24. Giliaks 25. Aborigines of S. W. China. 26. Negritoes of Andaman island, Malacca. The alphabetic list of races, which terminates each of the preceding volumes of the Stanford series, is omitted for want of space, containing 3000 entries. This list, however, with much. additional information, will be issued in a separate form. ANTHROPOLOGY IN AMERICA.-The Biological Society of Washington has issued its first volume of Proceedings, a neat pamphlet of 110 pages, containing the organization, constitution, list of members, and an account of papers read to May 26, 1882. An excellent feature of this work is one that all societies desiring to economize their means will do well to imitate. Instead of publishing all papers in extenso, a reference is given to all places where the whole or parts of papers appear in print. Mr. Calvin M. Young, of Darla P. O., Ohio, sends to the editor, a photo of a specimen of the polished ornament commonly called the brooding bird, in which the animal is a turtle, and not a bird. We have seen the beaver taken off in the same way. The turtle-form is exceedingly rare, if it is not the only example. The image was found near a mound in Miami county, Ohio, two miles west of Stillwater river. Mr. William Kite, of Germantown, Pa., draws attention to the existence of doughnut-shaped stones in Pennsylvania, similar to those so common from California. Mr. Kite says, I have in my possession two such specimens, one from Chester county, Pa., and one on the outskirts of Germantown. The latter is the more curious, as it has a saucer-like cavity worked on both sides of the stone." THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN.-The third number of Vol. IV, of this established quarterly is well above the average in merit. The original papers are as follows: The native races of Colombia. By E. G. Barney. Early European pipes found in the United States. By E. A. Barber. The Prehistoric architecture of America. By Stephen D. Peet. The correspondence and notes in this Journal are quite as valuable as the original communications. GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. A FOSSIL CROATIAN WHALE (Mesocetus agrami).—P. J. Van Beneden, in the "Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium," gives an account of the remains of a whalebone whale contained in the museum of Agram, Croatia. These remains are not only of interest from their affinities with existing species, but from the light they shed upon the changes undergone by the European seas since the Tertiary epoch. The Black Sea during that period covered Austria, Bavaria, Wurtemburg, and the lower part of Switzerland, and contained true whales, whereas now its cretacean fauna consists of only three dolphins. The remains consist of the hinder portion of the cranium, a mandibular condyle, several vertebræ and a part of a rib. The form of the condyle is a mean between that of the existing whalebone whales and that of the dolphins, showing habits intermediate in some respects between these two groups. When the transverse section of the cranium of Mesocetus is compared with that of Balanoptera rostrata, a striking difference is observable in form and in the relative development of the bones composing them. The former is spread out laterally at the expense of the height; the sphenoid is at least twice as broad as high, and the palatine plate forms a horizontal cavity under the sphenoid; whereas in Une Fossile Balenie de Croatie, appartenant au genre Mèsocèto, par P. J. Van Beneden. the existing species the sphenoid is much higher than wide, and the fold of the palatine is vertical. ORIGIN OF THE PRAIRIES.-I notice in the AMERICAN NATURALIST for May a note on "The origin of the prairies," in which the Indian custom of burning the grass is made to play a major part. Now, it seems to me, that this may help to account for the slow spreading of forests, but not for the origin of the prairies. Why did not trees spring up over one part of the country as weil as another? This is the question; not why did not the forests spread? A reason often given is that the forests flourished only along streams because the prairies are too dry, but the timber often covers the highest points and is not found on the lower ones. Did not the native grasses cover the ground first and thus prevent all light seeds from finding a place to grow? and as only the light seeds would be transported by the wind, and thus spread rapidly, the extension of the tree-covered areas was very slow. We observed several years since, that in Northern Ohio trees of the genus Populus, other than P. tremuloides, were very rare. Now they are not uncommon. Wherever a brushpile was burned at the proper season, if it was not a period of drought, the cottonwood appeared. The seeds must have come with the winds, and wherever they found soft earth ready to receive them, if the season was favorable, they grew. Of course the oak, hickory, walnut and beech could not travel in this way. It seems to me that in these facts we have an important element of the solution of this much-debated question.--J. W. Huett, Ottowa, Ill. DAVIS' CLASSIFICATION OF LAKE BASINS.-This is a valuable essay, by Mr. W. M. Davis, on a topic in physical geology which has not before received such detailed and special treatment. It is reprinted from the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History (Vol. XXI, 1882). The author's primary classification of lakes is into three classes: 1. Construction or orographic basins, of which (1) great basins such as Great Salt lake and the great lakes of Central Africa are examples, (2) mountain trough basins (the western part of Lake Superior), (3) fault basins (the Dead sea and other species); B. Destruction or erosion basins, of these are the following species: (1) Glacial erosion basins, (2) wind erosion, (3) solution, (4) pit crater basins; and C. Obstruction, barrier or enclosure basins, of which the most important are (1) fan delta barrier basins, (2) ice barriers, (3) moraine barrier basins, (4) drift barrier basins and a number of other species. The author claims