1398] NOTES AND COMMENTS 157 
inception by De la Beche in 1835 to its organisation at the present 
day. Some technical details as to the staff and field-work during 
1897 next follow; and then the new results are summarised in 
readable form under the respective geological formations, taking 
them in order from the oldest to the newest. It is difficult to make 
an adequate abstract of this summary, and it must thus suffice to 
enumerate a few noteworthy points. Petrologists will find much 
important new matter in the description of the old rocks of the 
Scottish Highlands, while stratigraphical geologists will probably 
turn with greatest interest to the account of the Scottish Silurian 
formations, in which an entirely new fossil fish-fauna has been dis- 
covered. The recognition of Upper Carboniferous strata in the Isle 
of Arran is also important, although no workable coal-seams have 
yet been found. In Mesozoic geology there is little to record, but 
the memoir on the Upper Cretaceous formations is evidently making 
good progress. In Pleistocene geology there is a wealth of new 
observations, which students of the glacial period will truly welcome. 
NEW SILURIAN FISHES 
THE discovery of Scottish Upper Silurian Fishes mentioned above is 
briefly reported upon by Dr Traquair, and when fully investigated is 
likely to prove one of the most important contributions to Biology 
of recent years. Among these fossils there seems to be clear evi- 
dence of a new group of the fish-like organisms now commonly 
known as Ostracodermi. The new forms are indeed likely to afford 
important additional information as to the affinities of this problema- 
tical group, which has hitherto been best known to us by Pteraspis, 
Cephalaspis, and Pterichthys. Still more important, however, are 
nearly complete skeletons of the primitive fore-runners of the sharks. 
It has long been suspected, on theoretical grounds, that the paired 
fins of fishes were originally continuous lateral folds of skin sup- ° 
ported by parallel bars of cartilage. A few years ago some approach 
to this condition was observed in the American Lower Carboniferous 
shark, Cladoselache. It now appears, from Dr Traquair’s brief notes, 
that still more important examples of the same arrangement are to 
be observed in the Upper Silurian genera, exactly where the primi- 
tive disposition of parts ought to be found according to theory. 
Biologists, will anxiously await the completed memoir on these 
remarkable new organisms. 
EXTINCT RHINOCEROSES 
THE rhinoceroses are typically Old World animals at the present 
day, and for many years the discoveries of fossil forms seemed to 
show that they had always been so. It soon became evident from 
fossils that the rhinoceroses could be gradually traced back both in 
