levels up to 200 feet. In some parts it is filled with stones of various sizes. It is of different degrees of hardness; and the shells, although generally distributed, vary in number at different places, as well as the stones. The stones are all more or less striated and ground. Above the lower clay in many places are beds of sand, and from these beds wide cracks run down the clay, some vertically, others diagonally, and from these smaller cracks diverge horizontally-all being filled with sand no doubt from above, that on the sides of them being cemented together, and the centre quite loose. This sand contains organisms similar to those of the clay, but in a very friable condition. Above the sand is often seen more clay, and crowning the whole a deposit of stones derived from all the previous geological formations, some being of great size. One such, of granite, at least 30 tons in weight, near the Custom-House at Wick, is 66 feet above the level of the sea. The clay rests upon rocks grooved and polished. The grooves run about N. and S., with variations to the E. and W. Some of the shells are almost perfect, the smaller and more delicate ones being most so; others, especially the Astartes, are covered with their epidermis; a few are perforated, evidently by the Whelk and the boring sponge, Cliona. In no case had he found two valves of any shell united. A difficulty often presents itself to many on finding that although the edges of the greater part of the broken shells are rounded, others retain their sharpness, as if only just broken. This difficulty will vanish if a collection of the recent broken shells be made from the sea-shore, for there the very same appearances may be seen, agreeing in every particular with those of the Boulder-clay. The mode of transport he thought had been by water-borne ice, the work of long periods. As he only wished to introduce the organisms, he left all this to others. He then read a detailed list of the organisms, first observing that, as Mr. Jeffreys had kindly examined all the shells and Dr. Bowerbank the sponges, the list might be depended upon :— Univalves. Trophon scalariforme. turricula. Natica nitida. sordida. helicoides. Aporrhais pes-pelecani. abyssorum, n. s. (Sars). Bivalves. Pecten maximus. opercularis. Leda caudata. Cardium echinatum. edule. Norvegicum. Cyprina Islandica. Astarte arctica. compressa. Bivalves (continued). Astarte elliptica. sulcata. Abstract.-Shells 32 species, 15 of which are Univalves and 17 Bivalves; Balanus, 1; Annelida, 1; Polyzoa, 4; Sponges, 2; Coral, 1; Alga (Melobesia), 1; making a total of 42 species, being the longest list of fossils ever before noticed from the boulder-clay of Caithness. Of the shells, 29 are British, 2 Scandinavian, and 1 Arctic. On Fossil Fishes from the Old Red Sandstone of Caithness. By C. W. PEACH. The author introduced the subject by stating that at the Meeting of the Association at Aberdeen in 1858 he laid before the members some fishes from the Old Red Sandstone which he thought not only new to Caithness, but one of which he believed new to geology. These had since been examined by Sir P. Egerton, and figured and described in Decade X. of the Government Geological Survey. The one he had considered new, and which proved to be so, had a true bony vertebral column, and thus differed from the fishes of the Old Red period previously discovered. He expressed the great gratification that he felt at being relieved from the painful position of standing alone, as he had done for some years, in the opinion that true bony fishes occurred in the Old Red of Caithness. He then entered into a description of several species (fine specimens of which he laid on the table) that he had further collected, and which he considered also as new to Caithness-some new altogether; these have long lobated fins, bony ribs and processes, &c. One species was evidently Gyroptychius of M'Coy; and although some of the others belong to that genus, they are new species. In this opinion he was to a great extent supported by Professor Huxley, to whom the whole of the specimens will be sent for examination and description. On the Correlation of the Slates and Limestones of Devon and Cornwall with the Old Red Sandstones of Scotland, &c. By W. PENGELLY, F.G.S. The distinguished author of 'Siluria,' as geologists well know, has made a tripartite division of the slates and limestones of Devon and Cornwall, as well as of the Old Red Sandstones of Scotland, &c., and given chronological equivalency to the Upper, Middle, and Lower groups of each respectively. Thus, he places the Barnstaple and Petherwin beds (the latter characterized by the presence of Clymenia and Cypridina) on the horizon of the Upper Old Red, with its Holoptychius and Phyllolepis; the limestones of Torquay, Newton, and