620 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



perissodactyle, or odd-toed, ungulates. An attempt to put 

 matters on a better footing in the case of the North American 

 Middle and Lower Eocene representatives of the group has 

 been made by Mr. W. J. Sinclair in an article published in the 

 Bulletin of the American Museum oj Natural History (vol. xxiii. 

 pp. 267-95). Several new genera, such as Wahsatchia and 

 Bunophorus, are named, and the whole group is included in the 

 family Dichobunidce , as typified by the European Oligocene 

 genus Dichobune. Sarcolemur, originally regarded as a lemuroid, 

 and Microsus of the Middle Eocene may have been the ancestors 

 of the selenodont, or crescent-toothed, artiodactyles of the 

 Upper Eocene Uinta beds. 



Three publications dealing with the horse family {Equidce) 

 and its extinct forerunners were published during the year in 

 America. The Evolution oj the Horse, as the first is entitled, 

 is an illustrated guide to the members of the group exhibited in 

 the American Museum of Natural History, in which Dr. W. D. 

 Matthew discusses the evolution of the horse-group in nature, 

 while Mr. S. H. Chubb deals with the origin of the domesticated 

 breeds and the structure, growth, and succession of the teeth. 

 In the second publication, issued as a guide-book to the remains 

 of extinct perissodactyles allied to the existing horse group 

 preserved in Yale University, Dr. R. S. Lull records the various 

 exploring and collecting expeditions from 1870 onwards which 

 have contributed to the collection, and concludes with a briet 

 summary of the equine pedigree. Finally, in a memoir published 

 by the Irving Press, New York, under the title of The Horse, 

 Past and Present, Prof. H. F. Osborn has done much the same 

 good work in respect to the collection illustrating the horse- 

 group and its ancestors in the American Museum of Natural 

 History. 



Here may be mentioned a curious incident relating to 

 extinct Perissodactyla which occurred during the year. In 1872 

 Sir R. Owen described the skull and part of the skeleton of a 

 small perissodactyle obtained by the Rev. R. Bull, then vicar of 

 Harwich, from the London Clay of that parish, under the new 

 generic and specific name of Pliolophus vulpiceps. A cast ot the 

 skull, a small fragment cut from one side of the original specimen, 

 and two or three limb-bones have been in the collection of the 

 British Museum ever since the date of Owen's paper, but what 

 had become of the remainder of the skull was unknown till this 



