NOTES 



'31 



The Aniorican Forestry Association lias 

 iiiauguratoil the plan of planting trees as 

 memorials to our soldiers and sailors who 

 lost their lives in the war. Xo better monu- 

 ments to the nu'inoiy of our fallen heroes 

 could he devised than rows of living trees. 

 The idt>a is receiving nal ion-wide conuiicnda- 

 tion, and several sjxMdlic methods have been 

 suggested, among them the bordering of the 

 great interstate highways. Tlie fact that 

 the now destroyed forests of France are 

 recognized as having savcil Paris makes this 

 form of commemoration peculiarly appro- 

 priate. 



Count Begouen, whose discoveries of pre- 

 historic art objects in the caves of southern 

 France are well known, is reported in Le 

 Figaro (quoted by Sciotcc) as having made 

 some additional explorations with his three 

 sons during the latter's furloughs from the 

 front. This time they discovered a series 

 of painted figures. These paintings are 

 among the most ancient records of human 

 art (30,000 years old?) that have ever been 

 found, and in this last instance include the 

 unusual representations of a lion and the 

 human figure. One jiartieularly remarkable 

 silliouette is that of a powerful, thick-necked 

 man with perfectly human lind)s but with a 

 camlal appendage like that of the apes. 



About twenty miles south of the great 

 fossil quarry at Agate, Nebraska, there is 

 a peculiar fossil deposit of somewhat later 

 geological age, which has been called the 

 Snake Creek beds. They consist of a series 

 of small pockets in the sand and gravel beds 

 near the surface, full of fossil teeth and 

 bones, mostly fragments, but with many 

 jaws and complete bones and occasional 

 skulls among them. Three-toed horses are 

 the most numerous; many thousands of 

 teeth have been found, hundreds of jaws, 

 and one fairly complete skeleton. A great 

 number of other animals of the Lower 

 Pliocene are represented in the American 

 Museum collections from the pockets, ob- 

 tained in 1908 and 1916. During this last 

 summer Mr. Albert Thomson has obtained 

 for the Museum an additional collection 

 which includes a few interesting specimens, 

 the best being fine skulls of the long-legged 

 rhinoceros, Aphelops, and the rare rodent, 

 MyJagaulus. The collection which he has 

 brought back to the Museum will add ma- 



terially to our knowledge of the nianinuilian 

 life of the Lower Pliocene. 



The American Muscuin Handbook Series 

 presents to the public; a new volume on FisJux 

 II f ihc TicinHji of Netv York Citii, by ^Ir. 

 John T. Nichols. In addition to a key and 

 illustrated descriptions of all the local fishes, 

 the book contains an introduction by IJr. 

 William K. Gregory on "The Structur(> and 

 Mechanism of Fishes." This handbook will 

 appeal not only to local collectois ami 

 anglers but also to everyoiu; interested in the 

 natural history of New York City as found 

 both out-of-doors and in the New York 

 Acpiariuin and the Anici-ican Muscuni. 



Mr. II. C. Ravex, of the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, who returned to Washington from 

 the island of Celebes on September 28, has 

 gone to ('Ornell University to continue his 

 studies. Mr. Raven has collected in the East 

 Indies during the last six years more than 

 four thousand mammals and five thousand 

 birds for the National Museum. 



Mr. Roy W. Miner, of the American Mu- 

 seum of Natural History, and his corjjs of 

 assistants, Messrs. Show Shimotori, Chris E. 

 01sen,and Herman Mueller, spent six weeks of 

 the summer of 1918 at the Marine Biological 

 Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts. 

 There, through the courtesy of that institu- 

 tion, they enjoyed facilities otherwise im- 

 possible for obtaining data and sketches for 

 a new Museum group. The group will repre- 

 sent, magnified 625 times, an area of the sea 

 bottom which could be covered by a 1% inch 

 magnifying glass. It is designed to show 

 the natural history and methods of life of a 

 number of minute sea animals, those known 

 as the moss animals and their associates, and 

 one of the ascidians (a "sea squirt"), the 

 latter as a representative of forms closely 

 relate<l to the stock from which it is su])- 

 [losed the vertebrates have sprung. 



Fish life at the very edge of rocky coasts, 

 both in the tropical or subtropical Atlantic 

 and the north Pacific, is represented in two 

 new minute groups, each 22 x 13^4 inches, 

 lately placed in one of the cases of the fish 

 hall of the American Museum. Small scul- 

 pins in the North superficiallj^ resemble 

 blennies and gobies of the Tropics, whereas 

 northern and southern blennies are quite un- 

 like. The southern Atlantic group contains 



