Almost Parallel Structures

A discussion of torsion of Riemannian G-structures leads to a survey of contributions of Alfred Gray and others on almost Hermitian manifolds, G_2-manifolds, curvature identities, volume expansions, plotting geodesics, and the geometry of nilmanifolds. The paper concludes with a new example of a compact 8-manifold with a quaternionic 4-form that is closed but not parallel.