654 NATURAL SCIENCE. jj^v.. 



The only other Stylopid known to he parasitic on a homopteron is 

 Colacina insidiator, whose host is a Bornean lantern-Hy, Epora snbtilis. 

 In the same number of the journal the Rev. A. E. Eaton gives a new 

 description of Elenchus, with figures, from Mr. Saunders' specimen, 

 and from a male taken free by himself. The female is still unknown. 



Dr. a. Irving has printed in full, for private distribution, a 

 paper on the Bagshot Beds of Bagshot Heath, read last June 

 before the Geological Society of London, and published in an abridged 

 form in the " Quarterly Journal " of that Society. The paper is a 

 controversial one, and deals with a number of minor points connected 

 with the stratigraphy of the Bagshot area, with special reference 

 to a paper by Mr. H. W. Monckton. Geological combats may be 

 interesting and profitable, but the records of them are hardly suitable 

 for publication in the journal of a learned Society, at any rate in the 

 form of a professedly scientific paper : it is quite sufficient if the 

 fighting is done during the discussion, of which brief notes are printed. 

 In connection with this subject we may recall attention to some remarks 

 made by Professor Judd in his Address to the Geological Society 

 in 1888. He then lamented " that the tendency towards bringing im- 

 mature and controversial papers before the Society is on the increase " ; 

 and he was quite right in urging that authors should bring forward 

 " the result of carefully matured effort," rather than " preliminary 

 notes " to be followed by a series of papers that would, from want of 

 concentration and completeness, necessarily burden the literature. 



Dr. Charles Barrois {Annales de la Societe Gcologique du Nord, 

 vol. XX., p. 75) has just published a memoir on the Graptolites of France. 

 His conclusions agree with those of Professor Lapworth and others in 

 Britain on the succession of zones marked by different forms of Grap- 

 tolites in both Ordovician and Silurian strata. In France, as in this 

 country, the species are preserved most abundantly in carbonaceous 

 shales or slates ; but they occur also in calcareous and arenaceous 

 rocks, so that they were widely dispersed irrespective of sedimentary' 

 conditions. Their importance, therefore, in correlating formations in 

 distant areas is apparent. Several forms of Graptolites that have 

 been obtained in Britain are at present unknown in France, and those 

 that have been found in the Corbieres, the Pyrenees, Ardennes, and 

 Brittany are, as a rule, poorly preserved and difficult of identification. 

 In Languedoc and Normandy, better specimens have been obtained. 

 Dr. Barrois' memoir is most valuable in summarising the present 

 state of knowledge. 



Most of the geological formations of Europe are known to have 

 their equivalents in the New World, but it is remarkable that, until 

 quite recently, the Americans have been unable to recognise in their 

 country any representative of our familiar Lias The discovery, 



