SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 85 
tiveness on this point; or to understand why the most friendly relations either 
with him or Dr. Thurnam should prevent my controverting their opinions as 
freely as they know I have allowed them to challenge mine. They are both well 
aware that their adverse comments on my views as set forth in the “‘ Prehistoric 
Annals of Scotland”—to which J recently replied in this journal,—made no 
change either in my correspondence with them, or in my exertions on behalf of 
their joint work. 
Dr..Davis forgets the object of my letter to the Afhenewm, and the article of 
same date in this Journal, when he speaks of my overlooking his corrections of 
his earlier error in relation to posthumous influences. I referred to a specific date 
in 1857, when I published certain opinions, and showed by reference to the 
Crania Britannica, that previous to their publication the views he held were in- 
correct. It was no part of my object to review his subsequent opinions. He 
says himself, in letter 2, he cannot tell whether he availed himself of my hint, 
or not, in these subsequent views. On this point I express no opinion; but I 
have failed to perceive any essential distinction between what he calls “ a dif- 
ferent point, viz., parieto-occipital flatness,” and what I had long before referred 
to as ‘‘ the vertical or flattened occiput.” 
The reader who turns to the Crania Britannica, p. 21, or to the passage quoted 
from it in this Journal (ante, vol. vii., p. 430), will probably be inclined to think 
with me, that a passage written by Dr. Davis, in which he states in his own words 
_ certain opinions, which he ascribes to Dr. Thurnam, is his, and not Dr. Thur- 
nam’s. My answer, however, to the opinions therein expressed is the same, who- 
ever may be responsible for them. 
As Dr. Davis writes now at my invitation, I shall leave his remarks to the im- 
partial consideration of your readers, without comment; and only add in expla- 
nation of the course I pursued, that my letter to the Athenawum, was necessarily 
limited to the claim of priority of publication of the views inquestion. My article 
in the Canadian Journal for September, written simultaneously with it, set forth 
in detail what these views are. When Dr. Davis complains that the latter was 
written before seeing what he had to say to my communication, he forgets that his 
article,—in which he communicated to the scientific world, in July 1862, as an 
original discovery, what he now admits to have been suggested by me, in this 
Journal, so early as Nov., 1857,—not only was already in circulation among the 
readers of the Natural History Review, to whom I have no such access as I have ac- 
corded to him in these pages ; but it remains there uncorrected to the present day, 
Iam, &c., 
Danigt WILSON. 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
To the Editor of the Canadian Journal. 
Peterboro, G. W., January 14th, 1863. 
Dear Sir,—Some four or five years ago I had the pleasure to offer to the 
Institute a tolerably good specimen of that most interesting Rodent, the Castor 
Fiber : and with the skin I forwarded a certificate to the effect that the animal 
was shot by a lad with whom I am acquainted, on the margin of a stream 
