300 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



ually attained is the deep sea, it is supposed that the in- 

 stinct of westward migration is inherited, and persists long 

 after the cause of such migration has ceased to exist. 12 A, 

 June 1, 1876, 113. 



THE TKIASSIC FATJNA IN ILLINOIS. 



John Collett, of the Geological Survey of Indiana, has re- 

 cently discovered a number of remains of fossil vertebrata, 

 which indicate the existence of a fresh- water formation of later 

 age than has been heretofore supposed to exist there. The 

 bones are those of lizards and fishes, two generic forms of each. 

 The lizards are remarkable from their perforate vertebrae, caus- 

 ing them to be ring-like or tubular, as they are long or short. 

 They represent the ovdiQv Rhynchocephalia^^xhioh is abundant 

 in the European trias, but is represented by only one living 

 species, the Sphenodon of New Zealand. The fishes are a 

 Ceratodus and a JBiplodus ; the former is also principally a 

 genus of the trias, but, like the lizards of the same locality, 

 has a living species in North Australia, the now famous 

 Barrimundi. It is thus evident that the triassic fauna now 

 represented in the southern hemisphere existed at an early 

 geologic period not only in Europe, but in North America 

 also. 



REMAINS OF THE IRISH ELK. 



Dr. A. Leith Adams communicates to Nature the particu- 

 lars of the discovery of a large number of remains of head 

 bones of the great Irish oSk^Cermis megaceros^ of which skele- 

 tons are now preserved in the museums of Cambridge, Yale, 

 Philadelphia, Washington, and elsewhere in the United States. 

 It is well known that this animal inhabited certain parts of 

 Europe during the prehistoric period, and was especially 

 abundant in Ireland, from which country most of the more 

 perfect skulls and skeletons have been obtained. The frame 

 of the animal was about the size of that of the American 

 moose, the horns, however, much larger, although of some- 

 what the same shape, the distance from tip to tip in some 

 cases being as much as twelve or fourteen feet. Zoologically 

 the species is quite distinct. 



The remains of these animals generally occur in peat bogs, 

 and in 1847, while draining such a bog at Kellegar, among 



