February i, 1906] 



NA TURE 



3*7 



MEMOIRS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF 

 NAPLES. 1 

 ""THE greater number of the papers published in the lasl 

 volume of the Atti of the Royal Society of Naples 

 deal with geological and palacontological subjects connected 

 with southern Italy. Dr. Maria Pasquale has prepared a 

 catalogue of the fossil remains of Selachians, preserved 

 with the University collections in Naples, and in various 

 other museums in Italy. The majority of the species were 

 already known through the writings of Prof. O. G. Costa, 



Clay of Taranto. 



who had originally formed the Neapolitan collection, and 



of Prof. Bassani, in whose custody the specimens now are. 

 With the exception of one possibly Cretaceous species, all 

 are Cainozoic, and no less than twenty-two species come 

 from the pietra leccese (Middle -Miocene). 

 The fish fauna of the Pleistocene (lays of Taranto is 



described by Prof. F. Bassani (No. 3, 59 pp., 3 pis.), prin- 

 cipally from a collection of 700 specimens obtained by Dr. 

 Marchesetti during the excavation of a new dry dock at 

 Taranto in 1886. From beds of clay varying from 10 metres 



to 73 metres in thickness come 9 

 ipecie oi algae, including the new 



Grateloupia bassanii, which form r 



the subject of a special memoir by 



Dr. A. de Gasparis (No. 4, 8 pp., 



1 pi.), and 29 species of fish, all of 



which are found living" in the 



Mediterranean at the present day, 



and many of which may be seen 



on the stalls of the fish market in 



Taranto. Certain genera, Hippo- 

 campus, Scbpelus, Maurolicus, 



Heliastes, Mullus, and Trachy- 



pterus, do not appear to have been 



recorded in the fossil state before 



these Tarantine discoveries. The 



occurrence of many individuals be- 

 longing to near-shore-living genera, 



like Solea, suggests that the 



fauna was essentially a littoral 



one, and the presence of such deep-sea types as Nyctophus 



( = Scopelus) or Maurolicus is hardly to be regarded in any 



other light than the occasional upheaval of the dead bodies 



of abyssal forms in the Straits of Messina at the present 



day. Bones of a dolphin are recorded from the same 



deposits. 



1 " \tti Hella Reale Accademia delle science fisiche e matematiche di 

 Napoli." Vol. xii. (too 5 .) 



NO. 1892, VOL. JT,] 



Dr. M. Pasquale also contributes a short illustrated de- 

 scription of another fish, Palaeorhynchus deshayesi, 

 Agassiz, from the Eocene deposits near Barberino di 

 Mugello, Florence (No. 8, 7 pp., 1 pi.). 



Two important contributions to the palaeontology of the 

 Gulf of Naples deal with the corals of Capri and with 

 the Triassic shells of Giffoni, near Salerno. Prof, de 

 Angelis d'Ossat has proved that the Capri limestones of 

 Yenassino, which have hitherto been generallj believed to 

 be of Tithonic age, in accordance with the view ol Oppen- 

 heim (1889), are far more nearly related in their coral- 

 fauna to the Urgonian rocks. Out of a total of 25 species 

 of corals, 18 are shared with the Urgonian, only 1 with 

 Tithonic deposits. Several species of Amphiastraeid and 

 \ hi id corals are described and figured as new to science, 

 and an Acanthoccenia is named after Dr. Cerio, the dis- 

 coverer of this rich deposit, who has devoted so much of his 

 life to the study of the natural history of Capri. The 

 dolomitic limestone of Giffoni has already been made 

 known by the work of Costa and Bassani on the fish-fauna. 

 In Dr. Galdieri's memoir (No. 16, 30 pp., 1 pi., 21 figs.), 

 which is in the main a revision of 0. G. Costa's work of 

 forty years ago, an attempt has been made to determin 

 the exact chronological position of the Giffoni beds with 

 1 ispect to others both in Italy and the Alps. More 

 material will be required before certain conclusions can 

 be drawn, but at the present slate of knowledge there is 

 fair evidence of contemporaneity with the well known 

 Triassic strata at St. Cassian. 



An interesting note bearing on the same general subject 

 of the limestones of the Bay of Naples is on the Scoglio 

 di Revigliano, by Prof, de Lorenzo (No. 12, 4 pp., 2 pis.). 

 Revigliano Island is a tiny islet rock of Cretaceous, per- 

 haps 11I Urgonian, age, which, were the sea to be removed, 

 would be seen to rise by itself from a gently sloping plain 

 of volcanic deposits, among which pumice, like that 

 which buried Pompeii in the year -o, would be con- 

 spicuous, as well as the products of other Vesuvian and 

 Campanian eruptions. The strata of the little rock dip in 

 the same direction as those of the Sorrentine peninsula, 

 viz. to the north-west, and they indicate by their trend 

 the existence of a great fault, all other trace of which is 

 buried beneath the alluvial and volcanic deposits of the 

 Sarno-< lastellamare plain. 



lli. granitoid and Filonian Rocks of Sardinia form the' 

 subject of a posthumous memoir of Carlo Riva (No. 9, 

 in8 pp., 7 pis. I, which has hern prepared for the press by 

 his friend and colleague Prof, de Lorenzo. After describing 

 the petrographical characteristics of the chief varieties of 

 rock in detail, the author gives a valuable account of 

 seventeen localities in Sardinia where zones "I contact 

 between the granites ami schists and calcareous rocks maj 

 be well studied, together with an appreciation of the meta- 



morphic changes that have taken place at each locality. 

 The memoir concludes with a discussion of the theories 

 of the probable age of the granitoid rocks of Sardinia. 



Dr. V. Bianchi has re-investigated certain parts oi the 

 brain of Delphinus delphis (No/ 14, 16 pp., 3 pis.), and 

 has compiled an interesting table setting forth his estimates 

 of the relative numbers of neuroglceal corpuscles and of 

 nerve cells in various regions of the cerebral cortex. 



