G. NATURAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 353 



LIEUTENANT WHEELER'S EXPEDITION. 



Of the various government exploring expeditions that 

 have been in the field during the past summer, the most sig- 

 nal success has been experienced by the party of Lieutenant 

 Wheeler, in the discovery of certain new beds of fossil verte- 

 brates, from which a large number of new species have been 

 derived. The division by which this result has been achieved 

 was under the command of Dr. H. C. Yarrow, in charge of the 

 natural-history department of the survey, accompanied by 

 Professor E. D. Cope, with several assistants. One of the 

 newly discovered beds belongs to the eocene tertiary period, 

 and originally constituted a fresh-water lake, probably drain- 

 ed off by the Chama and San Juan Rivers. The shores of the 

 lake are formed of cretaceous rocks of an age corresponding 

 to that of the No. 3 of Meek and Hay den. The rock in which 

 the fossils occur is a brown and white sandstone of about a 

 thousand feet in thickness. 



A preliminary investigation given to the collections by 

 Professor Cope shows marked differences from those of the 

 Bridge Basin of Wyoming, some of the more characteristic 

 genera being Bathmodon, Uipposyus, and Phenacodus. It 

 is a remarkable fact in this connection that there are several 

 species of sharks and an Ostrea found in connection with the 

 mammals. 



What Professor Cope considers the most striking feature 

 of the discovery is the occurrence of two new genera, which 

 he calls Calamodon and Eitoganus, belonging to the Toxo- 

 do?itia, an order of mammals not heretofore found in North 

 America. Of the last-mentioned genus three species were 

 found, and of the former one, all of them of about the size of 

 the tapir. One reptile, a species of alligator resembling the 

 A. neterodon of the Wyoming bed, was also detected. 



KOWALEVSKY ON THE BRACHIOPODS. 



Professor Kowalevsky, the great Russian naturalist, has 

 recently published at Moscow the results of his investiga- 

 tions on the embryology of certain Brachiopoda studied in 

 the Mediterranean. He fully confirms the researches made 

 by Edward S. Morse on the Brachiopoda of this coast, and 

 indorses the views Mr. Morse entertains regarding their rela- 



