News form the Magazines. OL 
MAGNESIAN LIMESTONE FOSSILS. 
The distribution of organisms in the Magnesian Limestone 
was largely influenced by the quantity of sulphates present in 
the surrounding water. The Shell Limestone is a chain of 
reef-knolls, in the building up of which limited numbers of 
forms take part, probably induced by current action in the 
Permian Sea and lying more or less parallel with the old Permian 
shore-line. The increasingly unfavourable conditions prevail- 
ing towards the top of the Shell Limestone bring about a 
dwarfing and gradual extinction of the typical Shell-Lime- 
stone fauna. The distribution and present condition of the 
Upper Magnesian Limestones in Durham is curious. The 
Permian succession is more complete in the southern than in the 
morthern area of the county. Various sections in the Upper 
and Middle Limestones in the Hartlepool area were described, 
among them the recent sinking for Blackhall Colliery, where 
the entire series was pierced, including the full thickness of the 
Shell Limestone. 
7O°% 
Mr. Gerrard’s report on the output of minerals for the Manchester 
‘district during 1911 appears in The Quarry for January 1913. 
In The Entomologist’s Record, Vol. XXIV., No. 12, the Rev. G. H. 
Raynor describes a collection formed in Essex sixty-six vears ago, which 
contains a few interesting northern records. 
The Entomologist for January announces the death of Thomas Boyd, 
the entomologist, which took place in February, 1912. Other more 
recently deceased entomologists are Peter Cameron, George C. E. Brabant, 
and Arnold Wullschlegel. 
In Knowledge for January is a lengthy and scathing article on the 
alleged perfect arrangement and classification of the specimens in the 
new London Museum at Kensington Palace, by ‘ A Provincial Curator.’ 
His views coincide with those expressed in our columns some little time 
ago. 
Mr. D. Sharp, F.R.S., describes a new beetle, Bladius gulielmi, from 
Linthorpe, Middlesbrough, in The Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine tor 
January. No figure of the species is given. In the same journal Mr, 
Porritt confirms the record of Platvcleis voeselit for Trusthorpe, Lincs., 
first made by Mr. Wallis Kow. 
Mr. J. K. Stanford records in British Birds that he recently was 
“observing migration’ on the Holderness coast, and ‘obtained’ the 
following birds, ‘noteworthy owing to their rare occurrence ’ :—Fire- 
crested wren, shot; red-breasted flycatcher, shot; Blyth’s reed-warbler 
(it “was very tame, and was “ obtained’’’), barred-warblers (a male 
‘obtained’ and a female shot). 
Messrs. Hutchinson & Co.’s Customs of the World, which is_ being 
issued in fortnightly parts, keeps well up to the standard of the first 
number in the wealth of illustration, and in the quaintness of the cere- 
monies and people portrayed. Some of the ground drawings and ‘ sacred 
drawings’ illustrated therein are not so very much unlike the cup-and- 
ring markings occasionally found carved on the rocks in the north of 
England, as at Ilkley. 
1g13 Feb. Ee 
