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over great tracts of country by their fossil remains, let us hope that 

 a clue is now at hand, by which we may find our way through that 

 vast assemblage of beds, which, not in England only, but in Scot- 

 land, Ireland, Germany, Russia, Sweden, and North America, has 

 hitherto presented to the observer a mere scene of confusion. 



In Mr. Murchison's paper we find also, traced with exactness, se- 

 veral hitherto unexplored lines of disturbance, producing sometimes, 

 as in the Abberley Hills, a complete inversion of dip. The rocks 

 which border the old red sandstone, acquire in some places an 

 anticlinal dip, and reappear in parallel ridges far westward of their 

 natural site, insomuch that the Ludlow series is met with even in 

 Montgomeryshire. Mr. Murchison has examined in detail the trap- 

 pean and porphyritic rocks to which these disturbances are for the 

 most part assignable, but the description of them has been reserved 

 for communications not yet before us. 



Professor Sedgwick has transmitted to us a notice on the granite 

 of Shap in Westmoreland. From recent excavations it appears that 

 veins of this granite penetrate the adjoining strata, from which he 

 infers that it is of posterior date. 



Mr. De la Beche, one of our Vice-Presidents, acting under the 

 direction of the Board of Ordnance, has produced a geological map 

 of the county of Devon, which, for extent and minuteness of informa- 

 tion and beauty of execution, has a very high claim to regard. Let 

 us rejoice in the complete success which has attended this first at- 

 tempt of that honourable Board to exalt the character of English 

 topography by rendering it at once more scientific and very much 

 more useful to the country at large. 



Organic Remains. — Every succeeding year brings to light new 

 fossil animals which cannot be assigned to existing genera. Dr. 

 Riley, deeply skilled in physiology and comparative anatomy, has 

 given us an account of an animal so extraordinary, that naturalists 

 differ even respecting its class. After careful examination, he con- 

 siders it a cartilaginous fish, partaking of the character both of the 

 Rays and the Squales. Here then is another instance of a link, 

 now wanting to connect existing genera, having formerly existed. 



Towards the close of the last session Mr. Channing Pearce exhi- 

 bited to the Society a matchless collection of Apiocrinites found at 

 Bradford in Wiltshire. To the description of this fossil as given by 

 the late Mr. Miller, Mr. Pearce adds that the column was occa- 

 sionally ten inches long. He has found in the great oolite, three 

 species of Apiocrinites, differing in the form of their body, and the 

 thickness of its component plates. 



Foreign Geology. 



Europe. — The structure of the South of Spain has been illus- 

 trated by Colonel Silvertop and Captain Cook. From the joint la- 

 bours of these gentlemen we learn, that the country between the 

 Sierra Morena and the Mediterranean consists of lofty ranges of 



