THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



Japan. The largest specimen in any collection is said to be that 

 in the British Museum. It has a spread of i8 feet. Even larger 

 specimens are, however, occasionally captured. One is recorded 

 to have had a spread of 22 feet. The specimen in the Ameri- 

 can Museum is from Miura-Misaki and was secured by Profes- 

 sor Bashford Dean of Columbia University. 



EOCENE FOSSIL MAMMALS OF SOUTH AMERICA. 



^^^ SERIES of casts of South American fossil mammals 

 of the Eocene epoch has been presented to the 

 American Museum through the courtesy of Dr. 

 Florentino Ameghino, Director of the Museo Na- 

 cional at Buenos Aires, Argentina. The rare fos- 

 sils forming the originals of these casts have only recently been 

 discovered, and all the specimens are in the museums of the Ar- 

 gentine Republic. During Eocene time South America was an 

 island-continent, or perhaps divided into two great islands, and 

 its animals at that epoch were almost as different from those of 

 the rest of the world as those of Australia are to-day. Some of 

 them are considered by Dr. Ameghino to represent very early 

 stages in the . ancestr}^ of the elephants; others are ancestors of 

 the fossil mammals of later epochs in the same region, of which 

 the American Aluseum has a large collection. The casts are ex- 

 hibited in the South American Alcove in the Fossil IMammal Hall. 



NEWS NOTES. 



The Department of Invertebrate Zoology is placing on ex- 

 hibition in the Synoptic Hall (No. 107) a collection of Protozoa 

 illustrated by actual specimens and enlarged modes of typi- 

 cal forms. The actual specimens, to be viewed by the visitor 

 through microscopes mounted in the cases for this special pur- 

 pose, have been prepared for the Museum by Dr. Gary N. Calkins 

 of Columbia University. The series includes beautiful prepara- 

 tions of well-known animalcules like the Amoeba, Paramoecium, 

 Vorticella, Peridinium, etc. Dr. Calkins will complete the 



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