Plymouth, in which are found Stringocephalus, Calceola, Bronteus, Acervularia, &c., are made to synchronize with the deposits of Caithness, &c., containing the remains of Asterolepis, Coccosteus, &c.; whilst the slates of Meadfoot, &c., in South Devon, and Looe, &c., in Cornwall, distinguished by the remarkable coral Pleurodictyum problematicum, are regarded as the equivalents in time of the Lower Old Red rocks of Forfar and the North-east Highlands, which are charged with Cephalaspis, Pteraspis, and Onchus*. Though this co-ordination may be said to have found a large acceptance, it is not in keeping with the opinion of some who laboured long and sedulously amongst the older rocks of Devon and Cornwall,-for example, the late Sir H. De la Beche † and the Rev. David Williams; nor is it unchallenged by some existing writers, amongst whom may be mentioned Mr. Pages and Mr. Jukes ||. That some diversity of opinion should exist respecting the true relations of the two systems of rocks now under notice is what might be expected when their lithological and palæontological dissimilarities are remembered. The northern beds are eminently arenaceous, whilst those in the south are almost exclusively argillaceous or calcareous; the former teem with fossil fish, and the latter with the exuviæ of molluscous and radiate animals: but, according to our fossil registers, Scotland does not yield the shells, corals, or sponges so abundant in Devonshire; nor are the ichthyolites of the former found in the latter area: they have no organic remains in common. It will doubtless be remembered, however, that, in his 'Palæozoic Fossils of Cornwall, Devon, and West Somerset'¶, Professor Phillips has figured and described, as a scale of Holoptychius, a fossil found in the slates of Meadfoot, near * Siluria, 3rd edition, p. 433. + Memoirs of Geol. Survey, vol. i. p. 103. Report of Royal Geol. Soc. of Cornwall, 1843, p. 123. § Advanced Text-Book of Geology, p. 123. | Manual of Geology, 2nd edition, 1862, p. 492. ¶ Pal. Foss. pl. 57. fig. 256, and p. 133. Torquay, in South Devon. It would seem that this identification has not been considered perfectly reliable, since the fossil has not found a place in subsequent works on the Devonshire beds, or in Professor Morris's Catalogue of British Fossils. The mineral and mechanical characters of the Old Red rocks may, perhaps, sufficiently explain the absence in them of mollusks and other dwellers at the seabottom; but there seems no satisfactory mode of accounting for the non-appearance of fishes in the slates and limestones of Devon and Cornwall. We are asked, by one proposed solution of the problem, to suppose that some geographical difficulty or barrier separated the two areas and prevented the migration and mingling of their inhabitants; whilst another suggests that the Old Red fish were probably at home in fresh water only, and ought not to be looked for in beds so decidedly marine as those of Devon and Cornwall. The interesting and important discovery, by Sir R. I. Murchison*, of the intermixture, in the same Devonian bed in Russia, of the fish of the Upper and Middle Old Red of Scotland with the shells of Devonshire seems to dispose of the latter of the two proposed solutions just mentioned, but leaves the difficulty untouched; nor does it appear that the synchronism of the representative beds in Britain necessarily flows from it. It proves, of course, that the fish and shells lived at one and the same time in Russian, not that they did so in British, waters. We may have an example here of the distinction between geological contemporaneity and synchrony, so ably pointed out, on a recent occasion, by Professor Huxley †. At the Meeting of the British Association held at Cork, in 1843, Mr. Peach brought under the notice of the Geological Section certain fossils which had then recently been found, by Mr. Couch, in the Devonian slates of Polperro, in Cornwall. The paleontologists to whom they were then submitted considered them to be the remains of fishes; this was the opinion also of the late Mr. Hugh Miller at first, but subsequently he considered them to be very doubtful and extremely puzzling; ultimately they were pronounced, by Professor M'Coy and Mr. Carter, of Cambridge, to be sponges merely. It may still be doubted, however, whether certain fossils found with them were not true ichthyolites; indeed, one specimen which, a few years since, I found in the same beds at Looe, in Cornwall, has been pronounced by Sir P. Egerton and others to be a decided ichthyodorulitet. It has not been identified, however, even generically. A few weeks since, I had the good fortune to find a fossil in the Pleurodictyum slates at Meadfoot, near Torquay; that is, in certainly the lowest group of the rocks of South Devon, and which Sir R. I. Murchison has placed on the horizon of the Cephalaspidian and Pteraspidian beds--the lowest of his divisions of the Old Red of Scotland. The fossil was at once identified by Mr. Davies, of the British Museum, as a scale, or rather a portion of one, of Phyllolepis concentricus, Agass.