George Poulett Scrope was born in London in 1797, is the second son of J. Poulett Thomson, Esq., of Waverley Abbey, Surrey, the head of the eminent mercantile firm of Thomson, Bonar, and Co., of London and Petersburg, and was educated at Harrow and St. John's College, Cambridge. During his undergraduateship he passed the winter of 1816–17 at Naples, with a part of his family, where he was struck by the phenomena of the neighbouring volcano, then in almost permanent though moderate activity. Returning to Naples in 1819, he renewed his study of Vesuvius and the volcanic territory of the Campagna; and, in the spring of 1820, made the tour of Sicily, visiting Etna and the Lipari isles. Having by these opportunities been led to take much interest in the phenomena of volcanos—at that era much misunderstood and undervalued by the rising schools of geology, both in England and on the Continent, where the doctrines of Werner were still in the ascendant—Mr. Thomson (who, on his marriage in 1821, had assumed the surname of Scrope) passed the summer of that year in a close study of the extinct volcanos of Central France, and collected there, the materials for the volume, published by him some, years later (in 1827), “On the Geology and Extinct Volcanos of Central France”—a work which has been ever since generally accepted as the best authority as to this interesting district.

Upon commencing, in 1847, the special study of the igneous rocks, I, no doubt in common with many others, took for granted the conclusions arrived at experimentally by Professor Bischof, of Bonn, as to the amount of contraction which such rocks would undergo when passing from the state of hot liquidity to that of cold solidity; and I did so, not after any critical examination of the details of Bischof's inquiry itself (the most important of which are contained in a memoir published in Leonhard und Bronn's Jahrbuchfor 1841), but merely in deference to authority, since these conclusions had apparently received unquestioned acceptation from geologists in general.

As the attention of geologists has lately been re-directed to the above subjects by Mr. S. V. Wood and Prof. Harkness, I venture to hope that the following notes and observations, made during visits to Wasdale Crag and the neighbourhood, on the 7th and 15th of last June, will not prove uninteresting to the readers of the Geological Magazine.

John Phillips was born on the Christmas Day of 1800 (N. S.), at Marden, in Wiltshire. At this period the science of Geology, to which he has devoted himself so ardently, was itself struggling into active life. Men had talked of “Theories of the Earth,” and with much fancy had built it up of concentric rings, but there were scarcely any actual observers of those strata of which they discoursed so poetically.

Principal Dawson, of Montreal,. Canada, has placed in my hands for description a remarkably interesting specimen, indicating a species of the genus Cephalaspis in transatlantic Silurio-Devonian beds. He writes, “The specimen was found by one of my assistants, Mr. G. F. Kennedy, B.A., when collecting with me, in a bed charged with remains of Psilophyton, on the north side of Gaspé Bay. The geological horizon is below the middle of the Gaspé Sandstones, but several hundreds of feet above their actual base, so that the specimen may be regarded as either Lower Devonian or Lower Middle Devonian.

In the year 1861 I communicated to the Geological Section of the British Association, which that year met at Manchester, a description of certain fossils discovered by J. H. Cockburn Hood, Esq., in the Canterbury Settlement of the Middle Island of New Zealand; which fossils, kindly submitted to me for description by that gentleman, were afterwards presented by him to the British Museum.

The earliest discovery of Elephant-remains in the British Isles appears to have been made in Ireland, and is recorded in the xxixth volume of the Philosophical Transactions.

Sir,—I beg to send you a notice, seemingly made with much care, respecting the origin and occurrences of earthquakes in England, which I find among some MSS. of an ancestor of mine, who, towards the end of last century, was an active Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. It is curious as a record of the crude notions on volcanic phenomena prevalent to so near our times, and may be of some interest as a list—albeit imperfeot—of the numerous earthquakes noted in a country where earthquake-movements are exceptional occurrences, and as a record of some peculiar phenomena which, notwithstanding the quaint and pretentious narration, have considerable geological interest. According to this record, the earthquakes were distributed as under by centuries and seasons.

The Lake District differs from other parts of England in the comparative absence of table-lands or broad upland plateaux. The original mountain-masses have in most parts been eaten into by denudation to such a depth as to leave only a series of narrow ridges or edges which act as buttresses to small peaks. When the pedestrian has climbed up from the inner end of one profound excavation, he finds himself on the brink of another. The larger valleys are deepest at their inner ends, and shallow out and narrow off towards their entrances. Their floors fall so slightly outwards that were the outlet stream-channels to be filled up, the valleys would be converted into troughs. In most instances their mouths are confronted by higher ground, and this is sometimes so strikingly the case that in approaching a valley from the surrounding belt of Carboniferous strata, you find yourself going down instead of up among the mountains. The highest ground is not in the centre, but irregularly surrounds a comparatively depressed area about ten miles in average diameter. Such a configuration of country could not have been the best adapted for accommodating a quantity of snow at a high level sufficient to send very large “tongues of ice” along the radiating valleys.

