Geological Society. 451 



pean and porphyritic rocks to which these disturbances are for the 

 most part assignable, but the description of them has been reserved 

 for communications not yet before us. 



Professor Sedgwick lias transmitted to us a notice on the granite 

 of Shap in Westmoreland. From recent excavations it appears that 

 veins of this granite penetrate the adjoining strata, from which he 

 infers that it is of posterior date. 



Mr. De la Beche, one of our Vice-Presidents, acting under the 

 direction of the Board of Ordnance, has produced a geological map 

 of the county of Devon, which, for extent and minuteness of informa- 

 tion and beauty of execution, has a very high claim to regard. Let 

 us rejoice in the complete success which has attended this first at- 

 tempt of that honourable Board to exalt the character of English 

 topography by rendering it at once more scientific and very much 

 more useful to the country at large. 



Organic Remains. — Every succeeding year brings to light new 

 fossil animals which cannot be assigned to existing genera. Dr. 

 Riley, deeply skilled in physiology and comparative anatomy, has 

 given us an account of an animal so extraordinary, that naturalists 

 differ even respecting its class. After careful examination, he con- 

 siders it a cartilaginous fish, partaking of the character both of the 

 Rays and the Squales. Here then is another instance of a link, 

 now wanting to connect existing genera, having formerly existed. 



Towards the close of the last session Mr. Channing Pearce exhi- 

 bited to the Society a matchless collection of Apiocrinites found at 

 Bradford in Wiltshire. To the description of this fossil as given by 

 the late Mr. Miller, Mr. Pearce adds that the column was occa- 

 sionally ten inches long. He has found in the great oolite, three 

 species of Apiocrinites, differing in the form of their body, and the 

 thickness of its component plates. 



Foreign Geology. 



Europe. — The structure of the South of Spain has been illus- 

 trated by Colonel Silvertop and Captain Cook. From the joint la- 

 bours of these gentlemen we learn, that the country between the 

 Sierra Morena and the Mediterranean consists of lofty ranges of 

 granite, slate, serpentine and limestone, succeeded either by red 

 sandstone or by vast beds of secondary, compact, dolomitic limestone. 

 We also learn from them that the valleys and plains which border the 

 shore of the Mediterranean, are composed of tertiary strata; but we 

 are indebted solely to Col. Silvertop for pointing out to us, on the 

 authority of M. Deshayes,that the teitiary deposit of Malaga and the 

 districts adjacent belongs to the Pliocene, while that of the basins 

 of Baza and Albania belongs to the Miocene epoch. 



Mr. Lyell has laid before us an account of the lignite formation 

 ofCerdagne in the Eastern Pyrenees. This lacustrine deposit re- 

 poses in horizontal beds on granite and hornblende and argillaceous 

 schist ;it the height of 8000 and 4000 feet above the level of the sea. 

 The shells procured are too imperfect to determine its age. 

 11 M '.' 



