Reviews— The Fcdceontographical Society. 417 



the long series of seventy volumes vpith which it now takes an 

 honourable place. Nor has the modest annual subscription of 

 one guinea been increased, notwithstanding the advanced price in 

 printing paper and illustrations and labour prevailing since the War. 

 In his monograph on the Wealden and Purbeck Fishes (part ii) 

 Dr. Arthur Smith Woodward gives an admirable series (pi. xi) of 

 the remarkable rows of small enamelled round, crushing, palatal 

 teeth in Lepidotus Mantelli (one of the most characteristic of 

 Wealden fishes), showing the mammaliform apices and successional 

 teeth in sockets; also the large flank bony-enamelled scales (square 

 or rhoniboidal in form), fixed in place and pegged down by bony 

 processes like the slates upon a house-roof (described in parti, 1915). 

 The genus Mesodon of Middle Purbeck age from Swanage, etc., with 

 its allied genera. J^omesodon (Lias and Portlandian), Mtcrodo7i(Fur])eck), 

 and Coslodus (Lower Cretaceous and Purbeck), introduces us to 

 a singularly interesting series of Pycnodont fishes with flattened 

 sides more or less covered by enamelled rhomboidal scales with 

 small protruding, often beak-like, mouths and crushing teeth well 

 adapted to feed upon coral-zoophytes, Crustacea, and molluscs. 

 This group of Mesozoic fishes is remarkably well preserved in the 

 lithographic rocks of Solenhofen, the Purbeck of England, and down 

 to the Lias, and without imaginary evolution the author is able to 

 give us on p. 49 an actual picture of Mesodon macropterus, as seen in 

 life, correct in every anatomical detail. There are numerous other 

 valuable text-figures, as well as ten plates drawn by Gertrude M. 

 Woodward, which add much to the interest of this important 

 monograpli. 



The third instalment of Mr. Harmer's fine monograph of Pliocene 

 MoUusca maintains the high standard of the earlier parts, both in 

 the careful preparation of the author's text and the very excellent 

 quality of the collotype plates executed by Mr. J. Green. Mr. Harmer 

 has been at infinite pains to trace the past history of each species 

 with its geological and geographical distribution and the collections 

 in which specimens are preserved, and in case of survivals their 

 present habitats. Many forms also are now figured and described 

 which occur in widely varied British and foreign localities, far 

 beyond East Anglia, which region gave birth to the parent 

 Crag monograph by S. V. Wood half a century or more ago. 



In Mr. W. K. Spencer's monograph on the Palaeozoic Asterozoa 

 much attention is given by the author to the anatomical details of 

 structure upon which their zoological arrangement depends ; indeed, 

 the external forms as shown in six out of the eight plates jvould 

 hardly suffice without the explanatory structural figures given in the 

 forty-eight text-illustrations and the anatomical details so carefully 

 delineated on pis. vii and viii (some of those on the plates being 

 perhaps needlessly large for the purpose of study, e.g. fig. 2, pi. vii, 

 and figs. 1, 2, and 7 on pi. viii). On the other hand, such a beautiful 

 form as Lepidmter Grai/i (6g. 1, pi, vii) might well have been more 

 enlarged to show its details to advantage. 



We congratulate the Misses Elles and Wood (Mrs. Shakespear) 

 and Professor Lapworth on the completion of their elaborate 



DECADE VI. — VOL. V. — NO. IX. 27 



