292 NATURAL SCIENCE [November 



general memoirs and papers, without any detailed statistics of the 

 Museum collections. The Director has thus wisely decided to begin 

 a third set of publications, namely, a series of Catalogues recording 

 the specimens in the Museum under their register-numbers, with 

 brief descriptions and illustrations, somewhat on the plan of the 

 Catalogues of the British Museum. The first of these publications, 

 just issued, relates to the Department of Palaeontology, and is en- 

 titled " Catalogo de los Mamiferos Fosiles conservados en el Museo de 

 la Plata." Only the first section is before us, namely that comprising 

 the type-genus of the ungulate order, Toxodontia, by Dr Santiago 

 Both, curator of the fossils. No less than 128 pages, with 81 text- 

 figures and 8 plates, are devoted to this characteristic genus of 

 extinct South American hoofed animals. The well-known figure of 

 the nearly complete skeleton of Toxodon at La Plata, which we 

 reproduce herewith, has now found its way into most recent 

 text-books. The student of mammals has thus known for some 

 years what to expect from a detailed account of the specimens of 

 Toxodon in the La Plata Museum ; and now for the first time he 

 is furnished with tolerably adequate descriptions. The characters 

 of the various parts of the skeleton are first systematically described ; 

 and then the species are successively diagnosed, while a numbered 

 list of specimens is placed beneath each. Although numerous new 

 facts are recorded, it would still be premature to say more concern- 

 ing the affinities of Toxodon than has already been said by previous 

 observers. We now want to know more of Nesodon and its ancestors, 

 which are found in Patagonia, before the relationships of this strange 

 group of ungulates can be further discussed. 



Possil Ostrich in China 



About 1857, a remarkable fossil egg was discovered at Malinowka, 

 Government of Cherson, S. Eussia, which though now destroyed 

 and lost, was seen by Prof. A. Brandt of Charkow and described by 

 him in the Bulletin of the St Petersburg Academy in 1873. 

 Nathusius examined some of the fragments microscopically, and 

 declared that they indicated a very close relationship with the 

 common ostrich. The egg as a whole, however, had a cubic con- 

 tents of upwards of 2075 c.cm., while the largest known egg of 

 the ostrich has only two-thirds this capacity. The microscopical 

 structure being very characteristic of the group he referred the egg 

 to a new genus and species Strut Molithus chersonensis. No bones 

 of the bird that left behind the egg are known, but ostrich remains 

 have been described from the Pliocene of the Sivalik Hills and the 

 lower Pliocene of Samos. The fragments of the Cherson egg are 

 still preserved in St. Petersburg Museum. Considerable interest is 

 now attached therefore to a paper by Mr C. B, Eastman, which 



