102 Chronicles of Science. (Jan. 
containing the record of such curiosities in Natural History cannot 
but tempt a naturalist to speculate on their probable causes. Much 
might be written in an endeavour to answer the question,— What 
are the causes of those trivial characters, having no relation to the 
economy of the organism, which impress on species of certain 
genera, or genera of certain families, a peculiar geographical or 
geological stamp? For instance, Why should so many Tertiary 
and recent corals, peculiar to Australia, have the septa and cost 
alternate imstead of opposite? And why should the Jurassic 
species of Crdaris (with scarcely an exception) have crenulated 
summits to the bosses of the tubercles, while the Carboniferous and 
Cretaceous species have them smooth ? 
A remarkably praiseworthy paper has recently been published 
by Mr. T. Codrington, F.G.S., in the ‘ Magazine of the Wiltshire 
Archeological and Natural History Society,’ on “The Geology of 
the Berks and Hants Extension and Marlborough Railways.” In 
it the author describes all the points of interest observed during 
their construction, in the order in which they are met with in going 
from Hungerford to Devizes on the one railway, and from Saver- 
nake to Marlborough on the other. This part of his paper will be 
extremely useful to the geologists of the neighbourhood, and, being 
well done, will no doubt attract attention elsewhere; but the con- 
cluding portion, containing some general observations and conclu- 
sions respecting the formation of the Vale of Pewsey, will, in these 
days of “atmospheric denudation” proclivities, certainly be some- 
what roughly criticized. Mr. Codrington’s main conclusion is, that 
the Vale of Pewsey was excavated to a great extent by marine 
denudation, at a period between the deposition of the Lower Eocene 
beds and that of the Boulder-clay, the valley being of the same age 
as the great chalk escarpment. 
‘The Muillstone-grit, its Fossils, and the relation it bears to 
other Groups of Rocks,’ by Fort-Major T. Austin, F.G.S., is another 
pamphlet of some importance, which may also be considered a local 
memoir, for its contents refer chiefly to the neighbourhood of 
Bristol. Major Austin’s long-continued search has been rewarded 
by the discovery of numerous fossils in this generally sterile forma- 
tion. Of the forty-seven species obtained the author considers all 
but three to be new, and two species of Crustacea are too obscure 
for description. Of the so-called new species the author gives bad 
figures and inadequate descriptions, and we feel almost positive 
that the majority of them are small variations from old and well- 
known species. While we are glad to be able to give a large 
amount of praise to Major Austin for his perseverance and enthu- 
siasm, we cannot avoid pointing out these and some other serious 
errors in his pamphlet. One of the sections given in the last plate 
bears its improbability on the face of it. The occurrence of a 
