ON THE PEOGEESS OF SCIENCE. 13 



researches during many years past, and will be the most complete 

 proof of the rare scientific knowledge and abilities of its author which 

 has yet been given to the public. It will contain the results of his 

 embryological investigations, embracing about sixty monographs from 

 all classes of animals, especially those characteristic of America; also 

 descriptions of a great number of new species and genera, accom- 

 panied with accurate figures and anatomical details. 



One of the most curious scientific books published during the past 

 year has been a history of the Tineina, a species of microscopic moths, 

 by Mr. H. T. Stainton, of England, who has devoted years to the 

 study of their habit and characteristics. These moths are numerous 

 in species, and extremely elegant in form and coloring, yet so minute 

 in size, that entomologists have scarcely known until lately of their 

 existence. The publication in question is to be executed on a scale of 

 completeness and extended detail not hitherto reached by naturalists 

 on any subject. The first volume published, of eight beautifully exe- 

 cuted plates, with 350 pages of letter-press, contains the descriptions 

 of only twenty-four species, and it will require forty such volumes to 

 complete the work. The principal novelty of this work, however, 

 consists in its being printed in parallel columns in four languages 

 English, French, German, and Latin. "With these polyglot honors, the 

 little night-flyers are raised to an importance surpassing far the lot of 

 any other insects. 



One of the most beautiful monographs ever issued in the United 

 States, has been published during the past year by Isaac Lea, Esq., of 

 Philadelphia, on the Fossil Foot-prints discovered by Mr. L. in the 

 lowest beds of the Coal Formation, near Pottsville, Pa. The work is 

 a large folio, and the plates represent the foot-prints of the oldest 

 reptilian, known to palaeontologists, of their natural size. Some at- 

 tempts have been made to question the accuracy of the reference of 

 these tracks to reptilian animals, and an opinion has been given by 

 Prof. Agassiz that they are caused by fishes. Prof. J. "Wyman, in a 

 recent communication to the Boston Society of Natural History on 

 this subject, stated that there is no known fish, recent or fossil, the 

 pectoral or ventral fins of which could produce a series of tracks like 

 those discovered in the coal strata of Pennsylvania by Mr. Lea. Al- 

 though among Lophioid fishes the pectoral fins are used for locomotion 

 on the shores, yet they in every instance conform to the fish type 

 are fins and not feet. An analogous condition of things is found 

 among cetacean and marine saurians, where the limbs serve the pur- 

 poses of paddles, and may be compared to fins, yet morphologically 

 they can be referred only to the mammalian or reptilian types. 



A new map of the Arctic Regions has been published by the British 

 Admiralty, to which the names affixed to various localities by the 



