| PROCEEDINGS OF THE MALACOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
As to the nature of the much debated successional premolar of 
Marsupials, reasons are adduced for the author’s belief that it is in 
reality, not a replacing tooth, but a retarded milk-tooth. In the 
following year (Anat. Anz., 1894, ix) vestigial teeth are described 
in several Rodentia, and are shown to belong to the milk-dentition. 
It is suggested that the functional molars of the Mammalia—the true 
molars so called—are to be assigned to the same set as the premolars, 
i.e. the second dentition (to be termed ¢hird dentition if we believe 
in the pre-milk dentition). The same year an able review of the 
recent work ‘On the Succession and Genesis of Mammalian Teeth’ 
appeared in Scrence Progress (1894, 1). 
‘Part ii of the ‘Contributions to the Study of Mammalian 
Dentition’ (P.Z.8., 1896) deals with the teeth of representatives 
of five out of the nine families of Insectivora. In this the author 
is led to view the considerable variation in the dentition of the 
Insectivora as a result of suppressions in the dental series, and of 
a tendency to reduction in the functional importance of the milk- 
dentition. Strictures are made on the tritubercular as well as on 
the concrescent theory of the evolution of the molar cusps, and the 
discussion of these general questions is conducted by a clever handling 
of arguments taken from ontogeny, comparative morphology, and 
phylogeny. In the last publication of the series (Anat. Anz., 1896) 
Woodward sides with the partisans of a pre-milk dentition so far as 
Marsupials are concerned. <A set of minute teeth in polyprotodont 
and diprotodont Marsupialia are described as the remnants of 
a pre-milk dentition. An analogous interpretation given by other 
workers to similar slight structures in some Placentalia is accepted 
‘with some reservation.’ Of this paper it may be safely foretold 
that it will hold its own ground for some decades to come. One 
of the reasons for which he discontinued his researches in this 
branch of study, and would presumably have done so for years had 
he been spared, was that he was rightly convinced the last word 
in researches of this kind belong to paleontology, but owing to the 
slow progress of paleontological discoveries the answers also would 
be slow in coming.” 
Ere this series was complete, however, Martin Woodward had 
once more reverted to the Mollusca, and owing to the fortunate 
incident of his becoming Secretary to this Society in November, 1897, 
this return bid fair to result in his specializing in this subject, for 
all his later papers dealt with Molluscan anatomy, and, with two 
exceptions, appeared in our Proceedings, whilst he was preparing 
material for the volume on Mollusca in the Oxford Natural History 
that had been entrusted to him by its editor, Professor E. Ray 