that the Great lakes, the Italian and other lakes, regarded by Ramsay, Logan, Newberry and others as due to glacial erosion, are more properly examples of what he calls "drift barrier basins." He considers that besides the small moraine barrier lakes, which are now found on Pike's peak, and in the Alps and the north-and-south lakes in Central New York, such as Cayuga, there are many others "whose obstruction must be given the more general name of glacial or fluviatile drift." Farther on he says: "The detritus of the glacial period was deposited with much irregularity, and it must often have interrupted the drainage lines of pre-glacial times; we cannot doubt that the greater number of lakes in Canada, New England and the Adirondacks, are of this origin, but nowhere are drift barriers of more significance than in the region of our great lakes." Davis believes that the evidence ordinarily quoted to prove their glacial origin proves only their glacial occupation. He regards Lake Erie as the effect of simple subaërial erosion slightly modified by glacial action, while he does not feel obliged to regard the other great lakes as the "work of the great ice-plow." He considers St. Mary's river, Niagara and the St. Lawrence to be "all postglacial overflows after the obstruction by drift and the change of level by northern depression were accomplished." The brief discussion is of a good deal of value, and will be read with interest in connection with the discussions now going on between Professors Newberry, Lesley, Spencer and other of our geologists. COLLETT'S GEOLOGY OF INDIANA FOR 1881.-This volume is fully equal to if not superior to its predecessors in interest and value, both from a practical and scientific point of view. Mr. T. H. Johnson's report on the transverse strength and elasticity of building stones is valuable and graphically illustrated, and Professor Collett, the State geologist, has been efficiently aided in his work by Messrs, R. T. Brown, M. N. Elrod, A. J. Phinney and John N. Hurty. The volume is largely made up of palæontological matter supplied by Professor James Hall and Dr. C. A White, being illustrated with fifty-five plates, rendering the vol ume of much educational value. TWO NEW GENERA OF MAMMALIA FROM THE WASATCH EOCENE. -The Phenacodus laticuneus differs from the species of Phenacodus in the form of its superior premolars. The second, possesses two cusps while there is but one in the genus Phenacodus. The new genus may be called Diacodexis. The species referred by me to Pachynolophus do not belong to that genus, which is identical with Propalæotherium. In the heel of the last inferior. molar, and general dental characters, they agree with Lophiodon, but they have seven superior molars, the first premolar well developed. The genus may be called Heptodon, the type is Lophiodon ventorum Cope.-E. D. Cope. WHITE'S CARBONIFEROUS INVERTEBRATE FOSSILS OF NEW MEXICO. We have received a report, by Dr. C. A. White, printed as an appendix to the forthcoming volume of the Wheeler Survey west of the 100th meridian. The collection described represents the coal-measure division of the Carboniferous system of the Upper Mississippi, and is closely allied to that upper division of that group. GEOLOGICAL NEWS.-The Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History contains descriptions of three new species from the Hudson river and Niagara groups, by S. A. Miller; a description of a new species of Bourguetocrinus, by P. De Loriol, of Switzerland, and remarks upon a species of Cristatella, by C. Schlumberger, of Paris, both from the Ripley group of the Cretaceous, Alabama; a description of two new crinoids from the shales of the Niagara group, New York, by E. N. S. Ringueberg, and an article on American Palæozoic Bryozoa, by E. Ö. Ulrich. The latter is the first of a series, and contains not only descriptions of twenty-five new species, but discourses upon the general structure of the class; upon the affinities and zoological position of the Monticuliporida and Fistuliporida, which the author is inclined to place among the Bryozoa rather than among the Coelenterata: as well as a scheme of classification of the American Palæozoic Bryozoa. M. P. de Tchihatchef, in a discourse delivered at Southampton, combated the idea that the deserts of Asia and Africa are beds of the sea recently raised, and stated his belief that the deposits of sand are of atmospheric origin, and are the product of influences acting from the more or less remote geological epoch, when the rocks from which they were formed, and which in many places still pierce through the superficial sand, were first raised.-J. F. Whiteaves (Am. Jour. of Science, Oct.) notices the occurrence in the Utica formation of Siphonotreta scotica, a spinose brachiopod not before known to occur in North America.- Mr. W. E. Abbott, in a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of New South Wales, refers to and endorses the opinion of Mr. Russell, that the amount of precipitation over the watershed of the Darling exceeds the evaporation plus the amount carried off by the river, and that there must therefore be an underground drainage. The fact that wells sunk in the vicinity of the Darling have a flow independent of the variations in that river, seems to support this opinion.In the Geological Magazine, Mr. T. F. Jamieson writes in support of the theory, propounded by him in 1865, that the submergence of the land during and after the conclusion of the glacial period was caused by the weight of the ice upon the elastic crust of the earth. The shifting of the centre of gravity of the earth consequent upon the weight, according to the theory of Mr. Croll, will not, in his opinion, account for the existence of raised beaches in high northern latitudes, as at the transference of the weight of the ice from the north pole to the south, and submergence caused by it would cease as the weight diminished, allowing no time for beaches to form. A submergence caused by actual sinking of the crust from superincumbent pressure would, on the contrary return but slowly |