320 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



mals during the period of the London clay, naming the most 

 prominent genus Palmophis^ and stating its relationships to 

 be to the boas. Remains of serpents are so rare that they 

 had never been observed out of Europe until 1868, when the 

 first American species were obtained by Professor Cope from 

 the eocene of New Jersey. In 1870, he procured fossil rattle- 

 snakes from the cave formations of Virginia, and, later, harm- 

 less species from similar localities in Pennsylvania. In the 

 following year. Professor Marsh described five species from 

 the eocene of Wyoming. During the past season an impor- 

 tant intermediate station of geologic time was discovered for 

 them by Professor Cope, in the miocene of Colorado. He 

 has recently described five new species of three genera, stated 

 to have been mostly of the innocuous group. Thus in the 

 serpents, as in the gar-fishes, the various gaps in the record 

 are being rapidly filled. 



BINNEY ON GEOGRAPHICAL DISTHIBUTION OF MOLLUSKS. 



Mr. William G. Binney has lately published, in one of the 

 Midletins of the Museum of Comparative Zoology of Cam- 

 bridge, a paper upon the geographical distribution of the 

 terrestrial air-breathing moUusks of North America, in which 

 he establishes much the same fiiunal provinces that Professor 

 Baird ascertained to exist from a study of the birds. He 

 recognizes three principal provinces, a Pacific, a Central, and 

 an Eastern. The Pacific province coincides with the Pacific 

 water-shed of the United States, and extends from San Diego 

 in the south to Alaska in the north. The peninsula of Lower 

 California is considered as belonging rather to Mexico. The 

 Central province reaches from the Rocky Mountains on the 

 east to the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the west, and is em- 

 braced between Mexico and the British possessions. The 

 Eastern province comprises the remaining portion of the con- 

 tinent north of Mexico. 



Several subdivisions are established by Mr. Binney upon 

 the study of the shells, the Pacific province being divided 

 into the Californian and the Oregonian regions, the former 

 embracing the whole of the State of California, the latter the 

 rest of the west coast of the United States, including Alaska. 

 The two overlap near Humboldt Bay. 



No subdivisions are established for the Central province, 



