THE YEAR'S VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY 505 



latter as being of a degenerate type. This question requires 

 careful consideration ; but, apart from this, the discovery is one 

 of great interest. 



The diamond-diggings at Kimberley are the place of origin 

 of the second batch of remains, which have been described by 

 Dr. E. Fraas of Stuttgart in the Zeits. deutsch. Gcol. Ges. for 

 1907 (pp. 232-43). The specimens include an imperfect masto- 

 don tooth, probably belonging to the same species as the one 

 described last }^ear from Barkley West ; and likewise other 

 teeth referable to a zebra, a hartebeest or blesbok, and a hippo- 

 potamus. In most instances no attempt is made at specific 

 determination, but the author refers the hippopotamus remains 

 to a large race of the common African species. 



The third discovery, reported by Messrs. F. Mendell and 

 E. C. Chubb in The Geological Magazine (pp. 443-8), relates to 

 Rhodesia, where remains of existing African mammals have 

 been found associated with stone implements of a palaeolithic 

 type. 



Passing on to a survey of papers devoted more or less 

 exclusively to particular groups of mammals, brief reference 

 must suffice to one by Dr. F. Ameghino of Buenos Aires in 

 which the author claims man to be of South American origin, 

 his ultimate ancestor being the Tertiary opossum-like genus 

 Microbiothcrium. Such a phylogeny is not likely to be accepted 

 by naturalists. This paper was published at La Plata. 



In March Mr. H. F. Standing read a paper before the Zoo- 

 logical Society of London on extinct Malagasy lemurs, in which 

 he discussed their relations to living lemurs and the higher 

 Primates. The remains were obtained in the muddy bed of a 

 swamp formed by the blocking-up of the River Mazy by a 

 lava-flow, at from a few inches to three or four feet below the 

 surface. They consisted of a large number of skulls and limb- 

 bones of lemurs and lemur-like animals. This material enabled 

 the author to corroborate the view, previously put forward by 

 Dr. Forsyth Major, that the extinct lemurs of Madagascar were, 

 in many respects, intermediate between existing lemurs and 

 monkeys, and to express his belief that New World monkeys 

 and the Lemuridae, as well as the Malagasy Indrisinae, had a 

 common origin. He also stated his opinion that, in view of 

 recent additions to our knowledge of lemuroids, and from the 

 evidence of the new collection as to their close relationship to 



