368 NATURAL SCIENCE. June, 



discovery of ten almost complete skeletons, in the natural position as 

 they had been buried in the brick-earth. The state of preservation 

 of the bones, and the occurrence in their immediate neighbourhood of 

 bones of the arctic fox and the mammoth, leave no doubt that they 

 belonged to Quaternary man. We learn from V 'Anthropologic that 

 the remains are supposed to have belonged to a family, which, after 

 having perished in some catastrophe or other, was interred in this 

 place before the culture-layer found above had begun to form — that 

 is to say, at the earliest period of habitation at Predmost. A block 

 of stone was placed on the tomb to prevent the ravages of wild 

 beasts, an end which was not completely attained, since some of the 

 bones have been found at a little distance from the tomb and marked 

 by the teeth of animals. The shape of the skulls shows that the 

 Quaternary inhabitants of Predmost belonged to a dolichocephalic 

 race, that their forehead was retreating, especially in the males, with 

 strong superciliary ridges, and a snub nose. The superciliary ridges 

 are, however, less developed than in the Neanderthal cranium. 



The skeleton of a primitive man is said to have been found some 

 years ago in the alluvial deposits of the lower Thames. We learn 

 that the remains consist of a human skull and limb-bones found in 

 the Palaeolithic Terrace-gravel of Galley Hill, Greenhithe, Kent. 

 Mr. E. T. Newton read an account of them before the Geological 

 Society on May 22, after we had gone to press. 



The Shells of the Antilles. 

 The West Indies may well be considered a paradise for the 

 malacologist. Apart from the abundant marine fauna, their super- 

 ficial area of 95,000 square miles supports some 1,600 species of terres- 

 trial molluscs, or nearly as many as are found on the mainland of the 

 entire continent of America. The distribution of these through the 

 various islands of the group forms the theme of a valuable paper by 

 Mr. C. T. Simpson (Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus., vol. xvii.), who prefaces 

 his remarks with a few words on the physical geology of the West 

 Indies, and a lucid summary of the means of dispersal of non-marine 

 mollusca. The tables of distribution themselves, dealing as they do 

 with strings of names, are too technical for all save the very elect ; 

 but the details concerning the relationships of the faunas of the 

 several groups of islands, both to one another and to the various 

 adjacent portions of mainland, yield much interesting information. 

 The conclusions arrived at concern the geologist quite as much as the 

 malacologist. Briefly summed up, they are that " a considerable 

 portion of the land-snail fauna of the Greater Antilles seems to be 

 ancient, and to have developed on the islands where it is now found. 

 There appears to be good evidence of a general elevation of the 

 Greater Antillean region, probably some time during the Eocene, 

 after most of the more important groups of snails had come into 

 existence, at which time the larger islands were united, and there 



