VERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY IN 1909 673 



South Wales, has been described by Dr. A. Smith Woodward 

 in vol. viii. pp. 317-319 of the Records of the Geological Survey 

 of New South Wales, under the name of Bothriceps major; its 

 main claim to distinction from the typical B. australis of the 

 Hawkesbury beds being the apparently larger size of the orbits. 



In addition to his work on the air-breathers, Dr. Broom 

 {pp. cit. pp. 251-369) has devoted considerable attention to the 

 fossil fishes of the upper division of the Karu series, which 

 include specimens from the Rouxville district of the Orange 

 River Colony and from the Ficksburg and Ladybrand districts. 

 Those from the former locality may be of Upper Triassic and 

 those from the latter of Lower Jurassic age. Apart from a 

 new hybodont shark, a ccelacanth, and three species of Ceratodus, 

 the majority of the remainder belong to fresh-water palaeoniscids. 

 Compared with the fauna of the Australian Hawkesbury beds, 

 a marked similarity in generic types is noticeable. Dictyopyge, 

 ClitJirolepis, and Pholidophorus are, for instance, common to both 

 areas, while the Australian palaeoniscid Myriolepis represents the 

 South African Oxygnathus. 



Another faunistic memoir is the fourth part of Dr. A. S. Wood- 

 ward's fishes of the English Chalk, issued in the Palaeonto- 

 graphical Society's volume for 1908. This part treats of the 

 genera Pachyr/uzodus, Tomognathus,Belonostomus, Protosphyrcena, 

 and their allies, but none of the species described are new to 

 science. Special attention is directed to the enormous length 

 of the pectoral fins of ProtospJiyrama, a genus first discovered 

 in the English Chalk but named from American specimens, 

 on account of the teeth of the English forms having been 

 erroneously referred to Sciurocephalus and the fins to Ptychodus. 

 In the fifth part of the same memoir (1909) the author treats 

 of the pycnodont ganoids, the sturgeons, and the fringe-finned 

 ganoids, and commences the chimaeroids, as represented by 

 Edaphodon ; a new species of Macropoma being described in 

 the fringe-finned group. 



The 1909 volume of the Palaeontographical Society's mono- 

 graphs likewise contains a further instalment of Dr. R. H. 

 Traquair's memoir on the British Carboniferous ganoids; the 

 group dealt with in this instance being the palaeoniscids. No 

 new forms are named ; but an interesting restoration of the 

 bones of the face and shoulder-girdle of Cyclopty chins carbonarius 



is given. 



43 



