406 Chronicles of Science. | July, 
the structure of this remarkable fossil “acquire an intelligibility 
which they lose to those who accept the interpretations given in the 
memoir” by Professor Owen. But the “ furculum” still presents 
an osteological difficulty which even Professor Huxley cannot sur- 
mount. He is also of opinion that if the head of Archzxopteryx, 
when discovered, should possess jaws containing teeth, it would not, 
to his mind, on that account, cease to be a bird, any more “ than 
turtles cease to be reptiles because they have beaks.” An abstract 
of this important paper will be found in No. 98 of the ‘ Proceedings 
of the Royal Society.’ 
Another of Professor Owen’s papers*has been severely criticized 
by Messrs. Albany Hancock and Thomas Atthey. On June 3rd of 
last year Professor Owen read a paper “On the Dental Characters of 
Genera and Species, chiefly of Fishes, from the Low Main Seam and 
Shales of Coal, Northumberland,” before the Odontological Society of 
Great Britain. An abstract of this paper appeared in the next (July) 
number of the ‘ Geological Magazine, and the following number of 
that periodical contained a criticism upon it from the pen of Mr. 
Thomas Atthey. The paper having been published in full, with 
illustrative plates, in the ‘ ‘Transactions of the Odontological Society ’ 
for 1867, Mr. Atthey, now in conjunction with Mr. Hancock (a 
well-known naturalist, and one of considerable eminence as a malaco- 
zoologist), has published his criticisms in detail in the April and 
May numbers of the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History.’ 
Professor Owen describes twelve genera of Fishes and Batrachians ; 
but Messrs. Hancock and Atthey find themselves “compelled to con- 
clude that there is positively not a single novelty in the whole series.” 
For instance, they state that “it is apparently on fragments of the 
jaw-bones and on the teeth of Rhizodopsis sawroides that Professor 
Owen has founded the Dittodus parallelus, Ganolodus Craggesit, 
Characodus confertus, and the Batrachian genus Gastrodus !!” 
Again, other remains, described as teeth of a small fish by the name 
of Mitrodus quadicornis, his opponents consider to be a large kind 
of dermal tubercles, and remark, “ this ‘minnow,’ then, of our shales 
is found to be identical with Gyracanthus tuberculatus, perhaps the 
largest fish of the Coal-measures.” To the younger paleontologists 
these confident assertions of Professor Owen's errors will appear 
incredible. It therefore seems highly desirable that the matter 
should be investigated by yet one more eminent odontologist. 
The fossils of the Portlandian deposits of the department of the 
Yonne have been carefully described and figured by M. de Loriol, 
in a monograph by that paleontologist, and M. Cotteau.* The 
latter author divides the series into two zones, namely, a lower one 
characterized by Ammonites gigas, and an upper by Pinna supra- 
* Bull. Soc. d. Sciences hist. et nat. de ]’Yonne, 2° série. Vol. i., 1868. 