In every branch of Natural Science there are earnest zealous workers, whose life-long devotion, to; its cause entitles them to be warmly remembered and even beloved, especially when their labours have been protracted over more than half a century; so long indeed, that to many of the scientific youth of the present day they are only known by name.

Very few deposits containing organic remains have yielded more beautiful Fossil Crustacea than our London clay formation. In evidence of this, one. has only to turn to the beautiful series of plates which illustrate Professor Bell's Monograph, published by the Palæontographical Society (vol. x. 1857), illustrative of 15 genera and 19 species chiefly from the London area and the Isle of Sheppy.

The Twenty-third volume of the Palæontographical Society's published Monographs has just reached us. It represents the annual volume for 1869; so that, thanks to the energetic exertions of the Honorary Secretary, the Rev. T. Wiltshire, M.A., F.G.S., we have now ten months during which the volume for 1870 may appear, thus bringing the date of issue once more even with the current year's subscription.

During the investigations I made on the “Post-Pliocene Gravels of the Severn, Avon, and Evenlode, and their extension over the Cotteswold Hills,” the result of which I embodied in a paper read before the members of the Cotteswold Club in the early part of 1869, and is now published in their “Proceedings,” many of the boulders found by me, on examination by R. Etheridge, Esq., of Jermyn Street, were determined to be syenite and granite from Charnwood.

In the GeologicalMagazine for September, 1868, I described a section of Drift deposits which, had been exposed in the cutting of the ‘Kilmarnock and Crofhead Extension Railway.’ If the reader refers to that paper he will fine it stated that the Lower Boulder-clay of the locality in question contains certain intercalated beds of clay, sand, and gravel which, have yielded Bos primigenius. Quite recently the remains of the horse and the great Irish deer have been met with in the same deposits. In the present paper I do not mean to say more about the character of the stony clay which overlies the beds with mammalian remains. There can be no doubt whatever that it is truly Boulder-clay. But as I understand that several members of the Glasgow Geological Society have since visited the section, and, while agreeing with me as to the glacial origin of the overlying Till, have yet expressed an opinion that this bed is not in its natural position, but has slipped down upon the stratified deposits from the adjacent hill-slope, it may be well to point out how all the facts are against such a supposition.

The fossil wood which covers the desert to the east of Cairo has long filled the passing traveller on this great Eastern high road with surprise.

No very perfect example of this species appears to have been collected; the one figured in my plate was kindly given to me by Sig. Meneghini. The shell is ovate and smooth, about ten lines in length by nine in breadth; the valves are moderately convex, and there exists a deepish sinus in the ventral valve to which corresponds an elevation or fold in the opposite one. Ter. Voglianei occurs in a yellowish marl in the Lower Miocene at Dego, and along with it is found a small Terebratulina, which may probably be a variety of T. caput-serpentis.

The name Dicranograptus was proposed by Hall, in his Memoir on the “Graptolites of the Quebec Group” (p. 112), for certain forms of Graptolites, some of which were then included in the genus Didymograpsus, and others in Diplograpsus. He, however, only considered these forms as constituting a sub-generic group of his genus Climacograptus, believing them to have a similar structure.

The review of my “Report on the Agriculture of Belgium,” which appeared in the last number of the GeologicalMagazine, illustrated by a reprint of the map which originally accompanied it in the “Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society” (2nd series, vol. vi., part 1), has induced me to offer some further remarks on the surface-geology of that kingdom while the subject is still fresh in the recollection of the readers of this Magazine.

It is a well-known fact that the shell-bearing gravels of the Western counties repose in many localities immediately upon a bed of blue or grey clay. This bed has been described as it appears in Lancashire and Cheshire, by Mr. Binney; and more recently by Professor Hull; in North Wales by Mr. E. D. Darbishire; near Rugby by Mr. Wilson; and in numerous localities by Messrs. Taylor, H. F. Hall, D. Mackintosh, and other contributors to the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE, in various papers, all testifying to the great extent and importance of this bed.

Within the last few months considerable, interest has been revived on the question of the origin of certain small excavations or borings which have been found in limestone rocks in different localities in Sicily, France, England, and Wales. The first public notice of them in England was by Dr. Buckland, whose attention, when at a meeting of Geologists at Boulogne in 1839, was called to some borings which had been found in the under-surface of a ledge of Carboniferous Limestone rock in the Boulonnais. After this Dr. Buckland examined some similar borings which the Rev. N. Stapleton had observed near Tenby, and described both caseg, in a communication to the Geological Society in 1841. About the same time that Dr. Buckland was engaged with these excavations, M. Constant Prévost found some similar perforations on Monte Pelegrino, near Palermo. Mr. C. P. Jopling discovered them in Furness in 1843. M. Bouchard Chantereaux, who met with them in the Bois des Roches, in the Bas Boulonnais, has published a memoir on the subject, the result of many years observation, to which I shall have occasion again to refer. Mr. Pengelly met with them in many localities in the Torbay district. They were also found on Birkrigg Common by Miss E Hodgson, of Ulverston, and were described by her in vol. vii of The Geologist, p. 42.