430 Correspondence — A. R. Sunt. 



III. — Pal^ontographical Society. 



The fifty-eighth annual general meeting of the Pal^ontographical 

 Society was held at the Geological Society's apartments, Burlington 

 House, on Friday, 16th June, Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., 

 President, in the chair. The annual report of the Council and the 

 'balance-sheet were submitted for the approval of the members, and 

 they were adopted on the proposition of Sir Archibald Geikie, 

 Sec. R.S. The report congratulated the Society on its continued 

 prosperity, and alluded to the activity of its members in the 

 promotion of research. The Council were still embarrassed by 

 more offers of memoirs than they could accept for immediate 

 publication, and they had again spent a large sum beyond their 

 income on the volume for 1904:. This volume contained an unusual 

 amount of letterpress with expensive tables, and was devoted to 

 continuations of the Monographs of Old Red Sandstone Fishes, 

 Inferior Oolite Ammonites, Carboniferous and Cretaceous Lamelli- 

 branchs, Girvan Trilobites, and British Graptolites. The Council 

 had carefully considered the financial position of the Society, and 

 had decided to issue a comparatively small volume for the year 

 1905. They proposed in future to end the financial year on 31st 

 December instead of 31st March, so that the year should correspond 

 exactly with the period to which the annual guinea related. They 

 also proposed that in future the price of the annual volume to 

 non-subscribers should be twenty-five shillings net. Dr. Henry 

 Woodward was re-elected President, and Mr. E. T. Newton a new 

 Vice-President ; Dr. G. J. Hinde and Dr. A. S. Woodward were 

 re-elected Treasurer and Secretary respectively. Professor W. J. 

 Sollas, Mr. F. W. Harmer, and Mr. P. Lake were elected new 

 members of Council. 



GOI^I^^3S:E=OI^^3D■.BI^^C:E!. 



THE COERELATION OF THE BOVET LIGNITE BEDS. 



Sir, — In the periodical discussions that take place on the Bovey 

 Lignite Beds, it seems always taken for granted that the late 

 William Pengelly believed them to be of Miocene age, and not 

 connected with any other known British beds. In 1865 Pengelly 

 published his paper " On the Correlation of the Lignite Formation of 

 Bovey Tracey, Devonshire, with the Hempstead Beds of the Isle of 

 Wight" (Trans. Dev. Assoc, vol. i, pt. 4, p. 90), and observed that 

 " they are all Lower Miocene or all Upper Eocene ; for they must 

 certainly go together." He tells us that Mi*. Keeping, who made 

 the excavations at Bovey, collected for him plant - remains at 

 Hempstead, and that, of ten species secured, four occurred at Bovey, 

 two were new to science, and two were new to Hempstead. One 

 of the Hempstead and Bovey plants was Sequoia Couttsm. 



It will be seen that thirty years ago Pengelly linked the Bovey 

 and Hempstead Beds together as what are now known as Oligocene ; 

 :but Mr. Starkie Gardner has since then for weighty reasons referred 



