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 Cxuawep 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 Chalicotherium 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 name Avtionyx, 
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 ontheother. All this confirms 
the view which we have so frequently urged as to the impropriety of 
separating Chalicotherium 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 
