454 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



group seems to have been characteristic of the Alpine region, 

 where it is still represented by the St. Bernard. 



In the Ungulate order a large amount of work has been 

 accomplished during the year, one of the most important con- 

 tributions to our knowledge of this group being a paper by 

 Dr. W. D. Matthew, published in vol. xxiv. of the Bulletin of the 

 American Museum of Natural History, on the osteology and 

 phylogeny of the American Cervidce. In this communication 

 the author suggests that the primitive Oligocene ruminant 

 Leptomeryx (hitherto generally regarded as a traguline) is the 

 ancestor of the exclusively American deer ; the annectant form 

 being Blastomeryx — a larger animal with long upper tusks 

 like those of a musk-deer — from which sprang the existing 

 brockets (Mazama). That Leptomeryx is not the ancestor of 

 the deer as a whole is demonstrated by the occurrence of 

 deer-like ruminants of a higher type in the European Oligocene. 

 Deer are evidently a Holarctic type, and the American forms 

 are supposed to have originated independently on the western 

 side of that realm. The difficulty in accepting this view seems 

 to me to be the general similarity of American to the Old 

 World deer ; if they had independent origins from antler-less 

 ruminants they should be much more unlike. No reference is 

 made by the author to the opinion that the Tertiary European 

 genus Anoglochis is near akin to the American deer. 



In connection with the foregoing, reference may be made to 

 a paper by Prof. Simonelli {Mem. Ac.Sci. Bologna, ser. 6, vol. iv., 

 1907) on the Pleistocene mammals of Crete, in which a new 

 species of the aforesaid Anoglochis is described. 



Explorations in Alaska, as described by Mr. Gilmore in the 

 Miscellaneous Collections of the Smithsonian Institution, have fur- 

 nished new information with regard to the bison and other large 

 Pleistocene mammals of that area ; while from the Yukon Pleis- 

 tocene, Mr. J. W. Gidley (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. xxxiv. p. 681) 

 describes a new musk-ox. In the same communication this 

 gentleman likewise named a species of the allied genus Bootherium, 

 on the evidence of a skull from the superficial deposits of 

 Michigan. Bison and oxen remains from Siebengebirge form 

 the subject of a paper by Dr. O. Phelps in the Verhandlungen of 

 the local society (vol. lvi., 1907). A new species of the extinct 

 bovine genus Symbos from a fissure in Arkansas is described by 

 Mr. B. Brown in a paper quoted later. In the camel group 



