458 A. Smith Woodward — Visit to American Museums. 



Acanihodes, Bhizodopsis, Megaliclithjs, Ccelacanthus, and Platysomus ; 

 and among Devonian fishes, there is the unique type-specimen of 

 Cephalaspis Dawsoni from Gaspe. Of recently determined acqui- 

 sitions, the most interesting, perhaps, is a small Cottus from the 

 Pleistocene nodule bed of Green's Creek, near Ottawa, described by 

 Sir William Dawson in vol. iv. No. 2, of the " Canadian Eecord of 

 Science." All the more important of these fossils are beautifully 

 displayed, with complete labels, in small exhibition cases ; and the 

 collection is arranged in stratigraphical order on the first floor of 

 the Museum, with the zoological collection in an encircling gallery 

 immediately above. 



Quebec. 



There is a small Museum in the Laval University, Quebec, under 

 the care of the Abbe Laflamme ; but the palasontological collection 

 is insignificant, and the only items of special interest are the relics 

 of the old Huron Indians. 



Boston and Cambridge. 



The fine Museum of the Boston Society of Natural History 

 comprises a good general European collection of fossils in addition 

 to those of America; but the only Vertebrates of special interest 

 are some well-preserved examples of the Lower Carboniferous 

 Paleeoniscid fishes from New Brunswick, and a few representatives 

 of Ischypterus and Dictyopyge from the black Triassic shales of 

 Connecticut. 



In the adjoining University city of Cambridge, however, there 

 is a most extensive collection of fossil Vertebrata in the Agassiz 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology. One of the most striking features 

 of the public galleries in this Museum is the manner in which 

 merely a selection of the more instructive types is exhibited, without 

 any of the overcrowding and bewildering array that characterizes 

 most institutions of a similar nature. The majority of the remains 

 of extinct Vertebrata are thus placed in one of the capacious store- 

 rooms ; and the collection has accumulated to such an extent that it 

 has been necessary to stow away the specimens, in most cases, upon 

 shelves and in drawers without any definite arrangement. The 

 Mammalia form the only group that has hitherto been investigated 

 in detail, these remains being described by Professors Scott and 

 Osborn, of Princeton ; but the fossil Eeptiles occupy many cabinets, 

 and the fossil Fishes, to which the writer devoted most of his 

 attention, by kind permission of Prof. A. Agassiz, form a still more 

 extensive series, representing both the Old World and the New. 

 A large number of Cretaceous fish-remains from Kansas are referable 

 to genera and species described by Prof. Cope; and several fishes 

 from the Coal-measures of Ohio evidently represent forms made 

 known in the works of Prof. Newberry. The Wachsmuth collection 

 of American Lower Carboniferous Selachian teeth is also here ; 

 while a number of remains of the huge Dinichthys, discovered by 

 Mr. Jay Terrell in Ohio, and lately studied by Prof. Newberry, are 

 rivalled only by those in the Museum of Columbia College, New 



