314 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



interesting faunas connecting the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic 

 periods will be largely filled up ; the supposed anomalies in 

 the distribution of fossils which are still believed by many 

 writers will then be satisfactorily explained. 



There is little to add concerning the Devonian rocks ; 

 the only stratigraphical paper to notice is one treating of 

 the rocks of the Altai Mountains (2). In this, Tscherny- 

 schew describes the fauna of the Krjukowsk-grube lime- 

 stones, enumerating twenty species of fossils found therein, 

 of which seven are new. The fauna of these limestones 

 is comparable with that of the Coblenz group (Lower 

 Devonian) of the Rhenish Provinces. The palaeontology 

 of the Devonian strata is enriched by another instalment 

 of Traquair's Monogi-aph of the Fishes of the Old Red 

 Sandstone of Britain (3), in which the study of the 

 Asterolepidce is commenced, the genus Asterolepis itself 

 being the subject of the contribution here noticed. The 

 same author elsewhere (4) describes a new Cephalaspis from 

 the Caithness Flagstones under the mame of C. magnified. 



Turning to the Carboniferous strata, we may notice in 

 the first place a paper of considerable importance to the 

 stratigraphical geologist, giving as it does the mature judg- 

 ment of a palaeobotanist on the value of fossil plants as indices 

 of horizons in the Carboniferous rocks ; I refer to the Vice- 

 president's address to the Royal Physical Society of Edin- 

 burgh (5). In this address Kidston states his belief that 

 plants are more useful than mollusca for separating the 

 Carboniferous strata : for this purpose the writer uses 

 assemblages of plants and not single species. He re- 

 marks that " many of the Calciferous sandstone species 

 do not pass into the Carboniferous Limestone series, 

 though they have some species in common ; still the 

 Moras of the two periods are very different as a whole. 

 Again, we find very few of the Lower Coal- Measure 

 plants passing up into the Upper Coal-Measures, and 

 even the few that do pass up are among the rarest of 

 Upper Coal-Measure species, whereas they are the com- 

 monest species in the Lower Coal-Measures ; even from 

 the Middle Coal-Measures very few pass into the Upper 



