226 NATURAL SCIENCE. March, 



account is appended a paper by Dr. Ludwig v. Ammon on Devonian 

 Fossils from Lagoinha in Matto Grosso. The specimens came from 

 the Chapada Plateau, and consist of, among others, the trilobite 

 Phacops, the gasteropod Bellerophon {Bucanella), a Tentamlites (T. belbtlus, 

 Hall), a fragment of a Nucula, and five Brachiopods. Of these 

 Brachiopods one is said to be identical with Discina baini, Sharpe, 

 and another with Chonetes falklandica (Morris & Sharpe) from the 

 Falkland Islands, while a third is identified as Leptococlia flabellites 

 (Conrad), a North American species. Figures of these fossils are 

 given, and Dr. Ammon notes that the beds containing them correspond 

 to those of Erere on the Amazonas, and to the Hamilton and Upper 

 Helderberg series of the United States, a statement agreeing with 

 one made by Dr. Derby in the paper referred to above. 



In the last issue of the Quart. Jouvn. Micr. Set. (vol. xxxv., pp. 407- 

 432), Mr. E. S. Goodrich gives an exhaustive account of all the 

 known remains of mammals from the well-known Stonesfield Slate of 

 Oxfordshire. From having carefully "developed" several of the 

 specimens, the author has not only succeeded in revealing the exis- 

 tence of teeth supposed to be missing, but has likewise determined in 

 others the true arrangement of their cusps. Perhaps his most interest- 

 ing result is to show that Amphitherimn had true "tritubercular- 

 sectorial " lower molars ; that is to say, these teeth had three cusps 

 arranged in a triangle anteriorly, followed by a keel, as in the modern 

 opossums and bandicoots. This leads him to conclude that Amphi- 

 tlierium cannot be included in the same family with Pkascolothevimn 

 and Amphilestes, in which the three cusps are linear. May we ask him 

 if he would, on the same grounds, propose to separate the existing 

 Thylacine from the Dasyuridae, as the difference is nearly the same in 

 the one case as in the other ? We are glad to see that the author 

 supports, in the main, the doctrine of " trituberculism," even going so 

 far as to derive the primitive tritubercular molar from the multituber- 

 cular type — a derivation which we are by no means sure that we are 

 inclined to support. He totally rejects, however, the view that the 

 so-called triconodont type of molar (that is to say, the one in which 

 the three cusps are ranged in a linear series) is the primitive type from 

 which the tritubercular molar was evolved. On the contrary, he 

 considers that the triconodont is the derivative from the tritubercular. 

 He, however, propounds this view of the specialisation of the former 

 type as if it were a new one, instead of dating from 1887. Thus in 

 that year Mr. Lydekker [Cat. Foss. Mamm. Brit. Miis., pt. v., p. 257) 

 wrote of Triconodoii, " it appears to be a highly specialised primitive 

 form, of which the lower true molars come nearest to those of 

 Thylacinus, and bear the same relationship to those of Dasyiirus as is 

 presented by the inferior carnassial tooth oi Idilyon to that of Canis.'" 

 We will not take leave of this valuable piece of work without remark- 

 ing how very refreshing it is to see palaeontological investigation 

 finding place in a journal popularly supposed to be given up to the 

 section-cutter and embryologist. We hope that a new era is being 

 entered upon in British Palaeontology, and that this publication marks 

 a closer alliance between students of the living and students of the 

 extinct. 



We are glad to hear that a fresh start has been made with the 

 long-suspended and much-desired " Flora of Tropical Africa." The 

 work was commenced by Professor Oliver, the late keeper of the 



