On the Older Tertiary Formations of the West-Indian Islands

In 1867 I believed that I had concluded the examination of all the collections of fossil corals from the West-Indian Islands which were available, and I was not aware that any others were likely to be formed. Therefore in a communication to this Society, which was published in the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxiv. p. 9, after having been read Dec. 4, 1867, I summarized the results of some years' labour on the subject. In the winter of 1868–1869, Mr. P. T. Cleve, a Swedish mineralogist and geologist, undertook a geological investigation of the Northeastern West-Indian archipelago. He visited the Virgin Islands, St. Bartholomew, Anguilla, St. Martin, Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Kitts, and spent a short time in Puerto Rico. After making collections of minerals and fossils, he returned home, and communicated a paper on the geology of the North-eastern West-Indian Islands to the Royal Swedish Academy on November 23, 1870. This communication consists of the descriptive geology and mineralogy of the islands, with a few notices of the fossil forms. The palæontology of the more important islands remained untouched; and early in the year 1873 Mr. Cleve asked me to help him in the matter. Some weeks since I received a great number of fossil corals, which had been collected with care, and which belong to the University of Upsala and to the collector. A cursory examination of the great collection was sufficient to prove its importance; for it contained abundant evidence of the former existence of