 1¼ miles on the West Fleet (1 inch map, sheet 341). The chief feature of interest is a lumachelle or oyster bed composed of a mass up to some 12 feet thick of the small oyster, Ostrea hebridica Forbes (= 0. sowerbyi Morris and Lycett), the var. elongata Dutertre predominating (see Damon, 1860 and 1884, p. 12, fig. 3). The oyster was recorded by Damon and by Strahan (1898, p. 5, and sheet 341) as O. acuminata J. Sowerby, but that species belongs to a lower horizon, below the Fuller's Earth Rock. The Langton Herring oyster bed, which is seen also at Watton Cliff near Bridport, lies in the Upper Fuller's Earth, above the Fuller's Earth Rock, which does not come to the surface in the Weymouth anticline. The lowest beds exposed in the anticline, for a few feet below the oyster bed, are tough clays with mudstone nodules and abundant Rhynchonella smithi (Davidson) (see Arkell, 1933, p. 252). With the Rhynchonellids there weather out also abundant fragments of a typical Fuller's Earth belemnite, which I follow some French authors in calling Belemnopsis bessina (d'Orb.).

My paper on The succession and metamorphism of the Mona Complex 1 contains (p. 339) an error of some importance, which I have long desired to correct.

Among the numerous volcanic necks of County Antrim, two—Tieveragh and Tievebulliagh in the neighbourhood of Cushendall—are particularly interesting, the one because it has metamorphosed the country rock into buchite, and the other because of the existence on its scree of a rock of problematic origin. In connection with the buchite of Tieveragh a general note on the name buchite, its origin and its application, has been included at the end of this paper. The paper itself makes no claims to do more than open up the study of these rocks.

The existence of the Crossopterygian fish Eusthenopteron in the Old Red Sandstone of the Moray Firth area has been recorded recently by the writer (Westoll, 1937). Since that time new material has been found in the collections of the Royal Scottish Museum; the specimens comprise a “parietal” shield and other remains from Boghole, and an imperfect “fronto-ethmoid” shield, of which the provenance is unknown. Dr. A. G. Stephen, of the Royal Scottish Museum, has been most kind in allowing the writer to study this and other comparative material.

During the course of a petrological investigation by one of us (J. C. G.) of the glacial deposits in South-West Wales, samples from a sandy boulder clay at Ludchurch in South-East Pembrokeshire were found to contain abundant grains of a platy colourless mineral with a specific gravity greater than 2·9, a perfect pinacoidal cleavage and high double refraction. This was ultimately diagnosed as diaspore, with which were associated various iron ores, zircon, rutile, chlorite, various tourmalines (brown, green, and pink being the commonest), pyroxenes, amphiboles, staurolite, kyanite, brookite, anatase, topaz, garnet, apatite, muscovite, and andalusite, an assemblage typical of the Irish Sea Drift of this district. A search through the literature for a description of detrital diaspore showed that there did not appear to have been published any detailed description with figures of the detrital forms.