ANALYTICAL ABSTRACTS. 42 1 



Good examples of the lowlands excavated from the Cretaceous base-level 

 during the Tertiary cycle, are the Valley of the East Tennessee and the cen- 

 tral lowland of Kentucky and Tennessee. During the post-Tertiary sub-cycle 

 the larger streams trenched to greater or less extent these lowlands. No 

 attempt is made to carry the history of the development of the Mississippi , 

 drainage into the complicated chapter of the ice-invasion. H. B. K. 



On a New Order of Gigaiific Fossils. By Erwin H. Barbour. (Uni- 

 versity Studies.- Published by the University of Nebraska. Vol. 

 I, No. 4, July, 1892, pp. 23, pi. 5). 

 A part of Sioux County, Nebraska, lying north of the Niobrara River, 

 has yielded a new order of gigantic Miocene fossils unlike anything hereto- 

 fore known. They are best described as fossil corkscrews, of great size, 

 coiling in right-handed or left-handed curves about an actual axis or around 

 an imaginary axis. The screws are often attached at the bottom to an 

 immense transverse piece, rhizome, underground stem, or whatever it may be, 

 which is sometimes three feet in diameter. In other cases the corkscrew 

 ends abruptly downward, as it always does upwards. In still other cases the 

 transverse piece is variously modified, and sometimes blends into the sand- 

 stone matrix, as if the underground stem, while growing at one end, was 

 decaying at the other. The fossil corkscrew is invariably vertical, and the 

 so-called rhizome invariably curves rapidly upwards, and extends outwards 

 an indefinite distance. 



That they could ever have been formed by burrowing animals, by geysers 

 or springs, or by any mechanical means whatever, is entirely untenable. 

 Their organic origin is unquestionable. Microscopic sections show smooth 

 spindle-shaped rods, which are suggestive of sponge spicules. From the 

 numbers seen in place it is evident that they flourished in thickly crowded 

 forests of vast extent. 



A finely preserved rodent's skeleton was found in one great stem. The 

 probable explanation is not that the rodent burrowed there, but that its sub- 

 merged skeleton became an anchorage for a living, growing Daimonelix, 

 which eventually enveloped it. 



The author proposes this provisional classification : 



Order. Family. Genus. Species. 



Daimonelicidce. f Daimonelix. \ circumaxilis 



bispiralis. 

 anaxilis 

 robusta 

 carinata. 



\ . 



The different species are described in full. H. B. K, 



