By the kind assistance of Monsieur E. Dupont, the Director of the Royal Museum of Natural History in Brussels, a coloured reproduction of the entire skeleton of Iguanodon Bernissartensis has lately been acquired for the British Museum (Natural History), and may now be seen admirably set up in the Reptile Gallery of the Geological Department.

The question of the origin of Eozoon Canadense has been recently revived in an important and most interesting paper on a similar structure in blocks of limestone ejected from Vesuvius. The writers, however, of that paper evidently found that more information existed as to the microscopic structure of the Canadian Eozoon than as to its mode of occurrence, so that a few notes on this subject may be of some use as a contribution to the discussion. I visited one of the most noted localities for Eozoon—Côte St. Pierre—in 1884, when I had the inestimable advantage of being conducted by Sir J. W. Dawson, to whose unwearied kindness and hospitality I was so often indebted during my stay in Canada. I made careful notes and rough sketches of what I saw, collected a fair suite of specimens, and paid especial attention to the relation of the structure to other parts of the rock-masses. Upon the question of the origin of Eozoon I do not purpose to enter: I shall restrict myself to stating facts of which, as it seems to me, account must be taken in all attempts to interpret this extraordinary structure.

A Traveller alighting at Trontbeck station (T of Figure), at the summit level of the Keswick and Penrith Railway, finds himself standing at the north-east corner of a moorland plateau (Matterdale Common), having a mean height of over 1000 feet, and sloping gradually down to the River Glenderamackin (G), which bounds it on the north. The moorland is thickly covered with drift, and rock exposures are scarce, except here and there in the tributaries of the Glenderamackin, which run in a northerly direction from the Helvellyn Range, the principal being Troutbeck (T B) and Mosedale Beck (M B); (the latter is one of many of the same name in the district). That the stones in the drift were mainly brought from the Helvellyn Range is easily seen after a very slight examination; the boulders consist mainly of the more altered ashes and lavas derived from the Borrowdale series of the Helvellyn Range, with occasional boulders of the type of quartz-felsite dyke which penetrate the rocks of Helvellyn and its minor ridges (the best known being the familiar “Armboth and Helvellyn Dyke”); whilst the “Eycott” type of volcanic rock, occurring north of the main outcrop of Skiddaw Slates and having its nearest exposure within a mile of Troutbeck station, is entirely unrepresented. At the north-east corner of the moorland, close to Troutbeck station, a few boulders of mountain limestone indicate the point where the erratics from Helvellyn are beginning to be replaced by others brought from the eastward. The drifts of this moorland and of the region to the north have caused the interesting changes in the drainage of the area which it is the main object of this paper to describe.

I Propose in the autumn of the present year to lay certain detailed observations on the rhyolites of County Antrim before the Royal Dublin Society; but meanwhile it may be of interest to give some account of the mode of occurrence of these rocks in their most central locality, the neighbourhood of Carnearney and Tardree.

Having recently returned from another season's work in the West Indies and Mexico, where I was collecting additional data bearing upon the stupendous changes of level of land and sea which have lately affected the American continent, I find the review of the “Reconstruction of the Antillean Continent” by Mr. Jukes-Browne in the Geological Magazine, April 1895, p. 173, a few points of which may be further explained at the same time that I furnish some advance notes concerning recently observed phenomena which greatly strengthen the theory of stupendous changes of level in the Pleistocene period. Many months must elapse before I shall be able to complete the studies for publication, so that my papers on Cuba, Jamaica, and Mexico shall be published.

In a note published four years ago,1 I pointed out a fundamental objection to the principle of the expansion theory. That objection has been clearly expressed as follows by Prof. Leconte,2 who, like myself, considers it fatal to the theory: “Sedimentation cannot, of course, increase the sum of heat in the earth. Therefore the increased heat of the sediments by rise of isogeotherms, must be taken from somewhere else. Is it taken from below? Then the radius [or rather crust] below must contract as much as the sediments expand, and therefore there will be no elevation. Is it taken from the containing sides? Then the sides must lose as much as the sediments gain, and therefore must contract and make room for the lateral expansion, and therefore there would be no folding and no elevation.”

When such minerals as mica, pyroxene, nepheline, fluorite, and hematite are mentioned to us, we can hardly avoid associating their genesis with very high temperatures, and if amphibole be added we are equally bound to imagine also the existence of high pressure. So deeply rooted is this, I might almost say, superstition that few petrographers, when they find such minerals lining the fissures or cavities in rocks, fail to immediately conclude that great heat, and sometimes pressure, is indicated by such an occurrence. No doubt that in the vast majority of cases they would be right, yet I hope to show in these notes that such minerals have occasionally been produced under little or no pressure at a temperature so low as to be insufficient to carbonize or even discolour the organic matter of bone, that is at a temperature considerably below that of an ordinary baking oven.

One of the contact-rocks from Shap, which I collected a few years ago, has always presented some points of special interest; and in view of a recent careful re-examination of it, microscopical and chemical, I think a few remarks upon it may not be out of place.

Glauconite may be described as essentially a hydrous silicate of iron and potash, but of very variable composition, and generally containing varying proportions of other bodies, such as alumina, lime, and magnesia. It is found at different horizons in the whole geological series of rocks from the Cambrian up to the most recent Tertiary layers, and, indeed, is particularly interesting in being one of the very few silicates which are in actual process of formation on the sea-bed at the present time. The physical characteristics of glauconite grains are practically the same throughout the series, the normal colour being dark green, but sometimes being yellowish, greyish, or even almost red. These variations of colour, however, mean at least the commencement of decomposition. The size of the grains is usually about one millimetre in diameter, and although much larger masses are sometimes found these are merely agglomerations of the smaller grains. Under the microscope the grains appear quite homogeneous unless some foreign body is enclosed, or, as sometimes occurs, the commencement of decomposition gives a more or less zonary appearance to them.

The new edition of Dr. Geikie's esteemed work has already been noticed at some length in this Magazine. The present writer desires to add some notes—freely, but with all respect to the author—on a special part of the subject, viz. that relating to the “high-level shelly deposits,” and their bearing on the question of submergence during the Glacial epoch.