Reviews — Brief Notices. 5 69 



noted. There are two other articles, by Mr. F. W. Harmer, on the 

 Pliocene Deposits of the Eastern Counties of England, and on the 

 Pleistocene Period in the same area, the subjects being dealt with 

 more purely from a stratigraphical and physical point of view, and 

 without special reference to excursions made by the Geologists' 

 Association. The second article, on the Pleistocene Period, is especially 

 valuable in giving the matured views of Mr. Harmer on the glacial 

 phenomena of East Anglia. He attributes the Contorted Drift (Lower 

 Glacial) to the invasion of the land by ice coming directly from the 

 North Sea, and the Chalky Boulder -clay (Upper Glacial) to the 

 subsequent action of an inland glacier fed by ice which had crossed 

 the Lincolnshire Wolds. His essay should do much to remove any 

 scepticism that still remains with regard to the agency of land-ice in 

 Britain during the Glacial Period. 



YII. — Brief Notices. 



1. British Pleistocene Canid^. — Professor S. H. Reynolds read 

 a paper before the Winnipeg Meeting of the British Association on the 

 British Pleistocene Canidae. Three species are found — the wolf, the 

 fox, and the Arctic fox. There is no evidence of the existence in 

 Britain in Pleistocene times of any animal that could be called a dog. 

 The jaw described as Lycaon anglicus is thought by the author to be 

 better regarded as a somewhat abnormal wolf. While, apart from any 

 ditference in size, the skull of a fox is readily distinguished from that 

 of a wolf or dog by the depressions in the post-orbital processes of the 

 frontals, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find any valid 

 distinctive character between dogs and wolves. The most useful 

 character, for which we are indebted to Studer, is the orbito-frontal 

 angle. He regards as belonging to wolves, skulls in which this angle 

 measures 40°-45°; and as belonging to dogs, skulls in which the angle 

 is greater than 45°. The author's measurements, while confirming 

 Studer's contention that the angle in question tends to be decidedly 

 less in the wolf than in the dog, show that the distinction is not 

 absolute, and cannot be relied on in all cases. — Nature, October 21, 

 1909. 



2. Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Societv. — A general index 

 to the Transactions of this Society, vols, i-viii, 1869-1909, has been 

 prepared by Mr. C. D. Sherborn, and is issued with the concluding 

 part 5 of vol. viii. 



3. Plesiosaurs. — An article by Dr. C. W. Andrews, "On some 

 new Plesiosauria from the Oxford Clay of Peterborough " (Ann. Nat. 

 Hist., November, 1909), contains preliminary notes on some new types 

 of Plesiosaurs and Pliosaurs, for which the generic names Tricleidus, 

 Picrocleidiis, and Simolestes are given. 



4. Index for the London Library. — A comprehensive Subject- 

 Index of the London Library, which contains more than 220,000 

 volumes, has been prepared by Dr. C. T. Hagberg Wright (1909). It 

 is a quarto volume of 1254 pages, arranged alphabetically, with many 



