June 12, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



;69 



of the treatise is devoted to the tracing of tribes 

 (Stamme) by means of their bows and arrows. 

 Meyer's map will be a revelation to any stu- 

 dent of South American ethnology. Brinton 

 has traced the Arawak from the Paraguay river 

 to the Bahama Islands. Long ago I was struck 

 with South American characteristics upon wood 

 carvings from Turk's Island and among tribes 

 of the Southern States. Holmes draws atten- 

 tion to peculiar pottery marks from the South 

 in the Gulf States, and Meyer shows that the 

 region of the Matto Grosso northward was a 

 cloaca gentium, especially the common sources 

 of the Paraguay, the Shingu and the Tapajos 

 and the lower courses of the Tapajos, the Ma- 

 deira and the Negro. The Negro is joined to 

 the Orinoco by the Cassiquiare, and from the 

 mouth of the Orinoco to Florida is an unbroken 

 chain of inviting islands. Dr. Brinton denies 

 that the Carib stock passed far north into the 

 Antilles, but there seems to have been an easy 

 and much-frequented highway from the Para- 

 guay as well as from Yucatan to Florida for 

 peoples. In this connection von den Steiueu, 

 Ehrenreich and Im Thurn must not be neg- 

 lected. O. T. Mason. 



SCIENTIFIC LITER ATUBE. 



FOSSIL PLANTS OF THE WEALDEN. 



The Wealden Flora. By A. C. Sewaed, M. A. , 

 F. G. S. Part I. — Thallophyta-Pteridophyta, 

 London, 1894. Part II. — Gymnospermie, Lon- 

 don, 1895. Catalogue of the Mesozoic Plants 

 in the Department of Geology, British Mus- 

 eum (Natural History). Parts I., II. 

 The second part of this important work has 

 come to hand. The first part apj^eared in 

 June, 1894, but as Part II. was expected even 

 earlier than it arrived no review has appeared 

 in America of Part I., and the whole work may 

 now be treated together. An additional ]3art 

 is promised, which will embody certain critical 

 discussions, but as no plants have been found 

 in the English Wealden of higher rank than the 

 Gymnosperms these two parts must contain an 

 enumeration of the entire flora so far as known. 

 At the time of receiving the first part I was 

 about starting for Europe, and while there I 

 made some investigations in the Wealden with 



a view to comparing that formation with the 

 Potomac of the United States. I was therefore 

 able to make excellent use of the information it 

 contained when preparing a paper on ' Some 

 Analogies in the Lower Cretaceous of Europe 

 and America ' for the Sixteenth Annual Eeport 

 of the U. S. Geological Survey (pp. 463-542), 

 chiefly growing out of the observations I had 

 made. That paper is now in press, but it might 

 have been made much more complete if I had 

 received Part II. of this work in time to make 

 use of it. As I have expressed in that paper 

 my appreciation of the important information 

 contained in Part I. , and have embodied a con- 

 siderable part of it in the comparisons there in- 

 stituted between the Wealdeu flora and that of 

 the Potomac formation, it is not necessary to 

 go into detail i-elative to this portion of Mr. 

 Seward's work. Its title sufBciently indicates 

 its scope ; thirty distinct forms are treated, the 

 greater number of which are ferns. There are 

 two algffi, one Chara, one hepatic and three 

 species referred to Equisetites. Nine of the 

 forms have more or less geographical distribu- 

 tion outside of England, and a table is given 

 showing this. 



It may be said of the whole work that, al- 

 though constituting, as the title page indicates, 

 the beginning of a catalogue of the Mesozoic 

 plants in the British Museum, it is much more 

 than a catalogue. All the material in the 

 Museum has been carefully revised, and though 

 treated somewhat by number it is dealt with in 

 a systematic way, and there are many refer- 

 ences to similar material in other museums. 

 The literature of the subject is also fully given, 

 and all new material is described and named. 

 There is a large amount of this latter, the 

 greater part of which has been collected by Mr. 

 P. EuflTord, of Hastings, for whom many species 

 and one genus have been named. Many of the 

 old specimens collected by Mantell and the 

 early geologists have been thoroughly worked 

 over and referred to modern genera, so that we- 

 now have some idea of the real nature of such 

 objects as Endogenites erosa, which is shown to 

 be a fern {Tempskya Schimperi Corda), while the 

 old genera Pecopteris, Alethopteris, Lonchop- 

 teris, and most of Sphenopteris have been 

 brought within the Mesozoic genera, Matonid- 



