we crossed a second great depression leading into the Green River Valley. This had been washed out, to a depth of 300 feet or more, in a series of nearly horizontal strata, composed of red shales, sandstones, and conglomerates. In some of the beds there were layers of ash-colored clays, and in these a few mammalian and tortoise bones were found, which indicated clearly the Tertiary age of the deposit. The same beds were seen the next day, near one of the branches of the North Uintah River, dipping about 5° to the N.W., and having beneath them a series of chocolate and ash-colored clays, which, rising gradually, attain a great development farther to the S.E., and form the remarkable Tertiary bluffs along the the Green and White Rivers, which it was our special object to investigate.

Crossing the Green River a few miles above the mouth of the Uintah, we passed eastward to the White River, over an elevated plateau, which was washed out along its sides into the true "Mauvaises Terres" form of conical buttes, beautifully variegated with alternating chocolate, green, and ash-colored layers. An examination of these deposits soon showed that they contained many vertebrate fossils, which were weathering out of the cliffs on every side. Farther up the White River, these remains were more numerous, and large collections were obtained, including many species of Tertiary mammals, reptiles, and fishes, some of which were undescribed. Tortoises were especially abundant, and at one locality no less than eleven of them were seen from one point of view. These various remains proved to be almost all identical with those we had found north of the Uintah Mountains, near Fort Bridger, and hence indicated plainly the synchronism of the two deposits. The great difference in elevation, however, and the character of the intervening region, render it more than probable that they belong to distinct lakebasins, connected in the same system of drainage. To distinguish this ancient lake-region from the Green River Tertiarybasin north of the mountains, the former may appropriately be called the Uintah basin. The stream which connected the two, however, did not flow through the present Green River Valley; although the tongue of Tertiary strata extending up into "Brown's Hole" would seem to point to that depression for a probable inlet from the north.

After exploring the region near the White River for twenty miles or more, and finding the variegated Tertiary clays replaced by hard sandstones and grits of a lower horizon, we turned back, and proceeded by a nearly N.W. course across the Green River to Fort Uintah. Here we procured an Indian guide, who led us nearly N.E. over the mountains by an extremely difficult route. On this journey we first passed over an extensive series of shales and sandstones of various shades of red,-a color

which predominates in nearly all the strata of the Uintah Mountains. These beds are evidently of Mesozoic age, and incline 20° to 45° to the southward. At one or two points, large masses of white compact gypsum were noticed in the sandstones. The oldest rocks observed were hard gray and purple sandstones and quartzites, extending to the bottom of the deepest cañons, and apparently forming the central mass of the Uintah range, in place of the granitic nucleus, which gives to the eastern Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas their most marked character. While descending the northern slope of the mountains toward the great Tertiary basin of the Green River, which lay in the distance, 2000 feet below us, we passed over a high ridge, from the summit of which appeared one of the most striking and instructive views of geological structure to be seen in any country. Sweeping in gentle curves around the base of the mountains, from near where we stood, many miles to the northward, was a descending series of concentric, wave-like ridges, formed of the upturned edges of different colored strata, which dipped successively away from the Uintahs; those nearest to us, 40° or more, those at a distance, seemingly but little,-altogether a scene never to be forgotten. Apparently we had before us a geological series from the Paleozoic to the Tertiary, but to study it step by step, as we strongly wished, our limited time forbade, and reluctantly we hurried on our journey. Our Indian guide led us across a very deep mountain gorge, called by the hunters of this region "Sheep Creek Cañon," through which a small stream flows eastward into the Green River. The sides of this gorge, where we crossed it, about ten miles above its mouth, are composed of light colored shales, and yellowish, friable sandstones, highly inclined, and towering into precipitous cliffs, some of them nearly 1000 feet in height.

In ascending the northern bank, through a narrow and almost impassable side ravine, we passed over a bed of light gray limestone, about thirty feet in thickness, which rested conformably on the sandstones below, and was inclined to the N.W. at an angle of 25°. This limestone contained an abundance of fossils of characteristic types, that at once established its Jurassic age. Among the most interesting of these were two species of Trigonia, one of Camptonectes, a Volsella, a small Ostrea, a Neritella, resembling N. Nebrascensis M. and H., an Acteonina, and a Chemnitzia,-nearly all undescribed,—with specimens of Pentacrinus asteriscus M. and H. The right humerus of a small Crocodilian was found in the same stratum. Resting immediately on this fossiliferous limestone, was a series of red and gray shales, with intercalated sandstone layers, perhaps in all 150 feet in thickness. In the red beds, white In the red beds, white gypsum was abundant, in the form of fibrous seams, and especially in interstratified

layers, several of which were one or two feet, and one nearly six feet, in thickness,-a deposit of much scientific interest, particularly in view of its bearings on the origin of gypsum. Next above this series came a bed of yellow sandstone, about 35 feet thick; then 100 feet or more of red and gray shales; and over all, near the head of the cañon, at least 40 feet of yellow and gray sandstone. In the upper part of these beds, Belemnites densus M. and H., and a small species of Rhynchonella were abundant. The whole series is undoubtedly Jurassic, and probably the best development of the formation yet found in this country. From this point, we proceeded directly to Henry's Fork, and thence westward, up the stream. Re-examining on our way the "Mauvaises Terres" deposits, we found additional evidence of their early Tertiary age, the lowest beds of the series being evidently Eocene, and resting on the Cretaceous, unconformably. Continuing our journey along our previous route, we arrived safely, after an absence of six weeks, at Fort Bridger.

