The general object of this paper is to draw attention to the apparently close connexion between the configuration of the surface in a glaciated country like Norway, and the disposition of the principal planes of division of the rocks, whether these planes be caused by stratification, cleavage or joints.

It would be the safer plan, in considering the remarkable Gravel and Crag deposits which characterize so distinctly the Quaternary Period, to infer the size of rivers, amount of rainfall, and elevation of tides from the deposits themselves. Further acquaintance with meteorological phenomena may find a fitting explanation of the difficulties we meet with in explaining the position of the gravel at such heights above our present streams, and fresh-water, alternating with marine clay, and sands at such depths below the sea-level.

In this communication I purpose describing a few new forms of Graptolites which I have obtained at various times from the Llandeilo rocks of the south of Scotland. Of one species, first collected at Moffat in 1866, a brief diagnosis has previously been given, and the names of two others, from the lead-mining district of Lanarkshire, have already been published. One of these also occurs near Moffat. The remaining species are all from one or other of these richly fossiliferous districts. Of their position in the geological series I need only say here that the black, more or less carbonaceous, shale in which they occur, appears, from the fossils it contains, to correspond to the higher portion of the Llandeilo flags of Wales; that it is almost immediately succeeded by a series of beds (the Gala group) containing fossils of Caradoc or Bala age; and that the unfossiliferous flagstone, or greywacké, in which it occurs, reposes on rocks which have yielded to the persevering search of Prof. Elliot and Messrs. Lapworth and Wilson a few fossils of Cambrian age.

In the general classification of the Palæozoic Rocks of North America, while we have carefully compared and attempted to correlate them with the greater divisions of the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous systems of Great Britain and the continent of Europe, we have still retained the local names of formations, which to a great extent were given in the Geological Survey of New York. These names, like English local names, indicate a locality or region where the strata are well shown, and the characteristic features of the formation better developed than in other places. Several of these local formations have thus been grouped together as representing certain stages in the systems of formations as recognized above.

The term “Midford Sands” suggested by Professor Phillips for the Sands which occur between the Inferior Oolite and the Upper Lias Clay, gives us a very happy name, and one that has been long wanted for these beds; for hitherto although they have been called by many names, not one has been generally adopted. They were first discovered and studied, so Professor Phillips tells us, by William Smith, in the picturesque cliff which overhung his house at Tucking Mill, near Midford—a little hamlet about three miles south of Bath, and situated in one of those delightful valleys formed by the river Avon and its tributaries.

Notwithstanding the very inconsiderable amount of sulphur it contains, this Greenland iron has a remarkable tendency to fall to pieces by the action of the air. The weathering depends on an oxidation, probably produced by a quantity of chlorine contained in the iron, and its great porosity; nevertheless, some of the phenomena connected with the weathering still appear to me inexplicable. I shall therefore somewhat more fully detail the observations and experiments made towards explaining this very disagreeable circumstance.