144 Correspondence—Mr. J. Starkie Gardner—Prof. T. R. Jones. 
required for the completion of the great physical phenomena, thongh 
the author’s inquiry tends to carry man further back geologically 
than is usually admitted. 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
—— 
A CORRECTION.—MESOZOIC MONOCOTYLEDON, 
Srr,—In my review of Mesozoic Angiosperms in the GEoLocrIcaL 
Macazine for May, 1886, I was induced to figure a specimen from 
the Woodwardian Museum, which I found placed in a case among 
Jurassic plants, and which I was informed had come from the York- 
shire Oolites. It is no plant, and really comes from Ascension, and 
presents one of those extraordinary cases of mimicry which all 
students of fossil plant-remains are familiar with. While presenting 
the external form of a fruit it exhibited no trace of internal vegetable 
structure, and I therefore abstained from cutting a section for the 
microscope which would have revealed it true nature. It is evidently, 
as pointed out to me by Prof. Judd, a gobbet of lava, which has been 
ejected in a molten state to a great height, and has taken its ropy 
and elongated form in its descent through the air. Knowing its 
origin, it is easy to see how the mimic spathe has been formed by 
the overrunning of the still melted top down one side of the already 
congealed body, like a guttering candle; the indistinct seeds being 
minute air-bubbles caught between the two surfaces. I fortunately 
forbore to give it any sort of name. 
In endeavouring to collect together and describe the rare and 
scattered, ill-preserved, and mineralized plant-remains from the 
marine Mesozoic beds which alone fill in much of the gap between 
the Carboniferous and the Tertiary, the most experienced are liable 
to err. Only a few days since some concretions were sent to me by 
a well-known geologist as plants. 
Unfortunately many of our museums abound with specimens to 
which hypothetical localities and imaginary formations are assigned. 
J spent the best part of a day in noting down errors of this descrip- 
tion in the Tertiary and Cretaceous collection of a northern university 
museum, and sent them to the Curator, who up till now has not 
acknowledged their receipt. J. STARKIE GARDNER. 
A SOUTH AFRICAN GEOLOGISTS’ ASSOCIATION. 
Srr,— You will be pleased to know that a ‘South-African Geologists’ 
Association’ has: been established at Grahamstown in connection 
with the Albany Museum there. Dr. Atherstone, F.G.S., has been 
appointed its first President; and there are Vice-Presidents in Cape 
Town, Natal, the Free State, and Transvaal. Dr. Atherstone had 
long endeavoured to get up such a Society, and the Exhibition there 
gave the opportunity for carrying it out. T. Rupert Jones. 
Dr. J. W. Spencer, Professor of Geology at the University of 
Georgia, has been appointed State Geologist ‘of Geor ola. 
