appears probable that their origin is due to the segregation or infiltration of siliceous matter, in the same manner as happens with the oxides of iron in many sedimentary rocks. SILICEOUS SINTER AND JASPER. The siliceous sinter is either quite white, of little specific gravity, and with a somewhat pearly fracture, passing into pinkish pearl quartz; or it is yellowish white, with a harsh fracture, and it then contains an earthy powder in small cavities. Both varieties occur, either in large irregular masses in the altered trachyte, or in seams included in broad, vertical, tortuous, irregular veins of a compact, harsh stone of a dull red colour, appearing like a sandstone. This stone, however, is only altered trachyte; and a nearly similar variety, but often honeycombed, sometimes adheres to the projecting plate-like veins, described in the last paragraph. The jasper is of an ochre yellow or red colour; it occurs in large irregular masses, and sometimes in veins, both in the altered trachyte and in an associated mass of scoriaceous basalt. The cells of the scoriaceous basalt are lined or filled with fine, concentric layers of chalcedony, coated and studded with bright-red oxide of iron. In this rock, especially in the rather more compact parts, irregular angular patches of the red jasper are included, the edges of which insensibly blend into the surrounding mass; other patches occur having an intermediate character between perfect jasper and the ferruginous, decomposed, basaltic base. In these patches, and likewise in the large vein-like masses of jasper, there occur little rounded cavities, of exactly the same size and form with the air-cells, which in the scoriaceous basalt are filled and lined with layers of chalcedony. Small fragments of the jasper, examined under the microscope, seem to resemble the chalcedony with its colouring matter not separated into layers, but mingled in the siliceous paste, together with some impurities. I can understand these facts,—namely, the blending of the jasper into the semi-decomposed basalt,—its occurrence in angular patches, which clearly do not occupy pre-existing hollows in the rock,—and its containing little vesicles filled with chalcedony, like those in the scoriaceous lava,—only on the supposition that a fluid, probably the same fluid which deposited the chalcedony in the air-cells, removed in those parts where there were no cavities, the ingredients of the basaltic rock, and left in their place silica and iron, and thus produced the jasper. In some specimens of silicified wood, I have observed, that in the same manner as in the basalt, the solid parts were converted into a dark-coloured homogeneous stone, whereas the cavities formed by the larger sap-vessels (which may be compared with the air-vesicles in the basaltic lava) and other irregular hollows, apparently produced by decay, were filled with concentric layers of chalcedony; in this case, there can be little