i8 95 . NOTES AND COMMENTS. 303 



modern bony fish ; Diptcvus still borrowing the head from a codfish ; 

 Dapedius and Aspidovhynchiis bearing even less likeness to the originals 

 than the once-popular silhouettes — all these greet us again. " Ptero- 

 dactylus crassirostris," with four free fingers on the hand, appears as if 

 it would never die. It would at least have been possible to cut off the 

 superfluous digit, as is now done by those who still use the block in 

 Europe. Cope's original guess at the form of the body in the Chalk 

 fish Poriheus (reproduced on p. 844) was long ago corrected ; and of 

 this, as of the other animals mentioned, adequate illustrations could 

 have been found in the literature of the last two decades. 



The Land and Water Areas of the Globe. 



Professor Hermann Wagner has an interesting paper on this 

 subject in the Scottish Geographical Magazine for April. He has worked 

 out a new calculation by zones of ten degrees of latitude. The 

 figures are so divergent from Dr. Murray's areas (Scott. Geogr. Mag., 

 ii., 1886, p. 553) that Professor Wagner has sought for some confirma- 

 tion of the new results. This he has found in the data of a new 

 calculation of the mean depths of the oceans which has been 

 published by Dr. Karl Karstens (" Neue Berechnung der mittleren 

 Tiefe der Ozeane," Kiel, 1894), w ^o divides the twenty-seven seas 

 of the globe into trapezes of one, two, or three degrees in breadth. 

 Adding these areas together, the surface of the land can be indirectly 

 deduced. The agreement obtained is astonishing, for while Professor 

 Wagner by direct calculation arrives at 45,417,000 square miles as 

 his estimate of land area, Dr. Karstens' data give him by indirect 

 calculation 45,445,000 square miles. Professor Wagner considers his 

 figures the more reliable. Only the zones between 6o° N. and 6o° S. 

 allow of exact comparison, for Dr. Karstens takes the Polar limit 

 at 661°. 



Professor Wagner is of the opinion that some 250,000 square 

 miles will include all the land in the Arctic regions, while he agrees 

 with Dr. Murray that 3,500,000 square miles is a likely figure for the 

 Antarctic lands. The proportion of land to water works out at 

 1 : 2*54. Professor Wagner promises an exhaustive paper in the 

 Beitrdge zuv Geophysik, vol. ii., no. 3, shortly to appear at Strasbourg. 



Wild Fowl in Norfolk. 

 Under the Wild Birds' Protection Act, 1894, the Home Secretary 

 has recently issued an order for the special preservation of the birds 

 of Norfolk. Frequenters of the Broads and of the coast of Norfolk, 

 or readers of the attractive book by Mr. P. H. Emerson, " Birds, 

 Beasts, and Fishes of the Norfolk Broad-land," which has just been 

 sent us from Mr. D. Nutt in the Strand, will be aware that many 

 birds, rare elsewhere in our islands, are still to be found in some of 

 these secluded haunts, though the extinction of several is threatened. 



