A. 8. Woodward— Visit to Continental Museums. 399 
Ganoidei, and Selachii, the first of these three already prepared for 
issue. The pyritous character of the Gaskohle, from which many of 
the specimens are obtained, renders it almost impossible to ensure 
their permanent preservation ; hence the importance of the exquisite 
fac-similes produced by the electro-deposition of copper, now to be 
seen in nearly all the principal museums, these reproductions being 
almost as satisfactory and reliable for examination as the originals 
temporarily surviving in Prague. Among the undescribed Permian 
fishes, the series of Plewracanthus (Xenacanthus) is unrivalled, and 
Dr. Fritsch has already given naturalists a slight foretaste of the 
“good things to come” in a recent figure and description of the 
pectoral fin. One specimen shows the entire fish, in beautiful pre- 
servation, confirming in an interesting manner the recent discovery 
of M. Charles Brongniart in France. Bohemia also yields many 
Chalk fishes, and the Royal Museum contains a large series, described 
and undescribed. Nearly all are in a very unsatisfactory state of pre- 
servation, compared with those of England, being merely in the 
form of hollow moulds. They indicate a fauna very similar to that 
of the English Chalk, and in some cases elucidate types of which 
very little is known in this country ; some large specimens of Halec 
Sternbergii, for example, reveal almost the entire skeleton of this 
ancient Clupeoid. 
Among later vertebrates a large part of the skeleton of a young 
Dinotherium from Bohemia, still undescribed, is noteworthy ; and 
there are numerous bones from the Pleistocene deposits of the country. 
At the German University in Prague Prof. Dr. Gustav Laube also 
presides over a large paleontological collection, comprising a few of 
the Permian Stegocephalians described by Dr. Fritsch, and the originals 
of the Cretaceous Protelops Geinitzii and Osmeroides levesiensis, made 
known by the Professor himself in 1885. 
The mission of the Paleontologist in visiting Prague is also in- 
complete without a brief pilgrimage up the Moldau to view the 
National Monument to Barrande—a simple tablet with his name, 
affixed to perhaps the finest section of Silurian rocks to be met with 
anywhere in the world. The collections of the departed pioneer in 
Bohemian Siluria are still packed up in the rooms he occupied, 
awaiting the completion of the National Museum destined to receive 
them. 
VIENNA. 
From Prague to Vienna the route lies in part through the 
picturesque vales of Moravia, famous for their bone-caves; and the 
traveller leaves the quaint streets of the ancient Bohemian capital 
for the new promenades, parks, and palatial edifices built upon the 
site of the fortifications of the Imperial capital. Among the great 
buildings is the Hof Museum, still not arranged for public inspection, 
but rapidly becoming one of the finest in Europe. The best-lighted 
of the lofty rooms in the Geological Section is devoted to the grand 
Httingshausen Collection of Fossil Plants, already in order and labelled, 
and each figured specimen accompanied by the published illustration. 
The other collections are arranged stratigraphically in the remaining 
