G. GENERAL NATURAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 247 



neighbors of purer blood. In the original political condition 

 of these people the lands were all held in common, but meas- 

 ures are now being taken to divide them, under the provi- 

 sions of the act by which Gay Head is made a township. 

 Report of B. L. Pease to the llassachusetts Legislature. 



GIGANTIC FOSSIL RODENTS AND REPTILES. 



No recent palaeontological announcement has been of more 

 interest than the discovery in the small island of Anguilla, in 

 the West Indies, of fossil remains of extinct species of verte- 

 brate animals, among them rodents of enormous size. These 

 are closely allied to the chinchilla, which furnishes the well- 

 known South American fur ; but instead of being of about 

 the size of a small rabbit, the largest fully equaled a cow in 

 its dimensions, constituting the largest rodent on record, and 

 considerably exceeding in bulk the castoroides, or fossil bea- 

 ver of the United States. Of the remains thus far identified 

 by Professor Cope there are five rodents, one deer, and two 

 birds. In the same communication Professor Cope announces 

 the discovery, in the collections of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, of a new fossil lizard from New Mexico, which must have 

 been about one hundred feet in length, being probably the lon- 

 gest known reptile. Proe. Am. Phil. Soc, December, 1810. 



FOSSIL WALEUS IN NEW JERSEY. 



At a meeting of the New York Lyceum of Natural History, 

 held during last autumn, Professor Newberry, the president, 

 exhibited the anterior portion of the cranium of a walrus 

 which had been found during the summer at Long Branch, 

 by a gentleman whose foot struck against it while bathing. 

 It was strongly silicified, but exhibited no appreciable differ- 

 ence from modern specimens. The precise age of this fossil 

 could not, of course, be ascertained, although it is well known 

 that its range was formerly much south of its present habitat. 

 It is not unfrequently brought down on floating ice off the 

 coast of Newfoundland ; and although Labrador is atpresent 

 the southern limit of its residence, it was once very abundant 

 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and its remains have been found 

 in the shell-heaps of the Bay of Fundy. It is probable that 

 the specimen exhibited by Professor Newberry is a relic of 

 the glacial period, although it was suggested that it might 



