June 20, 1912] 
NATURE 
409 
(Smithsonian Institution, Bull. 77, 1911, pp. xxii. and 
348). The United States National Museum has 
generously sent an almost complete set of the species 
described to the British Museum, while the British 
Museum has supplied in exchange a series of 
Ordovician bryozoa collected by F. A. Bather in 
Oland. It appears that bryozoa have not yet been 
traced back beyond the Lower Ordovician, but from 
that epoch their abundance makes them serviceable 
in stratigraphical work. The author reviews the 
relations of the Cambrian and Silurian strata of 
Baltic Russia to those of the United States, and 
correlates the Richmond series of America with 
the Borkholm Limestone as earliest Gotlandian 
(‘earliest Silurian’’ of the author). A species of 
Fenestella (p. 175) is found as far back as the Bork- 
holm Limestone. A new genus of Batostomellidz, 
Esthoniopora, is established (p. 259) for two species 
of Middle Ordovician age. Rhabdinopora (Eich- 
wald) is definitely referred (p. 348) to the hydrozoan 
Dictyonema. The drawings of structure throughout 
this important memoir are clear and abundant. 
The Geological Survey of Great Britain (Memoirs, 
Palzontology, vol. i., part iii., 1912, price 3s.) issues 
a paper by G. Lee on “The British Carbon- 
iferous Trepostomata."”’ The author observes that 
the forms are likely to have a zonal value. 
Charles Schuchert has usefully discussed the 
* Paleeogeographic and Geologic Significance of Recent 
Brachiopoda”’ (Bull. Geol. Soc. America, vol. xxii., 
IgII, p. 258). He shows how the inarticulata, when 
“large, thick-shelled, and abundant,” indicate water 
of less depth than too ft., and he incidentally illus- 
trates the extraordinary vitality of Lingula in Japan, 
under the most adverse conditions of sedimentation 
near a shore. The facts quoted from Yatsu (p. 263) 
go far to explain the persistence of this venerable 
genus. In the geographical part of the paper, the 
present distribution of genera is shown to harmonise 
with the existence and shore-line of the Gondwana 
continent across what is now the South Atlantic 
Ocean. We have read the following sentence from 
the conclusion several times (p. 275), and it surely 
needs some expansion to make it clear :—‘t Gondwana 
appears to have existed until middle Eocene times; 
the deciding land barrier between the northern and 
southern hemispheres and the  inter-hemisphere 
shallow-water genera followed either its shores or 
those of Oceanica and the northern Pacific bounding | 
lands."" Is it only the punctuation? 
A. R. Horwood (‘‘On the Layers of the Molluscan 
Shell,"" Geol. Mag., 1911, p. 406) shows that shells 
consisting of aragonite may be preserved in their 
original mineral condition from as far back as 
Jurassic times. He adds several examples to those 
already noted by G. Cole and O. H. Little. We are 
not aware on what authority he differs (p. 411) so 
widely from Sorby, who determined the nacreous 
layer of Nautilus—by far the greater part of the shell 
—to be aragonite. The statement in the same table 
that the fossil cephalopods are preserved in aragonite 
is, of course, a slip. The paper, however, is too full 
of slips or unusual modes of expression. The 
chemical composition of a specimen of calcite (p. 416) 
is said to include carbonic acid 42-2 and carbonate of 
lime 54-4 per cent., while a detailed analysis of some 
particular sample of aragonite is quoted for com- 
parison. Surely both minerals might have been 
given as calcium carbonate 100 per cent. We do 
not like to call (p. 411) a material that consists of 
calcite “ pseudo-calcite,’’ and we feel tempted to quote 
a sentence at the top of p. 408 as being far more 
difficult than that given above from Schuchert. 
R. Bullen Newton, in his presidential address to 
NO. 2225, voi. 89] 
| from Holcostephanus. 
| 4, Igrt). 
the Malacological Society, showed how molluscs have 
been utilised in marking stratigraphical zones (Proc. 
Malac. Soc., vol. ix., 1911, p. 282). 
P. Bartsch reviews recent and fossil forms of 
Alvania (a round-mouthed and reticulated genus cut 
off from Rissoa) from the west coast of America 
(Proc. U.S. Nat. Museum, vol. xli., rg1i, p. 333). 
Eighteen of the thirty-five species described are new, 
but the only fossil forms, both of them new, are 
| A. pedroana and A. fossilis, from sand-rock in Cali- 
fornia, the age of which is unfortunately not stated. 
J. Nowak (Bull. internat. de l’Acad. des Sciences, 
Krakow, 1911, p. 547) examines the cephalopoda of 
the Scaphites group in the Upper Cretaceous of 
| Poland. The paper is written in German. He 
| criticises Yabe’s reliance on the character of the 
internal saddle in distinguishing a new genus, 
Yezoites, and compares the three Polish species of 
Scaphites from several points of view. He places 
the familiar species aequalis under a new genus, 
Holcoseaphites (p. 564), thus indicating its descent 
Acanthoscaphites tridens and 
Hoploscaphites constrictus similarly record descent 
from Acanthoceras and Hoplites. The known species 
from other countries are distributed among these 
genera. The Polish forms, which are here repro- 
duced by photography, seem by no means so aberrant 
from the ordinary ammonite type as are the Scaphites 
familiar in England. 
The late Victor Uhlig, in the third fasciculus of 
his work on “The Fauna of the Spiti Shales” (Mem. 
Geol. Surv. India, ser. xv., vol. iv.), completed his 
description of the Ammonites with several new species 
of Perisphinctes, and an account of a_ possible 
Bochianites (p. 381). Another rare genus, Diplo- 
conus, seems to be indicated among the Belemnoidea. 
C. D. Walcott is enabled, by the discovery of the 
genus in the top of the Lower Cambrian of North 
America, to assign an horizon to the trilobite 
Olenopsis, hitherto known only from Sardinia 
(Smithsonian Miscell. Coll., vol. Ivii., 1912, p. 239). 
He also discusses a number of new Middle Cambrian 
Crustacea, Trilobita, and Merostomata (ibid., p. 145), 
in which he is especially successful in detecting limb- 
structures. It appears that the photographic illus- 
trations, as in previous cases, are from specimens in 
which the outlines and delicate features have been 
emphasised by painting on the slab. 
Anton Hardlirsch, of Vienna, records ‘New 
Paleozoic Insects from Mazon Creek, Illinois"? (Amer. 
Journ. Sct., vol. xxxi., 1911, p. 297). He has found 
it necessary, from a sample of the rich material in 
the Upper Carboniferous ironstone nodules, to 
establish forty new species, twenty-three new genera, 
nine new families, and a new order. The possibili- 
ties before future research are shown by the fact 
that ‘‘rarely has one and the same species been re- 
presented by more than a single specimen.” 
H. W. Fowler describes the ‘‘ Fossil Fish Remains 
of the Cretaceous, Eocene, and Miocene Forma- 
tions of New Jersey’ (Geol. Surv. N.J., Bull. 
The elasmobranchs figure largely among 
the Cretaceous forms. We regret to see that we are 
asked to write Lepisosteus for our old American friend 
Lepidosteus, especially as the order remains known 
as Lepidostei (p. 148). 
S. W. Williston has been given access to unworked 
Permian material in the Yale Museum, and describes 
the Limnoscelide, a ‘‘New Family of Reptiles from 
the Permian of New Mexico’? (Amer. Journ. Sci., 
vol. xxxi., 1911, p. 380). The skull is happily com- 
plete, and is exceptionally long, with highly developed 
conical incisors. The species on which the family is 
established is called Limnoscelis paludis, on account 
