48 PE0CEED1N"GS OF THE GEOLOG-ICAL SOCIETY. 



4 



with whicli the lower memhers of the Trias were deposited. In 

 the third boring at Orton, 12 miles jST.E. of Northampton, only about 

 24 feet of rock occurred which could be possibly referred to the 

 Trias, shortly after which a quartz-felsite was pierced, very similar in 

 all respects to the rock at High Sharpley (Charnwood Forest), which 

 I was formerly inclined to refer to an altered rhyolitic ash, but now 

 feel more disposed to regard as a true lava, once glassy, but now 

 devitrified, greatly crushed by subsequent pressure. 



The remaining stratigraphical papers are not very numerous, and 

 mostly rather brief. That by Mr. Downes on the Cretaceous beds 

 at Black Yen has considerably augmented our knowledge of the 

 basement-beds of the Chalk in the western area of Britain. Those 

 by Mr. Starkie Gardner on the plant-bearing deposits in connexion 

 with the basalts of Ireland and Iceland appear likely, when the 

 whole evidence is published, to raise questions of importance as to 

 the age of these deposits ; and to the extremely interesting paper by 

 Mr. Searles Wood on the no less problematical deposit at St. Erth, 

 I have already referred. Mr. Lamplugh added largely to our 

 knowledge not only of the fauna, but also of the stratigraphy of the 

 interesting fossiliferous deposit associated with Boulder-clay at 

 Bridlington. Boulder- clays themselves have been the subject of 

 papers by Mr. Mellard Beade and Mr. Jukes-Browne ; an inter- 

 esting paper by Col. Godwin-Austen and Mr. Whitaker on a new 

 railway-cutting at Guildford dealt with Post-tertiary as weU as 

 Tertiary geology ; and Mr. Pidgeon brought us up to historic time 

 by his communication on the submerged forest at Torbay. 



On palseontology, we have had the pleasure of receiving three 

 papers from our " Nestor " in that branch of geological study, Sir E. 

 Owen. In that on Eliytidosteus capensis, from the so-called Trias 

 of the Orange Biver Free State, he directed our attention to certain 

 mammalian characters in the Labyrinthodont Amphibians, and in a 

 later communication pointed out the resemblance between the teeth 

 of the South- African Tritylodon, described last year by him and 

 assigned to the Mammalia, and those of the Eocene mammal, Meo- 

 ^lagiaulax. In a third paper he described a portion of a skuU of a 

 youthful ElepTias antiquus from Creswell Crags. Mr. E. T. Newton 

 introduced to our notice a new species of Gazelle from the Forest 

 bed ; Mr. MialL described a fine specimen of MegcdicJithys from the 

 Yorkshire Coal-field ; and Prof. E. W. Claypole showed that in 

 America he had detected the remains of Pteraspidian fishes at a 

 lower geological horizon than they are known to occur in Britain. 

 A new species of Conoceras has been described by a new contributor, 

 Mr. T. Eoberts; and Mr. Walford has given us a second of his 

 carefully worked-out essays, in that " On the Stratigraphical 

 Position of the Lower and Middle Jurassic Trigonice of North 

 Oxfordshire and adjoining districts." Mr. Yine has treated of the 

 Cretaceous Lichenoporidae, and Prof. Duncan, Mr. Champernowne, 

 and Mr. Tomes of various corals. Professor Hughes has reduced 

 the number of extinct creatures by destroying Spongia paradoxica ; 

 while Dr. Hiude has shown us that it is possible to understand 



