272 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



uniform, since a genus really remains a genus, no matter how 

 numerous its subdivisions. He believed that orders were founded 

 upon degrees of complication of structure, and families upon .the 

 forms of animals. Gill, finding that Bleeker had divided the 

 group into several families, raised it one grade higher and called 

 it the order of Nematognathi, a name implying a structural feat- 

 ure of no ordinal value whatever. 



He claimed that the group was an order of ganoid fishes which 

 should be placed between the sturgeons and garpikes. They had 

 one striking feature in the structure of the jaws, not only reptilian, 

 but bird-like ; this was the power of sliding the palatine bone for- 

 ward upon the sphenoid, and thus thrusting the barbel forward. 

 The brain greatly resembled that of a sturgeon. Four families 

 were mentioned belonging to the order. 



EOZOON IN BAVARIA. 



Prof. Giimbel has described the Eozoon Bavaricum in the pri- 

 mary series of eastern Bavaria, in a rock consisting of a granular 

 aggregation of calcite, serpentine, and a white hornblendic min- 

 eral, supposed to be of Huronian or Cambrian age. Beside the 

 general characters of E. Canadense, the serpentine bands pass into 

 an adjoining portion of onehalf the width, or less, made up of 

 very much twisted lamellae, consisting of serpentine or a whitish 

 mineral, and possessing highly-vaulted and deeply-channelled out- 

 lines. From the last character he gives it the name of E. Bavari- 

 cum. He makes out the occurrence of Eozoon in the pargasite of 

 Finland, the coccolite limestone of New York, at Tunaberg, Bo- 

 den in Saxony, and Hodrisch in Hungary. Journal Geological 

 Society, xxii. 23. 



Eozoon Canadense. Messrs. Dawson and Carpenter, in the 

 "American Journal of Science,' 1 Nov., 1867, give the results of an 

 examination of this fossil, furnishing a conclusive answer to the 

 objections to the organic nature of Eozoon, which have been 

 founded on comparisons of its structures with the forms of fibrous, 

 dendritic, or concretionary minerals. They also give the sum- 

 mary and conclusion of Messrs. King and Rowney, who maintain 

 that this fossil is solely of crystalline origin and inorganic sub- 

 stance. 



AFFINITIES OF TELERPETON. 



Prof. T. H. Huxley, in describing the remains of Telerpeton El- 

 ginense, discussed especially the biconcave character of the verte- 

 bras, the mode of implantation of the teeth, which he believed to 

 be acrodont and not thecodont ; and the anomalous structure of 

 the fifth digit of the hind foot, which presents only two phalanges, 

 a proximal and a terminal ; a structure differing from that of 

 all known lacertian reptiles, living or fossil. He concludes that 

 the animal is one of the reptilia, and has no indication of affinity 

 with the amphibia. In all its characters it is decidedly saurian, 

 and agrees with the suborder Kionocrania of the true Lacertilia. 



