In 1848, under the name Agelacrinites Buchianus, Edward Forbes introduced to science “one of the most remarkable Cystideans as yet discovered in British strata.” His description and figures, published in his memoir “On the Cystideæ of the Silurian rocks of the British Islands” (Mem. Geol. Surv. Gt. Brit., II, pt. ii; see pp. 519–523, and pl. xxiii), have not proved fully intelligible to subsequent workers, even to those who have had the fossil before them. Unfortunately J. W. Salter, in his “Appendix. On the Fossils of North Wales,” to “The Geology of North Wales” by A.C. Ramsay (Mem. Geol. Surv. Gt. Brit., III, 1st ed., 1866), criticised a little, but illuminated less; while the same Appendix in the second edition, 1881, though “greatly enlarged and partly rearranged by Robert Etheridge, F.R.S.,” merely introduced verbal alterations into Salter's account.

The evolution of rivers and the origin of lakes have recently attracted a considerable share of attention; and the principles which should guide us in tracing the development of a drainage system have been expounded by several authors, both in England and in America.

An important paper on the reputed occurrence of fossil plant-stems in gneiss of Carboniferous age at Guttannen, Switzerland, by Messrs. E. v. Fellenberg & C. Schmidt, for a copy of which I am indebted to the courtesy of the authors, closes, if their view be adopted, a comedy of errors. On this account a brief outline of the story may be of service; for it reduces this supposed relic of Palæozoic forests to a lusus naturæ, and, in any case, once more illustrates the truth of the saying, “we are all fallible mortals.”

The able review of my paper on the Geological Age of the Earth which appears in the March number of this Magazine (p. 124), from the pen of the Rev. O. Fisher, raises again questions of such wide interest that some further remarks, referring principally to the criticism of the distinguished writer of the review, and also to criticisms which I have received from others and which are probably in the minds of many who have considered the matter, may not be out of place.

The sources of information are given below.

D. From T. Rupert Jones's Catalogue of the Foraminifera from the Chalk and Chalkmarl in the Second Edition of Dixon's “Geology and Fossils of Sussex,” 1878, pp. 284 and 285.