426 Reviews — Creatures of Other Days. 



III. — Proceedings of the MALAOoiiOaiOAL Society of London. 

 Vol. I., October, 1893— June, 1894 8vo. pp. 138, 10 Plates. 

 (London : Dulau & Co.) 



THE first three numbers of the Proceedings of this vigorous young 

 Society, whose President is Dr. Henry Woodward, P.R.S., lie 

 before us, and if they be any earnest of the future of the Society, 

 which may be said to show its hand in them, they indicate that, if 

 cheiromancy be worth anything, assuredly the Society's " line of life " 

 will be long. The object of this new bond between malacologists, 

 we learn, is " to facilitate the study of the Mollusca and Brachiopoda, 

 both recent and fossil," and we are pleased to note that the palteon- 

 tological side of the subject is fairly represented by some most 

 valuable and important papers by Mr. Gr. F. Harris and Mr. R. B. 

 Newton, who in three out of their four contributions write con- 

 jointly. Their "Revision of British Eocene Scaphopoda" and 

 " Revision of British Eocene Cephalopoda " are memoirs that will 

 long be of great value, even in these days of rapidly increasing know- 

 ledge. In the latter paper Edwards' anomalous genus Belemnosis is 

 neatly disposed of; for, acting on a hint received from Mr. F. A. 

 Bather, the authors are able to show that it was founded on a rolled 

 specimen of Spirulirostra. Their paper on some little known 

 Pulmonate Mollusca from the Oligocene and Eocene formations of 

 England, is, we think, less happy ; the authors having given living 

 force to certain MS. names, some of which, considering the very 

 fragmentary nature of the specimens, had better have been left in 

 obscurity ; nor do they seem yet to have realized that Planorhis has 

 long been known to be a sinistral, not a dextral, genus. It is to be 

 hoped that further contributions from these and other palasontologists 

 may be found in future numbers of the Society's Proceedings. 



IV. — Creatures of Other Days. By Rev. H. N. Hutchinson, 

 B.A., F.G.S. With numerous Illustrations by J. Smidt and 

 others (24 plates and full-page illustrations, and 79 illustrations 

 in the text). Pages xv. and 270, 8vo. Chapman & Hall, 

 London, 1894. 



MR. HUTCHINSON'S former book, "On Extinct Monsters," 

 noticed in the Geol. Mag. for January, 1893, was a praise- 

 worthy and successful attempt to give a good popular account of 

 many of the more noteworthy denizens of this world existing before 

 the advent of Man, and now known only by their fossilized bones, 

 teeth, and scales. Some of these relics, formerly gazed at with 

 ignorant wonder, and often referred to as evidences of prehistoric 

 giants drowned by the Noachian Deluge, had gradually during the 

 last century been pieced together into intelligible forms, though 

 strange even to those who knew something of the various modifi- 

 cations of the animals now existing. Limited groups of such 

 reconstructed skeletons have been frequently used in Manuals and 

 Text-books of Geology, and were occasionally invested with imaginary 



