230 Scientific Intelligence. 



Remarks. — The remains of plants determined above are gen- 

 erally in small fragments more or less deformed, like most of the 

 fossil plants of the Coal-measnres of Rhode Island, and therefore 

 their characters are not always satisfactorily recognized. In this 

 lot, they represent mostly species of the Upper Coal-measnres, some 

 of which have been recognized in the Lower Permian formations 

 of Europe. Of this kind are Nos. 6 and 7, Odontopteris Stieh- 

 leriana Goepp., A. Reichiana Goepp., Odontopteris obtusiloba 

 Baura, etc. This last species has not been recognized before in 

 the Coal-measures of North America, but has been described by 

 Gutbier only from specimens of the Lower Permian, and Geinitz 

 from the Dyas. 



~No. 25. Neuropteris dentata Lesqx., is a very rare species, first 

 described in Rogers's Geol. of Pennsylvania, 1858, p. 859, pi. v, 

 figs. 9 and 10, from four separate pinnules obtained in the Anthra- 

 cite Coal-measures (the Salem vein of Port Carbon), Pennsylvania 

 the highest coal of the measures. The specimen from Paw- 

 tucket, R. L, is more complete, representing the upper part of 

 a pinna with two pairs of large opposite lanceolate pinnules, 

 irregularly sharply dentate on the border, very oblique, decurring 

 to a narrow rachis, with close flabbellate veins derived from a 

 narrow indistinct midrib and very thin though deeply marked. 

 The nervation like the border teeth of the pinnules, is of the 

 same character as represented upon the figures in the Geology of 

 Pennsylvania, the leaflets merely differing by the narrowed, cor- 

 date (not decurrent) base. 



June 25, 1888. 



2. History of Volcanic Action during the Tertiary Period 

 in the British Isles • by Archibald Geikie, LL.D., F.R.S., 

 Director General of the Geological Survey of the United King- 

 dom. 184 pp. 4to, with maps and cuts. Trans. R. Soc, Edin- 

 burgh, vol. xxxv, Part 2. — The contrast between the eastern 

 and western borders of the Atlantic in amount of volcanic action 

 has great geological significance, and hence full and detailed 

 descriptions of the facts from the eastern side, like those here 

 presented by Dr. Geikie, have an importance far beyond that 

 of their local or volcanic interest. The facts with regard to 

 the great basaltic areas, those of Antrim of northern Ireland 

 and those of the islands of Mull and Skye and intermediate 

 islands off the coast of Scotland, are described in detail and 

 mapped; and besides these, the many dikes, or subordinate lines 

 of eruption, over Scotland, Ireland and northern England, far 

 away from the main centres, which make the area of fractures 

 and ejections in the Tertiary, according to the author, over 40,000 

 square miles in extent. The region of outside dikes, referred to, 

 includes the southern half of Scotland, which is intersected by 

 many east and west as well as northwest dikes ; and the northern 

 part of Ireland and England where the courses are mostly north- 

 westward. The eruptions may have begun, Dr. Geikie states, in 

 the Eocene ; they continued through the Miocene period probably 

 to its close, and perhaps into the Pliocene. 



