Notes and Comments. 3 



It deals with the minor igneous intrusions occurring in the 

 ■triangular area between Shap, Windermere, and Sedbergh. 

 Prom their field relations and petrographic characters the 

 intrusions are found to belong to one or the other of two 

 well-marked groups, a division which is regarded as connoting 

 also an age-classification. The rocks of the earlier set, 

 characterized by the presence of large orthoclase-felspars of 

 the granitic type, are intimately associated with the granite, 

 to the immediate neighbourhood of which they are practically 

 confined. The rocks range from quartz-felsites to lampro- 

 phyres. Of considerable interest in this group is a series 

 of hybrid intrusions, consisting essentially of rocks of a more 

 or less basic magma enclosing xenocrysts of a more acid (but 

 allied) magma obtained by settlement under intratelluric 

 conditions. The constitution of any given member of the 

 series is determined by two factors : the abundance of 

 xenocrysts and the composition of the matrix, an increasing 

 basicity in the latter (due to original magmatic differentiation) 

 and a decrease in the former marking the successive stages. 

 The more acid have affinities with the porphyrites, the more 

 basic with the lamprophyres, the seiies ranging from modified 

 biotite porphyrites to modified pilitic lamprophyres. The 

 later intrusions are typically free from the large orthoclase- 

 felspars, though quartz-grains may occur even in the basic 

 members. Associated centrally with the earlier set they are 

 distributed over a much wider area, overlapping the former 

 in every direction. They are the result of a further differen- 

 tiation, and are assigned to a later period when igneous activity 

 was renewed on a more or less regional scale. The rocks 

 include acid felsites and spessartites. The rocks of the earlier 

 set agree in general direction with the north-north-west fractures 

 transverse to the strike of the country.rock, while the later 

 intrusions trend generally east of north. 



SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE. 



The honour of associate-membership of the French Academy 

 of Sciences, which has just been conferred upon Sir Archibald 

 Geikie, is not the first distinction the famous geologist has won 

 from France. Already he was an officer of the Legion of 

 Honour and a correspondent of the Institute of France. Sir 

 Archibald is eighty-two. 



BLACK PUP^ OF ABRAXAS GROSSULARIATA. 



In a recent number of The Entomologist's Monthly Magazine, 

 Mr. G. T. Porritt has the following interesting note : — ' In 

 The Entomologist' s Monthly Magazine, 1916, page 206, I 

 recorded the occurrence from my wild larvae of Abraxas 

 grossulariata of a few pupae of an uniformly glossy black 

 colour, without any trace of the usual golden wings. This 



1918 Jan. 1. 



