104 Notes and Comments. 



Geological Survey and the Geological Society, to whicl> sug- 

 gested new geological names should be submitted. H6' also 

 opines that every geologist proposing a new name, whether in 

 a memoir of the Geological Survey or in the Proceedings of the 

 Little Muddleborough Field Club, should be invited to send the 

 name, together with a definition, to some central source. He 

 adds, ' It may, perhaps, be pointed out to me that, since the 

 International Catalogue of Scientific Literature has a section 

 for geology, that would be the pi'oper place for indexing such 

 names. Agreed ! But all the same, the suggestion is not a 

 practical one, so long as that partucular volume of the Inter- 

 national Catalogue is thrown together (one cannot say ' edited ') 

 on its present lines.' We quite agree with Dr. Bather. B\^ 

 the way, we can't find ' Little Muddleborough ' on the map. 

 It must be somewhere near London. 



THE MINERAL KINGDOM. 



Parts 17-20 of this remarkable work have receatly been 

 published, and both as regards letterpress and plates, are well 

 up to the standard of the previous parts, which is saying much. 

 Each contains four large quarto plates, upon which the 

 minerals are figured with surprising accuracy ; even the metallic 

 tints and lustres being faithfully represented. The work is 

 by Dr. R. Brauns, and has been translated into English, with 

 additions, by Mr. L. J. Spencer, M.A., F.G.S., of the British 

 Museum. It is publishecl by Messrs. Williams & Norgate, 

 London, and will shortly be finished, part 25 being the last. 

 When complete, the work will contain nearly a hundred plates, 

 and 275 figures in the text. 



A STRANGE ANIMAL. 



In Nature (No. 2208) reference is made to Dr. Case's work 

 upon the Permian vertebrata of North America, appearing 

 in the publication of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 

 It is pointed out that ' the late Prof. Cope's hasty method of 

 giving names to battered fragments of bones and teeth is 

 proved to have hindered and complicated the study of the 

 reptiles to which they belong. One specimen, indeed, which 

 Cope described as a skull with the external nostrils situated 

 beneath the end of the snout {Hypopnoiis squaliceps), is now 

 known to be a normal skull with a second small skull, upside 

 down, firmly adherent to the lower face of the snout and dis- 

 playing its orbits, which were mistaken for the nostrils of the 

 larger skull.' 



We quote the following sentence from The Zooloj^ist (No. 847, iniyc 35), 

 but must leave our readers to make t'le best of it : — ' The cockerel that 

 was let out was terribly lierce, and his sister (Mrs. Garratt) told mc that 

 after it (the cock) had killed all the rats at the mill, it then killed the cats 

 tliat used to help to catch them.' 



Naturalist 



