866 THE JOURNAE OF GROLOG VY: 
beginning of the Cretaceous, through the Tertiaries to and including 
the living species of the genus Nautilus. Its presence on the cysto- 
ceran volution in Cretacic shells can be explained only when it is con- 
sidered as a transmitted, tachygenetic characteristic derived from the 
ancestral, nautilian shells of the Jura, which have the same character- 
istic at a later age, z. e., in the paranepionic substage. 
““». The first conclusion is also sustained by the parallel phylogeny 
of the impressed zone in the ancestral forms of the Ammonoidea, 
the Nautilinidz and especially in Mimoceras, the radical genus of this 
family. 
“8. The fourth, fifth and sixth conclusions are also supported by 
the presence of a contact furrow on the dorsum of the earliest age of 
the conch in the specialized and highly tachygenic forms of the 
Goniatitinee of the Devonian and of all the remaining Ammonoids 
to the end of the Cretaceous. 
“9. These cumulative results favor the theory of tachygenesis and 
diplogenesis, and are opposed to the Weissmannian hypothesis of the 
subdivision of the body into two essentially distinct kinds of plasm, 
the germplasm, which receives and transmits acquired characteristics, 
and the somatoplasm, which, while it is capable of acquiring modifica- | 
tions, either does not or cannot transmit them to descendants.” 
S. W. 
The Protolenus Fauna. By G. F. Mattuew. Trans. N.Y. Acad. 
Sci., Vol. XIV., pp. 101-153. Plates I.—XI. 
In a paper entitled Zhe Protolenus Fauna, Mr. G. F. Matthew has 
added an important contribution to our knowledge of the Cambrian 
faunas of New Brunswick. 
The Etcheminian Series, considered as pre-Cambrian by Mr. 
Matthew, and the overlying St. John Group, present similar strati- 
graphic features in New Brunswick and Newfoundland. In New- 
foundland the Olenellus fauna is found in the same position as observed 
elsewhere, viz., preceding the Paradoxides fauna, but in New Bruns- 
wick the fauna characterized by Olenellus is absent, and the Proto- 
lenus fauna takes its place stratigraphically. 
The author publishes a list, with notes and descriptions, of seventy- 
four species and varieties belonging to the Protolenus fauna, twenty- 
eight of which are new, with two new genera, Pe/agied/a, a new genus 
of Gasteropoda, and AZzcmacca, a new genus of Trilobites. 
