relieved in 1828 at finding, in some spots on the Bormida, projecting fragments of serpentine in places which the erosion of the valleys had exposed to view. I concluded that they may not have travelled far, and when I saw some large blocks on the Superga (in 1828), I immediately suspected that as that hill consisted of beds of the same formation, the blocks might have been washed out of the Miocene not far off. I therefore now suggested this view to Gastaldi, and found that he was by no means tenacious of his printed theory, although he said that the blocks were many of them angular, of very great size, and accompanied by Alpine loam. We then examined the beds of the Superga, both those dipping to the north-west, and those to the south-east, and on both sides of this anticlinal are strata containing fragments of stone of various kinds, some not known in the neighbouring Alps or Apennines, from two to eight feet in diameter. On our ascent to the Superga I saw a thickness of sixty feet regularly stratified of this conglomerate, in which were fragments consisting chiefly of serpentine, but some of limestone, others of protogine granite, and one of the latter angular and eight feet in diameter. In less than half an hour’s search, I found two of the serpentine and one of the limestone pebbles with scratches, which would be called glacial if they were found in a modern moraine, though not such as you would select for examples for a museum. Still I searched this year in some recent moraines quite as long without finding better. As to the age of the beds, there is no doubt of their belonging to the Lower Miocene, the marine fossils of which we collected in strata both below and above them. These enormous blocks, therefore, were brought into their present position by causes which acted in the Miocene age. I know of no agency but that of ice which could have quietly let them down upon subjacent beds of undisturbed fine marl and sand. Hence I conclude that there was floating ice in the Lower Miocene period, and if the few scratches I saw really imply glacial striation, the ice-rafts were probably derived from glaciers which came down from mountains bordering the glacial sea; perhaps from the Alps, for that chain must have existed before the origin of a large part of the Lower Miocene. I have kept the specimens I found of these Miocene striated stones to show Ramsay, who will be interested in hearing, that in spite of some Brazilian genera of trees and insects, and not a few palms, and some reptiles of good size, and many other fossil genera found on both sides of the Alps and supposed to imply a subtropical climate, I am not afraid to appeal to ice as the only known cause capable of stratifying these great masses in the manner in which they occur.”