428 Revieics — Brief Notices. 



curvirostris and Strophalosia in the Permian of Eirilov ; in the 

 Polish Devonian fauna Reticidaria and Spirifer become drawn out, 

 while Retzia and Spiriferina occur in the Alpine Triassic fauna, and 

 Scacchinella, Tegulifera, elongated Meekella, and Spiriferina in the 

 Permo-Carboniferous of the Carinthian Alps. The contemporaneous 

 occurrence of such forms is due to external conditions, probably as 

 a result of the rapid accumulation of large masses of sediment. 

 The paper is accompanied by two plates of fossil illustrations. 



YI. — Brief JS'otices. 



1. Rhodesia Museum:. — From the Seventh Annual Eeport, 1908, 

 just to hand we learn that the Directors of the British South Africa 

 Company have presented a piece of ground 140 by 150 feet in 

 Bulawayo for the purpose of extension of the premises. The 

 Trustees of the Beit Bequest have granted £2500 towards the cost of 

 the new buildings, and a start will be made during the present year 

 in the building of new quarters on this permanent site, allowing for 

 future extensions. The geological accessions are mainly confined to 

 minerals, of which the curator, Mr. F. P. Mennell, reports a fine 

 series. Mr. E. C. Chubb, the curator of Zoology, has paid especial 

 attention to the exhibition of local birds, of which the Museum now 

 possesses a good collection. 



2. New Ideas on the Foejiation of Coral Reefs. — Dr. F. "Wood 

 Jones gave a demonstration at the Zoological Society's meeting on 

 June 15 of the method of formation of coral reefs. The purpose of the 

 demonstration was to show that the theories of subsidence put forward 

 by Darwin and of solution put forward by Murray were both 

 untenable in the light of actual facts. A fresh hypothesis — that 

 sedimentation is the most important factor — was substituted for these 

 theories : and it was pointed out that the atoll was in reality 

 a structure analogous to the Porites colonies, the upper surfaces of 

 which were made basin- shaped by sediment obliterating the zooids 

 of the central area ; that the deposition of sediment below the 

 " limiting line of sedimentation" probably accounted for the bathy- 

 metrical limit of the reef-building corals, and for the formation of 

 sedimentation banks up to that line ; that in the making of an atoll 

 from the basin-shaped reef the winds and the waves played the 

 greatest part, and that atoll lagoons tended to shoal owing to the 

 deposition of sediment within them ; that Le Conte in 1856 had 

 said that Barrier reefs stood out from shore because they were 

 limited on one side by the depth and on the other by the muddiness of 

 the water, and that his pronouncement accorded with every known 

 fact ; that the question of the formation of coral structures was 

 a zoological one and was to be solved bj' a study of the living zooid, 

 and that the chief agent inimical to the growth of the zooid was the 

 deposit of sediment. 



3. New Foraminifeea. — Professor P. 8. Pavlovic has published in 

 the Annales geologiques de la Peninsiile halkanique, 1908, vi, a study of 

 the Foraminifera of the Mediterranean beds of Servia from various 



