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NATURE 



\_Sept. 8, 1887 



Of course the value of all palseontological work, as of all 

 zoological or botanical work, must depend entirely upon the 

 care and exactness with which the work is performed. 



Time, the great assessor of all human labours, will sit in 

 judgment upon them and pronounce by their durability or in- 

 stability the comparative value of each. 



It appears to me that to the careful palxontological worker, 

 as to the careful archsologist, the greatest merit is due if he 

 succeed correctly in deciphering the too often fragmentary and 

 blurred remains of a bygone age, and giving us in the present an 

 accurate interpretation of a page from the life-history of the 

 past. 



Then, too, there is the geological aspect of palaeontology. 

 And here I may state that one of the charges made by a brother 

 zoologist against us is " that we use fossils merely as counters by 

 which to record the progress of geological time." 



As well might exception be taken that the milestones along a 

 turnpike road had been used by a traveller to calculate the 

 length of his journey. 



But omitting the word merely (for fossils have been made to 

 give up many secrets to the investigator besides their age), I 

 gladly accept the charge as conveying a great and important 

 truth. 



Do not the historian and the antiquary use the coins and 

 medals dug from the ruins of the dead and long past dynasties of 

 the world as sure guides in the chronology of the human period ? 



And may not the geologist also use " the medals of creation" 

 as Dr. Mantell aptly called them — coined in no counterfeit mint, 

 as the best and most trustworthy guides to enable him to establish 

 the chronology of the stratified rocks of the earth ? 



Great then as is the benefit which zoology has derived from 

 palaeontology in enabling the zoologist to learn the earliest 

 appearance in time of each group of organisms, and the modifi- 

 cations in structure, so far as we are enabled to ascertain them, 

 which each may have undergone from the ancient to the modern 

 period — it may be doubted whether even this valuable aid equals 

 the service performed to stratigraphical geology by the careful 

 study of organic remains — in enabling us to write the chronology 

 of the rocks over so large a portion of the habitable globe. 



Without fossils stratigraphical geology would be as unsatisfac- 

 tory as it would certainly be uninteresting ; with their aid it 

 becomes, both in the field and in the cabinet, one of the most 

 attractive and delightful of studies. 



Owing to the very nature of sedimentary deposits, being of 

 necessity either lacustrine, estuarine, or marine in origin, our 

 knowledge of the ancient land surfaces of the globe is necessarily 

 very limited, but we know much concerning its old marine areas. 

 These are the more constant and widespread, and it is mainly 

 upon these deposits, and not so much upon the more limited 

 evidences of ancient land surfaces, that our chronology has been 

 based. 



Of the antiquity of cave-folk and their contemporary Mamma- 

 lii we may expect to hear the very latest utterances from Prof. 

 Boyd Dawkins and Dr. Hicks. The former is also to be con- 

 gratulated upon his renewed work on the Mammalia in the 

 Palaeontographical Society's volume for 1886 (just issued). Prof. 

 O. C. Marsh has added a further contribution to American 

 palaeontology in the shape of a memoir describing and figuring 

 sixteen new species of Mesozoic mammals from the Upper 

 Jurassic rocks in Wyoming, on the western slope of the Rocky 

 "Mountains. Mr. Lydekker has just completed Part V. of his 

 most useful and much-needed Catalogue of the Fossil Mammalia 

 in the British Museum, containing the Sirenia, Cetacea, Eden- 

 tata, Marsupialia, and Monotremata. 



The fossil birds remain to be catalogued. In the Reptilia it 

 is refreshing to see Prof. Huxley once more taking up the pen and 

 writing upon Hypcrodapedon and Rhynchosauriis in his old 

 vigorous and earnest style. We can only regret that his health 

 precludes him from continuous labour, to the no small loss of 

 science. Prof. Marsh shortly promises us his memoir on the 

 Sauropoda, the plates of which are progressing rapidly to com- 

 pletion. 



Our late veteran chief. Sir Richard Owen, although retired 

 from active official duties, contributes a paper on Galesanrus 

 planiceps, a Triassic saurian from South Africa, and a further 

 memoir on Meiolania from Lord Howe Island. 



Prof. Seeley and M. Louis Dolb are both occupied with 

 Dinosauria, the former from the Cape (whence he has also de- 

 tected part of a mammalian skeleton in the Triassic rocks), and 

 the latter is adding to our knowledge of Iguanodon and other 

 forms from the Wealden of Bernissart. 



