The Rhatic Beds of England. Oke 
Spring Cove, near Weston-super-Mare; above Kew Stoke, Milton 
Hill: Uphill; Goblin Combe; and near Cadbury Camp. At 
Middle Hope the ejectamenta thin to the east, and lava is only 
found to the west; at Spring Cove small lapilli were found in 
the limestone 8 feet above the basalt. At Goblin Combe there 
is the most characteristic and convincing section of ashy beds in the 
district : the lenticular bands of coarse greenish tuff, the limestone- 
intercalations, the close admixture of lapulli, limestone-fragments, 
and oolitic grains are stamped with the hall-mark of submarine 
volcanic action; lava closely underlies these breccias and tufts. 
There is evidence of only one volcanic episode, which occurred in 
all cases after the Zaphrentis-beds had been laid down, and before the 
strata characterized by Chonetes and Streptorhynchus were deposited. 
(A table of certain broadly-marked horizons in the Carboniferous 
Limestone, by Mr. A. Vaughan, F.G.S.,is given for reference.) The 
lavas are olivine-dolerites or basalts; with phenocrysts of olivine or 
augite. They are frequently amygdaloidal, sometimes variolitic ; and 
in the variolites highly-altered felspar-phenocrysts occur. The rocks 
vary in grain, the coarsest being those from Uphill and near Cadbury 
Camp, of the contemporaneous character of which there is no direct 
evidence. ‘The tuffs are all highly calcareous, and most of them 
are best described as ‘ashy limestones. The bulk of the lapillh 
varies from one-hundredth part of the rock to about one-third, and 
their composition is closely related to that of the basaltic lavas of 
the district. Quartz-grains are abundant in the Goblin-Combe 
rocks, and these rocks are frequently oolitic. 
2. ‘The Rhetic Beds of England. By A. Rendle Short, Esq., 
M.B., B.Sc.) 
The paper opens with a description of four new exposures of 
these rocks: one at Redland rests upon Carboniferous Limestone, and 
is interesting because the ‘ Bone-Bed’ is very ill-developed on receding 
from the old shore; a second is at Stoke Gifford, with a continuous, 
well-developed landscape-marble, the Insect-Bed, and no bone-bed ; 
a third at Cotham Road (Bristol) yields baryta, celestine, and 
Naiadita at special horizons containing no other fossils; and the 
fourth, at Aust, has given measurements of the uppermost 13 feet, 
which are inaccessible from below. Next an account is given of the 
constituent beds, with special reference to the conditions of deposition. 
The Bone-Bed is of wide distribution ; it frequently occurs in pockets 
on a flat surface, or spread out over that surface; it contains frag- 
ments of rolled marl, rounded pebbles of Carboniferous Limestone, 
and pebbles of quartzite and well-rounded quartz. The author 
concludes that it was formed during a stormy period, after the sea 
had made its first irruption into the dried-up or silted-up level 
surface of the Keuper Lake. The Naiadita-beds appear to have 
been formed in very shallow, and perhaps only slightly saline, water, 
and the calcareous matter associated with them may have been mud 
washed from the Carboniferous Limestone. Only after the White- 
Lias period did the water finally become moderately deep. The 
area of deposit appears to have been a gigantic shallow lagoon 
