Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 27.djvu/57

 Professor Huxley communicates a letter from Dr. Bunzel, of Vienna, giving an account of a skull of Cretaceous age, belonging to a new order of reptiles with bird-like heads, for which the author proposed the name of Ornithocephala.

Messrs. Hancock and Howse describe a new Labyrinthodont amphibian from the Magnesian Limestone of Durham, and a new Proterosaurus (P. Huxleyi) from the marl-slate of the same district, associated with the P. Speneri. They also announce the discovery in the same rock of specimens of that peculiar fish the Dorypterus Hofmanni, showing the ventral fins and heterocercal tail.

A very interesting palaeontological discovery has also been made by Mr. Maw of a fine skull of a Labyrinthodont in the middle of the Coalbrook-Dale Coal-measures.

Mr. H. Woodward has drawn attention to some new Crustaceans, including a species of the curious Secondary genus Paloeocorystes, and also to two new forms referable to the family of Portunidae, in the lower beds of the London Clay of Portsmouth, of which the section has been described by Mr. Meyer. Mr. Carruthers has described a silicified fern-stem, probably from the sands under the London Clay at Heme Bay. In structure this specimen agrees most closely with the living Osmunda regalis. The minutest structure of the original specimen is preserved in a remarkable manner, even showing the starch-grains and the delicate mycelium of a fungus contained in its cells.

Colonial and Foreign Geology.

We have had some excellent papers on Colonial Geology ; and we are especially indebted to our correspondents in South Africa.

Dr. Sutherland describes an ancient Boulder-clay in Natal. It is an argillaceous deposit with boulders, reposing upon old sandstones, the surface of which is often deeply grooved and striated. He considers that this deposit may possibly be of Permian age.

Mr. G. W. Stow describes the Jurassic beds (with their Trigonia- limestones) and the Saliferous beds of Uitenhage, between the Cape and Natal. These are succeeded by Tertiary deposits, the newer of which follow the coast-line, and run in raised terraces up the river-valleys — the one being characterized by a large Panopoea, and the other by a species of Akera. The Karoo formation of the Stormberg, which is of Triassic age, with its plant-beds and Dicynodont fossils, are described in another memoir. The present surface-conditions of this part of the interior Mr. Stow considers espe-