808 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. II., No. 46. 



typical specimens, representing seventy-eiglit species 

 described by Mr. U. P. James, from tlie Hudson 

 Kiver group in southern Ohio. These are the gift of 

 Mr. James, and liave been recorded. Mr. Walcott 

 lias also received, from Cornell university, for study 

 and illustration, the type specimens used by Prof. C. 

 F. Hartt, in Dawson's 'Acadian geology,' in his de- 

 scriptions of the fossils of St. John, N.B. All the 

 species described by Professor Hartt will therefore 

 now be illustrated for the first time. 



Prof. O. C. Marsh, in charge of vertebrate pale- 

 ontology for the survey, has had parties working in 

 Wyoming during the past season, and also in the 

 Jurassic of Colorado, and reports to the director tliat 

 they have made large additions to the collections, and 

 very important discoveries, the results of which will 

 be reported later. 



Chemistry. — The chemical division of the siu-vey 

 will hereafter occupy the laboratory of the U. S. 

 national museum, where work will be begun at once 

 on material that has been accumulating in the hands 

 of the chief chemist, Prof. F. W. Clarke. 



Professor Clarke has been appointed honorary cura- 

 tor of mineralogy in the U. S. national museum. At 

 the New Haven laboratory, Dr. Carl Barns and Dr. 

 William Hallock are conducting thermo-electric in- 

 vestigations. They find that thermo-electric couples 

 containing nickel behave anomalously at tempera- 

 tures above 400° C, but that couples of platinum, 

 with palladiuuy or iridium, are available for the meas- 

 surernent of high temperatures. With such couples, 

 temperature-! as high as 1200° may be measured as 

 exactly as with tho air-thermometer. 



Fresli-water aliflls from Hie paleozoic rocks of Ne- 

 vada, — The bed of calcareo-argillaceous strata con- 

 taining this unusual fauna is situated near the base 

 of the great lower belt of carboniferous limestone 

 of the Eureka mining district, Nevada. The argil- 

 laceous layers pass into calcareous strata above, that 

 contain a few plates of crinoidal columns, and fi'ag- 

 ments of brachiopods, and besides these a fauna of 

 forty or more species that is purely marine, and closely 

 related to that of the lower carboniferous fauna of 

 the Mississippi valley. 



Although there is now a large collection of material 

 from the band containing the fresh-water shells that 

 was collected subsequent to the geologic field-work, 

 during which the specimens now to be mentioned 

 were collected, it will not be studied until after the 

 publication of the report on the Eureka district. 

 This brief notice is to call attention to the occurrence 

 of fresh-water shells in the paleozoic rocks, and also 

 to state that more is to be jiresented when the paleon- 

 tologic collections shall have been thoroughly worked 

 over and studied. 



The first species discovered was a Physa, — a form 

 of the genus so characteristic that there is no need 

 of making any other generic reference; judging, of 

 course, from the shell, and not presupposing that any 

 variation existed in the animal inhabiting it. For this 

 species I have proposed the name Physa prisca (fig. 

 2). The second is a species so AmpuUaria-like that a 

 reference is made to that genus (fig. 3). The oper- 



FlG. 



1. — Ziiptycbius carbonaria > 

 Fig. 2. — Pliysa prisca x 2 

 G. 3. — Ampul'laria-' Powelli ' 

 Fig. 3«. — Operculum of A. 



culum is shelly, calcareous, concentric (Gg. 3a). If 

 not gencrlcally identical with Ampullaria, it certainly 

 belongs to the group in a closely allied genus. The 

 name Ampullaria? Powelli is proposed for it. The 

 third species is a pulmonale shell that appears to be 

 closely related to 

 Auricula, and for 

 which the name 

 Zajitychius carbo- 

 naria {nov. yen. et 

 sj). ) is proposed. 



A small lamelli- 

 branchiatc shell 

 that may be a Nu- 

 cula, Corblcula, or 

 Cyrena, probably 

 one of the two lat- 

 ter, is associated 

 with the above, and 

 also fragments of 

 twigs and small 

 cones that may be 

 referred to the Co- 

 nifer.ie. The land- 

 shells thus far de- 

 scribed fronr the paleozoic series are all referable to 

 the sub-order Geophila or terrestrial pulmonates, and 

 comprise six species; viz.. Pupa vetusta, P. Bigsbyi 

 Dawson, P. vermilionensis, D.iwsonella Meeki Brad- 

 ley, Zonites (Conulus) prisons Carpenter, Anthraco- 

 pupa ohioensis Whitfield (from the horizon of the 

 coal-measures), and one species (Strophitesgrandaeva 

 Dawson) fi-om the erian plant-beds of St. John, N.B. 

 To these we now add two species of the Limnophila 

 (Physa prisca and Zaptychius carbonaria), and one 

 species of an operculated fresh-water shell (Ampul- 

 laria? Powelli). It may be said of these species, as 

 Principal Dawson has said of Pupa vetusta, they are 

 remarkable not only for their great antiquity, but 

 also because they are separated by such a vast inter- 

 val of time from other known species of their race. 



Charles D. Walcott. 



public and private institutions. 



■Williams college, Williamstown, Mass, 

 The natural-history department. —T\\ro\\g\i the lib- 

 erality of friends, the college has secured a permanent 

 table, with the necessary facilities for its use, in the 

 museum of the U.S. fish-commission at Wood's HoU. 

 The table will be occupied every summer by the de- 

 partment. The college has also leased for a series of 

 years a table at Professor Dohrn's international zoo- 

 logical statioTU,at Naples, from the use of which it is 

 hoped that permanent benefits will inure to this de- 

 partment. The conditions of the gift of the late Dr. 

 William J. Walker make provision for a scientific 

 expedition every fourth year. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The extensive collections of American Coleoptera 

 made by the late Dr. J. L. LeConte, containing an 

 immense number of original types, become the prop- 