-a fish known only by its fossil scales, which have hitherto been found only in the Clashbinnie beds, belonging to Sir R. I. Murchison's "Upper Old Red." This fossil, then, appears to necessitate the belief, either that the organism which it represents had a greater vertical range than has been supposed (that is, that it belonged to the Lower and Middle, as well as Upper, Old Red fauna), or that the Pleurodictyum beds of Devon and Cornwall, instead of being on the horizon of the Lower, are on that of the Upper Old Red Series of Scotland. To accept the first of these (apparently the only two) alternatives would be to accept the difficulty of supposing that Phyllolepis dates from the times of Cephalaspis, the extinction of which it witnessed, as well as the subsequent introduction and withdrawal of Coccosteus, Asterolepis, and others; and yet that, unlike its early contemporaries, it failed to leave any trace of its existence in the Old Red rocks, save only in the uppermost of their three groups. Rejecting this, however, we seem compelled to adopt its rival, which amounts to this:-There are in Devon and Cornwall no representatives of the Lower and Middle Old Red rocks of Scotland, but the Lowest (the Pleurodictyum) beds of the former are on the horizon of the upper division of the latter, an opinion in *Siluria, 3rd edition, p. 382. +Anniversary Address, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xvii. p. 40, &c. harmony with those of Sir H. De la Beche and the Rev. David Williams, already spoken of, as well as that advocated by myself in an earlier paper*. It will be seen also that the indications of the supposed scale found by Professor Phillips were to the same effect. Like the Old Red Sandstone fish found in Russia by Sir R. I. Murchison, the Phyllolepis-scale was surrounded with marine shells†, and also by corals; hence the ancient fish to which it belonged was not incapable of living in the sea. On the Gold-bearing Strata of Merionethshire. The author referred to a paper read before the Association at Manchester in 1861, the object of which, he said, was to point out the probability of gold-seeking in the Dolgelley district being, at no very remote date, of commercial importance. He stated that, since the last Meeting, he had acquired additional facts connected with the subject, and his wish was to present them in support of the opinion expressed in the paper referred to. The author said that he had employed an eminent analytical chemist for several months upon the spot, to test the accuracy of his former experiments; and the assays referred to in the paper were made of 8000 grains, taken from quantities of 56 lbs., after the most careful sampling, instead of the customary 400 grains. He said that the geological features of the district were now too well known to require more than a repetition of the general statement that the rocks are of the Cambrian and Lower Silurian series, forming a junction in a very sinuous course, and frequently cut through by narrow bands of porphyritic greenstone. The metalliferous veins have a general bearing N.E. and S.W., with an underlie to the north. The auriferous district under notice is comprised in the Ordnance Survey Maps, 75, S.E., and the upper part of 59, N.E. For convenience, he divides the district into the following sections:-Cwmheisian, Maesgwm, Berthwllyd, Cambrian, Clogau, and Vigra. The parishes included in the notice are Llanfachreth, Trawsfynydd, Llanddwye, Llaneltyd, and Llanaber. THE CWMHEISIAN SECTION. The Cumheisian uchaf Mine has in it more than twenty strong metalliferous lodes. One very remarkable junction of about fourteen lodes is 40 feet wide, and the whole of this mass of lode-stuff contains more or less gold. A large number of assays gave from 3 to 19 dwts. of gold to the ton of quartz. Picked specimens of galena have given as much as 16 ounces to the ton; and more than 170 ounces of gold were taken by Mr. Clement from about 300 tons of mineral from all parts of the mine. Mr. Arthur Dean produced 148 ounces from 157 tons of ore. Gold, visible in blendic quartz, has been discovered within the last month. Cumheisian Isaf is a silver-lead mine, adjoining the last-mentioned on the south. The galena yields about 47 ounces of silver to the ton; and one lode in the mine gives, on assay, 5 to 11 dwts. of gold to the ton of mineral. Gwynfynydd Mine is opposite Cwmheisian Ucha, on the west bank of the river Mawddach. Galena from this mine, though poor in silver, has occasionally given as much as 8 ounces of gold to the ton. Hafod-y-bach Mine.