Reviews— Transactions of Dudley Geological Society. 33 
Messrs. Daglish and Forster hold as to the stratigraphy of the 
Magnesian Limestone. Suffice it to repeat that we are fully per- 
suaded that their opinions on that subject are not those which they 
would have held had their investigations been more carefully con- 
ducted in a geological point of view and more thoroughly carried out. 
HE Transactions or THE DUDLEY AND MipLAND GEOLOGICAL 
AND SCIENTIFIC SocrETy AND Fretp-Cius. No. 3, September, 
1864, contains, among other communications, an agreeably written 
and sound paper by the Rev. H. Housman, on paleontology generally, 
on the increased value of fossils when studied not as merely 
isolated memorials of this or that long-past age, but as members 
of God’s great creature-family, links in the great chain of life, 
and as holding definite places in the scale of being, either as 
ancestors, or as analogues, of the living creatures now flourishing on 
the earth. The Lingule and other Brachiopods, the Trilobite, Péery- 
gotus, and other Crustaceans, are especially considered, as having 
existed from early times, and as illustrating the manner in which 
Life has spread over the world. Well-considered and concise 
remarks on the Literature of Geology are made in a short paper 
by the Rev. J. W. Bain, with truth and energy. In the Rev. W. 
Symonds’s paper on the progress of Geological Science during the 
past year, he alludes to most of the later geological discoveries, 
and those tenets and theories which have some foundation in Philo- 
sophy. The metamorphic origin of many granitic and other rocks, 
once thought to have cooled from a molten state,—the presence 
of fossils in the Laurentian and Cambrian rocks, once thought 
to be azoic, and in Lower Silurian rocks once thought to be poor 
in organic remains and indefinite in position,—a better knowledge 
of the uppermost Silurian beds, of the ‘Devonian’ flora of NP. 
America, of the fishes of the Old Red Sandstone, of the ‘Old 
Red’ itself (especially of its probably two-fold aspect, and of its 
rightful possession of Yelerpeton and Stagonolepis), of the Coal- 
measures and their fossil Reptiles, of the Permian plants and hematite, 
and of the Trias as occurring in New Zealand (New Caledonia 
and California may be added). Lastly, Mr. Symonds treats of the 
evidence of Man’s existence in Western Europe since the Glacier- 
epoch, according to Prestwich and Lyell. 
In his paper on the Recent Discovery of Cannel-coal in North 
Wales, Mr. Beckett, first briefly explaining the general bearings of 
the Flintshire and Denbighshire coal-fields, states that after having 
worked with Mr. E. Hull, of the Geological Survey, over this and the 
adjoining coal-area of Lancashire, he fully coincided with Mr. Hull 
in his opinion of the continuation of the coal-beds beneath the Mersey 
and the Dee, and also found some evidence of the existence in 
Flintshire of lower coal-beds than had been yet explored. Circum- 
stances aided in necessitating deep sinkings (at Leeswood Green) ; 
and there, at about 93 yards below the ‘ Main-coal,’ with seven or 
eight seams of coal intervening, a valuable Cannel-coal, nearly four 
feet thick, was reached. Other seams of good coal occur still 
VOL. il.—NO. VII. D 
