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AFTER sunset this evening there was a peculiar pink flush in the western sky here similar to that which attracted so much attention in England last year. Twenty-five minutes after the sun had gone down, the colour was so vivid as to be reflected from the snows of Mount Baker (10,700 feet), which is about seventy-five miles east of this place. Shortly afterwards it disappeared, but reappeared thirty-five minutes later, prolonging the twilight and making the stars look green, finally dying away very gradually. The weather for the past twelve days has been very wet, and to-night's is the first clear sunset in that time. Fourteen days ago, when on the Fraser River, eighty miles from here, I saw after sunset a very brilliant aurora borealis. I write this thinking there may be a repetition of the phenomena in England, in which case this note may possess interest.

DIVERSIFIED beyond compare among counties, both in its o surface features and in the range and exposure of its outcropping formations, Yorkshire has naturally given rise to a copious stream of geological literature, which has flowed unceasingly ever since the establishment of stratigraphical studies within it more than a century ago. The depth and strength of the current can be gauged well from this latest work, which is in all respects a powerful addition to the stream, with novel and serviceable attributes. Geology of Yorkshire: an Illustration of the Evolution of Northern England. By Prof. P. F. Kendall Herbert E. Wroot. 2 vols. Pp. xxii + 995 + 72 plates. (Leeds: Prof. Kendall, Moor Allerton; or H. E. Wroot, 99 Spencer Place, 1924.) 17s. 6d. net.

STONES bored by Pholas and Saxicava are by no means rare in the shelly “Basement clay” of East Yorkshire, and I have occasionally found examples in which the shells remained in the borings surrounded by fossiliferous sand, just as described by Mr. T. Mellard Reade from the Lancashire area. These stones are generally limestones of various kinds—Carboniferous, Magnesian, Jurassic, or Cretaceous—and the diversity of their origin seems to show that they have first been scattered over a shallow sea-bottom by floating ice, and afterwards perforated, but I do not think that they can be taken as proof of the marine origin of the boulder clay in which they now lie.

IF the intercrossing of two separate systems of folding be the essential condition in the complicated rock-structures so ably worked out by Mrs. M. M. Ogilvie Gordon in South Tyrol, I scarcely think the parallelism with the conditions in the Manx Carboniferous rocks can be so close as Mrs. Gordon suggests in her recent letter (NATURE, March 22, p. 490).

I THANK your correspondent, Mr. Chauncey Thomas, for pointing out my error in describing Glacier Bay as opening into Chilcoot Inlet, and for more exactly indicating its position. When I visited this region I was provided only with a small and inaccurate pocket-map, in which I found it difficult even to trace the course of the steamer, and I was under the impression that the whole of the fiord northward from Chatham Strait was known as Chilcoot Inlet, though my statement would still not be quite correct.

THE comment in NATURE of January 10, p. 58, on poets who have touched the field of science may fitly be supplemented by some reference to Robert Browning, whose utterances in this field are often overlooked, although he has shown a deeper insight into the spirit of research than any other poet known to me, and has expressed it many times in glowing words. This trait is the more remarkable since Browning evidently knew little and cared little about the particulars of science, and probably found them somewhat repellent; being in this respect widely different from Tennyson, who was well versed in the scientific literature of his day, and used his knowledge of it freely. Yet Tennyson's attitude remained always that of the orthodox cultured “naturalist” of Victorian times, skilful in observation, but recoiling in alarm from the outlook to which observation led. Browning on the other hand took little heed of the path, but pressed on boldly toward the outlook and gauged the qualities required to reach it. Even in his conception of a poet, as expressed in “How it Strikes a Contemporary”, he sees an investigator pure and simple, with an aptitude for understanding and recording: vividly pictured in the person of the elderly man of Valladolid, the true “Corregidor” of the city, whose "—very serviceable suit of black Was courtly once and conscientious still"; who "—walked and tapped the pavement with his cane, Scenting the world, looking it full in face"; everywhere taking such keen "cognisance of men and things" that you might even "—surprise the ferrel of his stick Trying the mortar's temper 'tween the chinks Of some new shop a-building—".

MANY previous writers have suggested that the dicynodont present in the Panchet sandstones might be Lystrosaurus. Some, such as de P. Cotter, were not concerned with a review of the dicynodont material available but had some particular stratigraphic axe to grind. Others (Lydekker, Das Gupta, von Huene) have directed attention to certain features of the few fragments available. It is probably not possible to identify Lystrosaurus on such fragments. Many characters can be matched individually with those seen in some other dicynodont. A complex of characters, and in particular the key characters of Lystrosaurus which are dependent on the relative shortness of the temporal region as compared with length and depth of snout region, can obviously only be assessed on a reasonably complete skull. The matter has been well expressed by Das Gupta1, “ without the discovery of an entire skull, the zoological position of the Panchet reptile cannot be definitely settled”.