To Major R. S. LaMotte, in command of this Post, and his associate officers, including Lieut. W. N. Wann, who had charge of our escort, our best thanks are returned for valuable assistance, and many kind attentions. Our grateful acknowledg ments are likewise due to Hon. W. A. Carter, and Dr. J. V. Ă. Carter, residents at the Fort, for important information in regard to the surrounding country, and generous hospitalities. Yale College, January 20th, 1871.

ART. XXX. On the System of the Batrachia Anura of the British Museum Catalogue; by E. D. COPE.

UNTIL 1858 the Batrachia Anura was a group of animals to which but little attention had been turned, and for which no detailed system based on any general investigations, had been proposed. It was, therefore, a considerable addition to knowledge when the catalogue of the British Museum appeared in that year, and nearly doubled the number of species already known, and arranged them in a system which went into some detail of structure. This detail was, however, almost entirely with reference to external characters. This fact is sufficient to excite question as to the coincidence of the system adopted, with that of nature, and a full examination into the general anatomy of the order, has answered such question unfavorably to it in a very decided manner.* But as authors who have subsequently written do not seem to be at all aware of the demerits of this system, it is proposed here to point out some of them.

*See the writer on the classification of Batrachia Anura, Nat. History Review, 1865, and Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1866-67.

In the first place the order Anura is divided into three suborders, the Aglossa without tongue, the Opisthoglossa with tongue free behind, and the Proteroglossa, with the tongue free in front. The first group is natural, having been already established by Wagler and Duméril; while the value of the character used to distinguish between the two last is not more than generic at most. Several genera possess the peculiarity of the "Proteroglossa," which in this system are placed among the Opisthoglossa, while the general affinities of the genus Rhinophrynus, the only one of this supposed suborder, are clearly shown by its structure to be those of the family Bufonida or the toads, on a very slight examination.

The division of Aglossa is supposed by our author to be represented by two series, Haplosiphona and Diplosiphona, the first including the previously known representatives of the order, the last, the genus Myobatrachus Schlegel. Now this last, as Í I proved by examination of the type specimen at Leyden in 1863, is a dried example of Chelydobatrachus Gouldii; an Australian Bufonid, with the tongue shrunken away by drying.*

If we now turn to his primary division Opisthoglossa, its principal groups are based on one of the most subordinate characters in the order, viz: the Oxydactyla and Platydactyla, on the presence and absence of the digital dilatations on the ends of the last phalanges; in other words, tree and terrestrial frogs. As all subsequent writers have repudiated these groups, I will pass them with the remark, that the author's reasons for establishing them, that the characters are so important in the life history of the species-are abundantly sufficient for suspecting their value.

The further subdivision of these groups is based on a variety of characters, some of importance, having been introduced by Müller and Gray, and others newly introduced of very little value. The manner in which they are used is remarkable, and contrary to what would be expected from an examination of the relations of other animals. That is, the characters are treated as of equal importance in all cases, producing a kind of dichotomous system, each group being equal and similar to others, and presenting none of that successional relation which we know so well characterizes nature's groups. The unfavorable impression is strengthened by a further examination into the structure, and the system is found to be little better than if it had been based, dictionary-fashion, on the first letters of their names.

If we mix thoroughly Günther's groups of tree-frogs and not tree-frogs, as the subdividing characters used by him are the same in each, a criticism of the latter will cover both.

*This error is perhaps not due to the author of the catalogue, as he has seen no specimens.

The presence and absence of maxilliary teeth is an important character, much more so than the conditions of the digital dilatations, though the esteem in which I formerly held it has been much diminished by the discovery of the genera Colostethus Cope and Eupemphix Steindachner. Their presence or absence, together with the perfection or imperfection of the ear, as to tympanum, vestibule and eustachian tubes gives our author occasion for dividing each of his series dichotomously into four groups-or three, in the case of the tree-frogs, since the diagnosis of one of them has no answering group in nature. But the presence or absence of the different parts of the auditory apparatus is a character of far less importance than is here assigned to it. The two nearly allied genera Scaphiopus and Pelobates are separated into two different primary divisions by it, the last to be associated with the Bombinator and the first with Alytes and Helioporus, two genera quite remote in affinities, as well as from the most widely separated regions of the earth. Thus Helioporus is Australian, Alytes European, and Scaphiopus American, and each has sundry allies in its own country, with which it should be arranged. Other most remotely allied genera are associated because of agreement in the structure of the ear. Thus Discoglossus is placed in the group Ranina, though it represents the family of all others in the Batrachia anura, the most remote from the Ranidæ, and which includes beyond a shadow of doubt the genus Bombinator which Günther makes not only the type of a different family, but of a distinct primary series, his Bombinatorina. Many other instances of the same want of appreciation of natural affinities might be adduced here, but I pass to the toothless or Bufonoid series. Here we find Phryniscid genera separated from their true allies the Engystomidae, while the latter are placed with much remoter relatives the Bufonida, merely because a lesser grade of imperfection of the auditory organs characterizes them.

To come to the characters used to distinguish the families, the same window-pane arrangement prevails. Those employed are the presence or absence of parotoid glands, of palmation of the toes, and of dilated or non-dilated sacral diapophysis. The latter character, noted by Bibron and Gray, is of family value, and the only one of the above to be so estimated. The palmation of the toes is only a generic feature, hardly that in some cases. As this is now agreed to by all good herpetologists, I give it no further notice. The presence or absence of parotoid glands is quiet as worthless in this connection. Thus Scytopis venulosus has or has not an immense "parotoid" covering the head and back indifferently, as both Steindachner and myself have observed independently. Alytes and Bombinator, two European genera of Discoglossidæ little known to our author, but most closely allied, have, the one a small parotoid, the other little