The hill of the Great Doward rises above the right bank of the river Wye to the N.W. of the well-known limestone escarpment of Symonds Yat. The section of the Great Doward, geologically considered, is best seen by ascending the hill from theMonmouth road, a quarter of a mile from the village of Whitchurch. The basement beds consist of Upper Old Red Sandstone, which thins out considerably in its Southern strike from the Brecon Vans; and we pass upwards over the Old Red Conglomerate, and the Passage beds of the Upper Yellow Sandstones, while the hill itself is capped by the Lower Limestone shale and the Carboniferous Limestone.

1. Introductory.—The fragmentary evidence attesting the presence of former tenants of our globe is just sufficiently tantalizing to permit of glimpses of bygone forms to be evoked; and what is lacking in the relics themselves is supplied by the imagination or reasoned out by the aid of existing forms. Palæontology, in truth, is based as yet on a narrow but solid foundation of fact, propped up by much that is uncertain or unstable, which future time must test, try,—accept, or reject. For this reason all adventitious drapery thrown around the remnants of the departed requires to undergo a close scrutiny of its genuineness; and no seeming fittingness can save it from the ruth- less hands of succeeding inquirers should any counterfeit be detected.

In the last number of the Geological Magazine there is an abstract from an interesting and important paper by Prof. Hull and Mr. Traill on the relative ages of certain igneous rocks of Co. Down, Ireland. In that paper there is one paragraph on which I should like to offer a few remarks, as it refers to a previous communication from myself, and relates to a subject in which I take a special interest. The paragraph is as follows:—“It might have been supposed that microscopical examination would show some distinction in the basalts of these geological ages, but recent investigations by Zirkel, D. Forbes, Allport, and others, tend to show that there is no criterion of age amongst the constituents of basalt, dolerite, or melaphyre.”

In the July Number of the Geological Magazine a well-known geologist has endeavoured to prove the existenceof sands of the Chillesford age in the Crag Pits near Butley, referring more especially to that on the Neutral Farm, nearthe Oyster Inn; and as I cannot agree with this opinion, I venture to lay before the readers of the Magazine some of the notes upon which I ground my dissent.

For the last three summers we have devoted the greater part of our leisure time to the examination of the Silurian Rocks that lie more immediately between the Moorfoot Hills and the English border. Our investigations have been attended with a fair amount of success, and we thought that a short summary of what we have accomplished would not be wholly uninteresting to the Geological Section. As these old Silurian strata of the South of Scotland have only been once alluded to in the papers already read at the Meeting—namely, by the Chairman in his eloquent address—we may be pardoned if we say a few preliminary words concerning them.

Geol. Mag. for September. In Mr. Searles V. Wood, jun's. paper “on the Sequence of the Glacial Beds,” p. 410, line 2 from bottom of page, for Dentalium dentale read Dentalium entale.

Dentalium dentale (Mid-Glacial shell) occurs exclusively to the South of Britain. Dentalium entale (Lancashire fossil) is a British species.