April II, 1878] 



NATURE 



473 



of a Pterygotus (recognised by Dr. H. Woodward), now 

 in the British Museum. The occurrence there of this 

 characteristically Upper Silurian and Lower Old Red 

 Sandstone genus supports the view contended for in this 

 paper as to the true horizon of the Orkney and Caithness 

 flagstones. 



The Shetland Islands contain a portion of the shore- 

 line of Lake Orcadie with its conglomerates and sand- 

 stones and the flagstones and shales of deeper water. 

 Among these strata the Caithness Estheria occurs, with 

 abundant stems and roots of large calamite-like plants with 

 well-marked flutings but without observable joints. Some 

 ichthyolites of the Caithness type are said to have been 

 found in Bressay. The general lithological characters 

 are quite those of the sandy parts of the Orkney and 

 Caithness groups. On the west side of the mainland of 

 Shetland interesting evidence occurs to show the exist- 

 ence of volcanic action contemporaneous with the accu- 

 mulation of the Old Red Sandstone. Beds of amyg- 

 daloidal lavas and bands of tuff occur anaong the sand- 

 stones, the whole being pierced by masses of pink 

 felsite. •, = . 



The south-western and southern margin of this great 

 northern basin of the Old Red Sandstone can still be 

 traced nearly continuously from the confines of Caithness 

 to the borders of Aberdeenshire, its position being marked 

 by a zone of littoral conglomerates. Beyond the edge of 

 that zone, however, there occur some interesting outliers 

 which in some cases may represent long fjord-like in- 

 dentations of the coast line ; in others may mark what 

 were really independent basins lying at the base of the 

 Grampian Mountains. The author points out that prob- 

 ably most of the difficulty which has hitherto been expe- 

 rienced in understanding the sequence of beds along the 

 southern shores of the Moray Firth and their parallelism 

 with those of Caithness and Orkney is not to be attributed 

 to the amount of detritus covering the country, but rather 

 to the fact which has not heretofore been observed that 

 the Upper Old Red Sandstone with Holoptychius and 

 Pterichthys major really overlap unconformably upon 

 the older nodular clays and conglomerates with Coccasteus, 

 Cheirolepis, &c. This relation could be satisfactorily 

 determined in Morayshire, and was now being worked 

 out by Mr. John Home in the course of the Geological 

 Survey. The author traces in great detail from the Spey 

 into Sutherlandshire, the development of the lower sand- 

 stone conglomerates and clays, which have been regarded 

 as equivalents of the Caithness flagstones. He thinks 

 that in no sense can this comparatively thin group of 

 rocks (seldom 1,400 feet in depth) be regarded as a 

 mere southward attenuation of the great Caithness 

 series, as suggested by Murchison, for that neither 

 lithologically nor palaeontologically can that view be 

 sustained. He has been led to the conclusion that the 

 whole of these rocks from the borders of Sutherlandshire 

 to those of Aberdeenshire represent only the higher por- 

 tions of the great Caithness series, and that they were 

 formed during a gradual depression of the ancient high 

 grounds whereby the waters of Lake Orcadie were 

 allowed to creep southward over the descending land. 

 This movement is indicated by the character of the 

 strata, and that it took place about the time of deposit of 

 the later flagstones of Caithness is shown by the occur- 

 rence of the fossils of that division in the nodules, flags, 

 and clays of the Moray Firth region, while those of the 

 Lower division are absent. 



Allusion is likewise made to the discovery of two 

 localities where contemporaneous volcanic action has 

 recently been observed in the Moray Firth area, the 

 whole of the basin of Lake Orcadie being otherwise 

 remarkably free from any trace of such action except on 

 the northern margin in Shetland. The history of the 

 area embraced by Lake Caledonia will form the subject 

 of the next paper. r, ' * 



,...fl: -i'^-d;,,,.'-,; -:'. ; NOTES 



We regret to have to announce the death of Dr. F. Briiggc- 

 mann. Dr. Briiggeman was a native of Bremen and studied at 

 Jena, where he was for several years assistant to Prof. Haeckel. 

 His earliest publications were on entomological subjects, but 

 later he published an account of the Amphibians and Reptiles of 

 Bremen, He was especially interested in ornithology, and 

 amongst other papers on this subject published two on the Birds 

 of South-Eastern and Central Borneo {Abhand, d. naturw. 

 Vereins zu Bremen, Bd. v. u. vi.). On the recommendation of 

 Prof. Haeckel, Dr. Briiggemann was engaged last year by Dr. 

 Giinther to arrange and catalogue the collection of corals in the 

 British Museum. Whilst in the midst of this undertaking he 

 died suddenly at his lodgings on the night of Saturday last of 

 haemorrhage from the lungs. He had already named 1,500 

 species of corals in the collection, and had published two papers 

 on und escribed forms in the Annals and Magazine of Natural 

 History. He had in hand a revised list of all species of recent 

 corals hitherto described, which was in an advanced state and 

 which he had intended to have published. He was of an 

 extremely amiable disposition and his loss is deeply regretted in 

 London by the staff of the British Museum and other naturalists 

 with whom he was acquainted. He was under thirty years of 

 age at the time of his death. 



On Thursday last the members of the General Council sum- 

 moned to deliberate upon the improvements required in the 

 organiration of the Paris Observatory waited upon M. Bardoux, 

 the Minister of Public Instruction. They insisted upon the 

 necessity of continuing the existing connection between astro- 

 nomy and meteorology in accordance w ith the principles estab- 

 lished by M. Leverrier himself, and developed the reasons 

 which had led the majority to pass a resolution in favour of 

 that system. A number of eminent scientific men had interviews 

 with M. Bardoux, and have made a strong impression upon his 

 mind. M. Bardoux has ordered all the letters from a number 

 of departmental meteorological commissions to be summarised, 

 and it has been found that not a single one has urged the discon- 

 nection of the two departments. We are in a position to state 

 that according to every probability, during the present month, 

 the Academy of Sciences and the new Council of the Observatory 

 will be summoned to present each two candidates, between 

 whom the Minister will exert his right of selection according to 

 the provisions of the newly-published decree. 



Captain Feilden, R.A., naturalist to the late British Expe- 

 dition to the Arctic Regions, and Mr. De Ranee, of H.M. 

 Geological Survey, are announced to read a paper on the Geology 

 of the Northern Lands visited, at the next meeting of the Geolo- 

 gical Society of London, at which Mr. Etheridge will present a 

 detailed report of the palaeontology of the same area. We 

 understand that the British Museum will probably be the destina- 

 tion of the very numerous collection of geological specimens 

 made by Capt. Feilden, Dr. Coppinger, and other officers of the 

 expedition. 



M. Belgrand, Director of the Paris Sewers and Waterworks, 

 died suddenly on the 8th inst. in his sixty-eighth year. To him 

 Paris owes its network of sewers and its supply of water from 

 the Dhuys, the Vanne, and the Somme Sonde. He also devised 

 the system of hydrological observations, by which floods are 

 foreseen. As a connoisseur of water he is said to have had no 

 rival. 



It is stated that Prof. H. J. S. Smith, F.R.S., is to be a 

 candidate for the representation of Oxford University in 

 Parliament. 



The coloured spherules discovered by M. Hannover in the 

 cones of the retina of many birds are known to have three 

 colours : a. yellowish green, an orange yellow, and an intense 



