Notes and Comments. 



YORKSHIRE TYPE AMMONITES. 



We are pleased to see that Mr. S. S. Buckman, F.G.S., 

 is issuing a work on Yorkshire Type Ammonites, with 

 upwards of two hundred plates. This will include for the 

 first time, illustrations of the specimens described in Martin 

 Simpson's ' Monograph of Lias Ammonites, etc.', the original 

 specimens being in the Whitby Museum. Work of the character 

 undertaken by Mr. Buckman is, unfortunately, rarely remunera- 

 tive, and we trust all who are able, will assist him by subscribing 

 for copies. A prospectus will be gladly sent on application to 

 the author at Thame. 



' OUR GEOLOGICAL RECORD.' 



Under the above heading a natural history journal recently' 

 issued gives the following gem, under the signature of A. A. 

 Swinton (not ' Hugh Miller ' !) Under ordinary circumstances we 

 should refer to the publication from which we'have made the 

 quotation ; but in the present case we think it a kindness to omit 

 it : — ' According to Page, not Lyell, the east of England is a 

 pucker, marked by the Channel which, expanding and contract- 

 ing to heat and cold, has successively risen and sunk, leaving 

 superimposed, rock-hardened layers of sand, mud and clay, 

 to relate like the leaves of a book, the struggle for existence and 

 evolution.' [ pause here to take a breath. — Ed.1. 'Silurian 

 irilohites, predecessors" of spiders and insects, swam off the 

 granite coast of Cornwall until lepidendrons [sic], or tree club- 

 mosses, sprang up at Bristol ; fish lizards then plunged over 

 Lyme Regis until bird-like lizards, appeared and cycads, no 

 longer European, flourished in Dorsetshire ; in Sussex monstrous 

 lizards luxuriated ; then huge ammonites, predecessors of 

 nautili, swam in a chalky sea, and lamp shells and stone lilies 

 dwindled away ; elephants came across from the continent : 

 arctic shells such as the Cyprina islandica, entombed in the 

 mud of the Greenock docks, cropped up ; and when Britannia 

 rose from out the main savage man paddled his canoe and 

 hunted beavers.' [Another breath.] 'A nebulous, molten 

 earth may have receded from its parent sun or changed its 

 orbit ; hot water currents may have altered ; but has not the 

 sun itself periodically become hot and cold ? ' If the preceding 

 is ' our geological record,' all we can say is that it is a bad 

 one. 



Naturalist, 