-Samples of quartz, indiscriminately taken from this mine, gave from 3 to 5 dwts. of gold to the ton. The mineral here is probably richer than this. Tyddynglwadis Silver-Lead Mine is on the west bank of the river Mawddach, about eight miles from Dolgelley, in the direction of Tanybwlch. This mine is situate exactly at the junction of the Cambrian and Lower Silurian rocks, which is distinctly observable at the top of the charming waterfall, Pistil-y-Cain. The average quantity of silver contained in the galena is from 50 to 60 ounces to * Report of the British Association, 1860, p. 100. + Siluria, 3rd edition, pp. 383 and 433. the ton. Selected specimens have given as much as 300 ounces. Visible gold is occasionally found in the galena, and he had seen it also in copper-pyrites. Assays for gold gave from 6 to 11 dwts. per ton. Some moss pulled from the river-side had small specks of gold attached to the roots. Penmaen Copper Mine has some very strong metalliferous veins upon it, said to be auriferous. Visible gold is said to have been found here. Dolfrwynog Gold Mine is situate about a mile over the mountain eastward from Cwmheisian, and includes the farms denoted on the Ordnance Map-Dolfrwynog, Tynsimna, Bwlchroswen, and Rhoswen. This is a very remarkable property. There are several strong lodes, only one of which he notices in the paper: it is known as the "Gold Lode." He had stones of beautiful quartz from this lode, containing at least 400 ounces of gold to the ton!; and he believes that a goodly amount of gold will be obtained from this lode, although it underlies north 6 feet in a fathom, and at the depth of about 60 fathoms enters a spur of the North Dolfrwynog Mine. He had specimens from this lode in the International Exhibition, and had seen stones taken from a depth of nearly 40 fathoms, richer than any at Clogau. The bulk of this lode-stuff will give on an average, he thought, from 10 to 15 dwts. of gold to the ton. East Dolfrwynog Mine is on the east of the last-mentioned, and takes in the farms marked on the Ordnance Map-Buarthrae, Doledd, and Penbryn. There are six or more lodes on this property, which give on assay from 6 to 9 dwts. of gold to the ton. The Dolfrwynog Gold Lode runs into Penbryn-a few yards from the spot, at Dolfrwynog, where the richest gold was discovered. It is about 5 feet wide, and of precisely the same character, and will probably prove as rich. North Dolfrwynog Gold and Copper Mine is situate on the east bank of the Mawddach. There are ten metalliferous veins in this property, and all of them auriferous. The Dolfrwynog rich Gold Lode underlies into this sett; and it is certain that at the depth of 60 fathoms very rich gold will be found. Assays of the lode-stuff from this mine give an average of 9 dwts. of gold to the ton. The author said that he had once extracted as much as 6 ounces to the ton from stuff in which gold was not detectable under a powerful microscope. He had recently superintended the removal of about 100 tons of alluvium from the eastern bank of the Mawddach, with the object of discovering whether the particles of gold found therein increased in size from the surface to the bed-rock. He found this to be the case; and the sample of coarse-grain gold produced was perhaps the most interesting item of the recent discoveries. This gold was obtained by a very rough washing over a trough 30 feet long,-a process which washed away all the fine gold, weighing probably ten times as much as the coarse gold obtained. It is probable that the whole side of this mountain will be found to contain gold in paying quantities on the erection of machinery to economize labour. West Dolfrwynog Copper and Gold Mine adjoins the last-mentioned on the south, and is marked on the Ordnance Map the "Turf Copper Mine," from the singular fact that, some time ago, about £10,000 of copper was sold from the ashes of peat, there burnt for the purpose. The water at the present time is highly saturated with copper; and a shaft, now in course of sinking, will probably discover a large deposit of copper-ore, if not gold. The lode-stuff of this mine gives on assay about the same quantity of gold as North Dolfrwynog. On a portion of the mine the author found the alluvium to contain gold under the same circumstances and in about the same proportions as the North Dolfrwynog Mine. Gold has been obtained here at the rate of 6 ounces to the ton. The minerals of this mine and Dolfrwynog are identical in character. THE MAESGWM SECTION Is on the western side of the Trawsfynydd Road, nearly opposite Tyddynglwadis. Maesgum Mining Sett extends over 1600 acres, and has three large lodes on it, which are all auriferous. The Cwmheisian Great Gold Lode runs into it, and the Ganllwyd Gold Lode, |