Miscellaneous. 169 



brother and I made personal and explicit inquiry of him as to the 

 fate of these bones, concerning which we were naturally anxious to 

 know whether we had been correctly informed. His " reply " was 

 so vague as to compel us to be content with the guarded expression 

 we used. It will be seen that the " reply " he has now given is 

 not more satisfactory. It shows, indeed, that two of the three 

 bones or fragments which we had been informed were sent by M. 

 Bouton had reached Prof. Owen, had been rightly recognized by the 

 former and " returned " by the latter ; but it says nothing as to their 

 " fate," which remains as " unknown to us " now as it was then. 

 One thing is certain — that on search being made last August in the 

 Museum at Port Louis, they were not forthcoming. 



Fully appreciating the terms of general approbation in which 

 Professor Owen has been pleased to mention our paper, the care- 

 lessness as to the fate of these particular specimens, whatever may 

 have been their number or condition, which ho imputes to my 

 brother and myself is so great that I need not apologize for troubling 

 you with the assurance that it has no foundation in fact. 



I remain, Gentlemen, 

 Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall, Your obedient Servant, 



January 10, 1872. Aifred Newton. 



Tapirus villosus. 



The British Museum has received from Mr. Buckley a series of 

 specimens of diiferent ages of Tapir us villosus from the Cordillera of 

 Ecuador. The adult male is black, closely covered with rather short 

 hair ; the young is covered with abundance of longer hair ; the young 

 is marked with broad grey streaks more or less confluent or united 

 into shoi't grey lines. The nasal bone of the adult is elongate. — 

 J. E. Gray. 



A Letter concerning Deep-Sea Dredgings, addressed to Prof. Benjamin 

 Peirce, Superintendent, United States Coast Survey. By Louis 

 Agassiz. 



Cambridge, Mass., December 2, 1871. 



Mr DEAR Friend, — On the point of starting for the Deep-Sea 

 Dredging-expedition, for which you have so fully provided, and 

 which I trust may prove to be one of the best rewards for your 

 devotion to the interests of the Coast Survey, I am desirous to leave 

 in your hands a document which may be very compromising for me, 

 but which I nevertheless am determined to write in the hope of 

 showing within what limits natural history has advanced toward 

 that point of maturity when science may anticipate the discovery of 

 facts. 



If there is, as I believe to be the case, a plan according to which 

 the afl&nities among animals and the order of their succession in time 

 were determined from the beginning, and if that plan is reflected in 

 the mode of growth and in the geographical distribution of all 

 living beings, or, in other words, if this world of ours is the work 



Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 4, Vol. ix. 12 



