VERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY IN 1914 623 



are sufficiently rare to merit special notice. The latest discovery 

 of this nature, as recorded by Mr. C. Schuchert in the American 

 Journal of Science, April 1914 (vol. xxxvii. pp. 321-30), occurred 

 in Connecticut in August 191 3, when some Italian workmen 

 engaged in digging a trench to drain a swamp, came on what 

 proved to be an entire skeleton, which has now found a 

 home in the Peabody Museum, Yale. Some specimens of the 

 American mastodon are furnished with a small single tusk on 

 one side of the lower jaw, while others carry a pair. Such 

 individuals, according to a supplemental note to Mr. Schuchert's 

 paper by Prof. R. S. Lull, are males. 



Several papers published during 1913 had not come under 

 my notice when writing the article for that year. Among these 

 is one by Dr. R. N. Wegner on fossils from Miocene beds near 

 Oppeln, Upper Silesia, published in the sixtieth volume of the 

 Palceontographica (pp. 175-274, 7 pis.). It contains the descrip- 

 tion of a new race of the widely spread Mastodon (Tetrabelodon) 

 angustidens, for which the name of M. a. austro-germanica [us] 

 is proposed. 



Among the numerous series of remains obtained from the 

 asphalt-beds of Rancho La Brea, California, which, as noticed in 

 an earlier article of the present series, formed a death-trap 

 during the Pleistocene period for the animals of the surround- 

 ing country, those of ground-sloths are some of the most 

 common. The identification of the species to which these 

 remains belong forms the subject of a note in Science, ser. 2, 

 vol. xxxix. pp. 761-3, and of a longer article in the Bulletin of 

 the Geological Publications of California University, vol. viii. 

 pp. 319-34, by Mr. Chester Stock, who concludes that all are 

 referable to the typical Mylodon harlani of North America. 



The affinities of the Multituberculata, that remarkable group 

 of primitive, and yet in some respects specialised, mammals, 

 which ranges from the Trias to the Lower Eocene, form the subject 

 of an article contributed by Dr. R. Broom to the Bull. Amer. 

 Mus. Nat. Hist. vol. xxxiii. pp. 115-34. The group has been 

 pushed from pillar to post, some naturalists, like Dr. Gidley in 

 1909, 1 including them in the marsupials, while others consider 

 that their relationships are with the monotremes (duckbill and 

 echidna). Dr. Broom adopts the latter view, and considers it 



1 See the article on Vertebrate Palaeontology in Science Progress for that 

 year. 