In the Amphibia, Prof Dr. Herman Credner has added a 

 most valuable paper on the development of Branchiosaurus, a 

 small Labyrinthodont from the Keuper of Saxony, in which he 

 has been able successfully to trace the development through a 

 long series of individuals of a water- breathing naked larva of the 

 Palaeozoic epoch into an air-breathing adult firm, clad in a 

 strong coat of mail. 



In fossil ichthyology, A. Wettstein has been occupied in the 

 study of the Eocene fishes of the (jlarus slates, and in his recent 

 memoir he shows that out of one fish {Anenchelitm), so constantly 

 distorted by slaty cleavage, Agassiz had made no fewer than six 

 species. The fish is now found to be identical with the living 

 " scabbard-fish," Lepidopus ; and the author reduces the forty-four 

 species of Glarus fishes to twenty-three, and adds four new ones. 

 Among the latter is the first fossil Reiiiora yet met with, named 

 Echeneis glaronensis. Its first dorsal is modified as a sucker, 

 exactly as in the living Remora. 



Baron Zigno, of Padua, has figured and described the first 

 entire Alyliobatis hitherto discovered in the Eocene of Monte 

 Bolca. 



M. Louis Dollo records the occurrence of two skeletons of 

 Carcharodon heterodon in the Eocene of Boom, Antwerp, one 

 measuring 7 metres, and the other nearly 9 metres in length. 

 They are now mounted and exhibited in the Brussels Museum. 



Mr. J. F. W^hiteaves is commencing to publish the detailed 

 descriptions of the Devonian fishes from Scaumenac Bay, 

 Quebec. 



Mr. James Wm. Davis, of Halifax, has produced a second 

 monograph for the Royal Dublin Society. The first, which 

 appeared in 1883, was devoted to the teeth and spines of Elas- 

 mobranch fishes from the Carboniferous limestone of Great 

 Britain ; the present monograph, illustrated by twenty-four 

 plates, is devoted to the description of the fishes of the Creta- 

 ceous rocks of the Lebanon, and makes us acquainted with a 

 wonderful series of Selachian fishes, representing nine genera 

 and sixteen species, of which two genera and twelve species are 

 new to science. The Ganoids comprise two species of Pycno- 

 donts and two forms related to Amia ; there are also a number 

 of Teleostean fishes, amongst which are Pagellus, Beryx, 

 Homo7iotus, rialax, and many other genera. Two species of 

 eel, Anguilla, are the first Mesozoic examples recorded. Alto- 

 gether we have ten genera and sixty-three species of fish recorded 

 as new. The author is to be congratulated upon having contri- 

 buted to fossil ichthyology one of the most extensive works 

 published in recent years. 



Mr. Arthur Smith Woodward (a former student of Owens 

 College, Manchester) has this year also contributed numerous 

 papers on fossil fishes : on Ptychodus from the Chalk ; Squalo- 

 raja from the Lias ; on the Brazilian genus Rhacolepis ; on a 

 Maltese Holocentritm ; " On some Eocene Siluroid Fishes from 

 Bracklesham " ; and "On the Canal-System in the Shields of 

 Pteraspidean Fishes." 



Mr. E. T. Newton describes a Semioiiolus from the Trias of 

 Warwickshire. 



Both Mr. James W. Davis and Dr. R. H. Traquair have 

 given us descriptions of the anatomy of Chondrosteus acipen- 

 seroides from the Lias of Lyme Regis. 



Mr. William Davies describes two species of Pholidophorus 

 from the Purbeck beds of Swanage, Dorset. 



But the groups which have proved of the greatest service in 

 the chronology of the sedimentary rocks have been the Mollusca, 

 the Brachiopoda, and Crustacea (especially the Trilobita, Phyl- 

 lopoda, and Ostracoda), the Echinodermata, Corals, Graptolitq^, 

 Spor>ges, and Foraminifcra. 



It would be an interminable task merely to record the worli 

 in the various sections of palaeontology, but in glancing at tl: 

 one cannot prevent many illustrious names arising in one's 

 — many who have finished their work, and are reckoned am^ 

 the fathers of the science, but many also who are still our cc 

 panions, and from whom we may expect further important ' 

 before they lay down their hammer, their lens, and their penJ 



In the Cephalopoda the task so lately left by our country! 



Dr. Wright, after a long life devoted to palaeontological scieni 



has been taken up by Mr. S. S. Buckman, who has already pre- 

 sented one fasciculus of a monograph on the Ammonitidas of ti 

 Inferior Oolite. 



The Gasteropoda of the Oolites have an able historian in 

 W. H. Hudleston, whose contributions on this subject enr 

 the pages and plates of the Geological Afagazine and the ProceJ 

 ings of the Geologists' Association ; the Paljeozoic forms are 

 the hands of Dr. Lindstrom. 



