464 Notices of Memoirs — E. Wilson on Rhcetic Beds. 



many of the Europeaii formations, more may be done in tracing the 

 details of subformations. The same may be said of much of North 

 America, and for a long series of years a great deal must remain 

 almost untouched in Asia, Africa, South America, and in the islands 

 of the Pacific Ocean. If, in the far future, the day should come 

 when such work shall be undertaken, the process of doing so must 

 necessarily be slow, partly for want of proper maps, and possibly 

 in some regions partly for the want of trained geologists. Palaeon- 

 tologists must always have ample work in the discovery and descrip- 

 tion of new fossils, marine, freshwater, and truly terrestrial ; and 

 besides common stratigraphical geology, geologists have still an 

 ample field before them in working out many of those physical 

 problems which form the true basis of Physical Geography in every 

 region of the earth. Of the history of the earth there is a long past, 

 the early chapters of which seem to be lost for ever, and we know 

 little of the future except that it appears that " the stir of this dim 

 spot which men call earth," as far as Geology is concerned, shows 

 " no sign of an end." 



Ill, — On the Eh^tios of Notts. By E. Wilson, F.G.S. 



THE author gave a summarized account of the Rh^tic series in 

 Nottinghamshire. The Phytic sections of this district already 

 known to geologists comprise those at Gainsboro', Newark, and 

 Elton. The author described several additional new sections in 

 the EhEetics of the county — viz. at Gotham and Kilvington, between 

 Newark and Bottesford ; at Barn stone, between Bingham and 

 Stahern ; the boring for coal at Owthorpe, near Colston Bassett ; 

 and the section at Stanton-on-the-Wolds, between Nottingham and 

 Melton Mowbray. A list of the Ehsetic fossils of Notts was given, 

 and the presence of bone-beds noticed. The author could not agree 

 with certain geologists that the green marls which are found beneath 

 the Paper Shales in Notts (nor probably also the "Tea-green Marls " 

 of the West of England) belong to the Ehsetic series, but took them 

 to be Upper Keuper Marls, once red in colour, which had become 

 discoloured by some deoxidizing agent, probably carbonic acid 

 evolved during the decomposition of the organic matters of the 

 fossils of the Paper Shales. For, in lithological character the green 

 marls agreed with underlying beds in the Keuper, but differed 

 markedly from the overlying Rhsetics ; then there was every ap- 

 pearance of a passage between the green marls and the underlying 

 red and green marls of the Keuper ; and, lastly, the green marls, like 

 the rest of the Keuper marls, were practically unfossiliferous, while 

 with the commencement of the Paper Shales we get the remains of 

 an abundant, and distinctly marine fauna, in part Liassic. 



IV. — Eemakks upon the Structure and Classification of the 

 Blastoidea. By P. Herbert Carpenter, M.A. 



THE author and Mr. E. Etheridge, jun., who are preparing a joint 

 memoir upon the Blastoidea, have arrived at the following 

 conclusions respecting the group. 



