SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTIONS 101 
COSMOCEHRATIDA. 
VASCOCERAS Choffat.* 
This genus, thanks to the researches of Choffat,’ can now perhaps be 
assigned to its proper group. In my chapter on Cephalopods in Zittel’s 
Text-book I placed it with a question mark in the Acanthoceratidae. It is 
apparently a group of very broad coronate shells having in the young 
adolescent stage of some primitive forms (ex. V. swbconciliatum, Choffat) 
three rows of tubercles, which are often large nodes on casts. The section 
is essentially helmet shaped at this age, the umbilical zones very abrupt, 
and the diameter through the umbilical shoulders much greater than that 
through the ventro-lateral angles. The absence of a keel and the rounded 
ventral zone, interrupted by costes in some forms, are characteristics that, 
together with the lateral nodes and section, are similar to the young stages 
of Coronites and the discoidal forms of Hoplites that have similar coronate 
young with a line of large nodes. The sutures have remarkably broad first 
lateral saddles and ventral lobes that are similar to those of some species of 
Heinzia and Metoicoceras. These and the other characters indicate that this 
genus may have had relations to typical Pulchelliide similar to those that 
“Belongs with the Desmoceras group.’’ It seems probable, therefore, that Professor Hyatt had 
changed his opinion concerning the relationship of the genus, but as he had arranged figures of it on 
the plate in connection with figures of Coilopoceras, it is thought best to print the manuscript as 
written. The statement that ‘‘the group * * * is correctly referred to the Phylloceratida”’ is 
evidently in conflict with the general note on the Mammitida, which is made to include the Coilopo- 
ceratidze and many other families. I have not been able to determine which of these views was last 
held by Professor Hyatt, but the arrangement of the manuscript gave the impression that Aconeceras 
was removed from Coilopoceratide as the result of later studies and that much of the eyidence for the 
relationship of the family with Phylloceratida was thus remoyed.—T. W. 8. 
«Tn the manuscript a sheet is inserted just before Vascoceras with the heading ‘‘Cosmoceratida,”’ 
followed by ‘‘In family description notice resemblance of form to Aspidoc. of Jura as more remote 
than to Cheloniceras of the Cretacic.’’? Another memorandum bears pencil-sketch copies of 
d@Orbigny’s figures of Ammonites royerianus (Pal. Fr. Terr. Crét., I, pl. 112, figs. 3, 4) labeled 
Cheloniceras royerianus, indicating that he had probably selected this species as the type of a new 
genus. It is inferred from this that he had referred Vascoceras to the Cosmoceratida, and that he 
intended to name and describe a new family to include this genus and possibly Tolypeceras. But did 
he also intend to put Coilopoceratidee, Pulchelliidze, and all the families that follow in the Cosmoce- 
ratida? I can see no evidence of it, except in the arrangement of the manuscript and the absence from 
it of other super-family names. Certainly no justification for it can be found in the definition given 
by Professor Hyatt in Zittel’s Text-book. In the plates Vascoceras follows Coilopoceratidee, and I 
have changed the arrangement of the manuscript sheets as found so that the descriptions follow in the 
same order, believing that this is a more natural order and that it represents Professor Hyatt’s latest 
views, as the last work he did was the mounting of these drawings in plates.—T. W. 8. 
bFaune Crét. du Portugal. 
