1897.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 489 



showing the relations of crampianus to No. lo,754 will, of course, 

 equally apply to B. alleni. The use of crampianus in the ahove 

 comparisons was necessitated by the writer's inability to procure the 

 type of alleni. 



Prof. Marsh also described on the same page of the American 

 Journal two horn-cores of another and smaller and straighter-horned 

 bison from the lower Pliocene of Nebraska which he named Bison 

 ferox. Its specific distinction from B. alleni is, perhaps, well-founded 

 (although it is not enough smaller than that species not to be its 

 female), because of the straightness of its horns. In this respect 

 and in its much greater size it is, without a doubt, a different species 

 from that represented by the large Alaskan specimen No. 13,754. 

 Both ferox and alleni, of course, are not comparable to latifrons, and 

 both are as equally removed from antiquus (= erassicornis) as cram- 

 pianus has been shown to be. 



Before making a final decision as to the status of this large Alas- 

 kan specimen it remains to consider some important questions of 

 synonymy and identity arising from the original description and 

 figures of erassicornis. 



Richardson's species erassicornis, as originally described in the 

 " Zoology of the Voyage of the Herald," is founded primarily on 

 the skull formerly secured by Captain Beechey at Eschscholtz Bay 

 and figured by Buckland in the appendix to Beechey's Voyage. 

 This skull is figured by Richardson on Plate IX of his work, no 

 other reference being given in the headline of his article on this 

 species (p. 40). On page 42 he enumerates a " No. 91," stating : 

 " This number indicates the large horn-core, of which a side view 

 on the facial aspect is given in Plate XIII, fig. 1, and a view of the 

 coronal aspect in fig. 2, both of the natural size." On the next 

 page he refers to this specimen, stating, after a comparison with 

 other remains from Alaska and with Bos primigenius — " it has 

 therefore been considered a horn-core of an older and probably a 

 male individual of the race that produced the skull marked No. 

 1 A, and to which, from the thickness of its horns, I have given the 

 distinctive epithet of erassicornis." 



Leidy, Allen and others have already almost conclusively shown 

 that erassicornis, based on the Beechey specimen as a type, is a syn- 

 onym which must yield priority of publication to antiquus of Leidy. 



The fine series of specimens of fossil bison now in the Academy 

 of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia confirms this conclusion. But 



