Notes and Comments. 
3 
•admirable Memoir (No. XXIV.) on ‘ Aplysia,’ by Nellie 
B. Eales, there is Prof. P. G. H. Boswell’s Presidential Address 
on ‘ Sedimentation, Environment, and Evolution in Past 
. Ages ’ ; Prof. W. A. Herdman’s valuable Report on the 
Year’s Work at Port Erin ; Notes on Dinoflaggelates and the 
Discolouration of Sands, by E. Catherine Herdman ; Ex- 
periments on the Water Vascular System of Echinus, by 
Ruth Bamber ; On the Inheritance of Coat Colour in the 
Varieties of Rattus rattus, by J. W. Cutmore ; and an admirable 
Report on the Lancashire Sea-Fisheries Laboratory at Liver- 
pool, with many scholarly contributions by various con- 
tributors, edited by Prof. James Johnstone. 
WEST CUMBERLAND ROCKS. 
At a recent meeting of the Geological Society of London, 
Mr. K. W. Earle read a paper on ‘ The Lower Carboniferous 
Rocks of West Cumberland.’ In the course of this paper the 
zonal sequence of the Carboniferous rocks is traced into 
Cumberland, the local variations from the type -district are 
noted, and comparsion made with other areas. The thinning- 
out of the zones, when traced northwards from Shap, becomes 
still more marked north of the River Eamont, until it is found 
that, in the northern and western parts of the area described, 
the lowest beds resting against the Lake-District massif 
(partly in the faulted, but largely in unconformable junction) 
belong to the N ematophy Hum-minus sub-zone. The only out- 
lier of Carboniferous Limestone within the massif itself 
^consists at the base of beds of that zone. 
LAKE DISTRICT AN .ISLAND. 
These facts, and a consideration of the radial dip, which, 
■even if constant across the crest of the dome, would be little 
more than sufficient to carry beds of T) ± age over the present 
summit of Carrock Fell (or pre-Bala age), lead to the con- 
clusion that the Lake-District massif was an island in earliest 
Carboniferous times, and that complete submergence did not 
take place until D t times. The irregular distribution and 
thickness, the constituent materials, and the high angle of 
dip of the Polygenetic Conglomerate beneath the gently- 
dipping limestones, tend to confirm the conclusions of other 
writers as to its Devonian age, while note is made of the 
absence of any true basal Carboniferous Conglomerate. The 
• transgression of the Orebank Sandstone across the faunal 
zones is compared with the transgression of the Orton-Ashfell 
Sandstone in the Westmorland area. Comment is made on 
the variability of the Millstone Grit in thickness, in composi- 
tion, and in stratigraphical horizon in various parts of the area, 
and the valuable iron-ore deposits in the limestone series near 
Whitehaven are noticed. 
1^22 Jan. 1 
