326 



NATURAL SCIENCE. 



May, 



feet the indigenous vegetation was much injured, especially the 

 tropical plants which here reach their northern limit. 



Dr. Henry reports that the destruction of vegetation about 

 Canton has also been very great. The banana plantations are ruined, 

 the bamboos have suffered, the candle-nut trees (Aleurites triloba) are 

 all shrivelled up, while begonias, euphorbias, crotons, and scores of 

 others, are quite destroyed. 



A Clawed Artiodactyle-like Mammal. 



From several references to the subject, readers of Natural 

 Science are probably familiar with the fact that the remarkable clawed 

 Miocene and Pliocene mammal known as Chalicotherinm presents 

 many curious resemblances to the ordinary Perissodactyle Ungulates. 

 Messrs. Osborn and Wortman now announce the discovery of another 

 American Tertiary mammal, for which they propose the na.me A rtionyx^ 

 with almost precisely similar resemblances to the Artiodactyle divi- 



Front and hind foot of Artionyx. — (From Osborn.) 



sion of the Ungulates. The authors refer both these curious creatures 

 to a single group, which they suggest originated from the primitive 

 Ungulates before the acquisition of distinctly Ungulate terminal 

 phalanges ; and they call attention to the curious double parallelism 

 existing between these two forms on the one hand and the Artio- 

 dactyle and Perissodactyle Ungulates on the other. All this confirms 

 the view which we have so frequently urged as to the impropriety of 

 separating Chalicotheriuni as an order from the Ungulates. 



Mountain Chains as Barriers. 



Dr. J. Regnault, in a lecture before the Ethnographical section 

 of the Geographical Society of Paris, has drawn attention to the 

 " Influence of Mountain Chains on the Distribution of the Human 

 Race." His original observations resulted from a visit to Darjeeling 

 and the Terai, but his conclusions are drawn from a study of the 



