292 NATURAL SCIENCE [November 
general memoirs and papers, without any detailed statistics of the 
Museum collections. The Director has thus wisely decided to begin 
a third set of publications, namely, a series of Catalogues recording 
the specimens in the Museum under their register-numbers, with 
brief descriptions and illustrations, somewhat on the plan of the 
Catalogues of the British Museum. The first of these publications, 
just issued, relates to the Department of Palaeontology, and is en- 
titled “ Catalogo de los Mamiferos Fdsiles conservados en el Museo de 
la Plata.” Only the first section is before us, namely that comprising 
the type-genus of the ungulate order, Toxodontia, by Dr Santiago 
Roth, curator of the fossils. No less than 128 pages, with 81 text- 
figures and 8 plates, are devoted to this characteristic genus of 
extinct South American hoofed animals. The well-known figure of 
the nearly complete skeleton of Towxodon at La Plata, which we 
reproduce herewith, has now found its way into most recent 
text-books. The student of mammals has thus known for some 
years what to expect from a detailed account of the specimens of 
Toxodon in the La Plata Museum; and now for the first time he 
is furnished with tolerably adequate descriptions. The characters 
of the various parts of the skeleton are first systematically described ; 
and then the species are successively diagnosed, while a numbered 
list of specimens is placed beneath each. Although numerous new 
facts are recorded, it would still be premature to say more concern- 
ing the affinities of Zoxodon than has already been said by previous 
observers. We now want to know more of Nesodon and its ancestors, 
which are found in Patagonia, before the relationships of this strange 
group of ungulates can be further discussed. 
Fossiu OSTRICH IN CHINA 
Axsout 1857, a remarkable fossil egg was discovered at Malinowka, 
Government of Cherson, 8. Russia, which though now destroyed 
and lost, was seen by Prof. A. Brandt of Charkow and described by 
him in the Bulletin of the St Petersburg Academy in 1873. 
Nathusius examined some of the fragments microscopically, and 
declared that they indicated a very close relationship with the 
common ostrich. The egg as a whole, however, had a cubic con- 
tents of upwards of 2075 c.cm., while the largest known egg of 
the ostrich has only two-thirds this capacity. The microscopical 
structure being very characteristic of the group he referred the egg 
to a new genus and species Struthiolithus chersonensis. No bones 
of the bird that left behind the egg are known, but ostrich remains 
have been described from the Pliocene of the Sivalik Hills and the 
lower Pliocene of Samos. The fragments of the Cherson egg are 
still preserved in St. Petersburg Museum. Considerable interest is 
now attached therefore to a paper by Mr C. R. Eastman, which 
