316 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 610. 



a striking fact that if the three extensive 

 clear regions of the earth are considered, there 

 are no large observatories located within them. 

 The interior of northern Africa has no large 

 observatory. The only large observatory in 

 South Africa is in Cape Town, an excep- 

 tionally cloudy part of that region. In Atos- 

 tralia, the clear interior is left unoccupied, 

 while the "two principal observatories are on 

 the coast, at Sydney and Melbourne. The 

 well-known Harvard Southern Observatory, at 

 Arequipa, Peru, is handicapped by clouds in 

 summer (November to March). There seems 

 a possibility of excellent conditions in South 

 Africa, but it is doubtful as yet whether the 

 conditions would be better than at Arequipa. 



E. DeC. Ward. 



Habvaed Univebsity. 



PALEONTOLOaiGAL NOTES. 

 THE PENGUINS. 



Dr. Wiman's and Dr. Ameghino's papers on 

 fossil penguins are so important as to demand 

 review, although it is some little time since 

 they appeared. Dr. Carl Wiman deals with the 

 bones of fossil penguins obtained at Seymour 

 Island by the Swedish South Polar Expedition ; 

 Dr. Florentino Ameghino while nominally 

 giving an enumeration of fossil penguins of 

 Patagonia and Seymour Island gives descrip- 

 tions and figures of all the species and also 

 discusses their probable origin. Dr. Wiman 

 describes as new five species, each of which is 

 referred to a new genus, while Dr. Ameghino 

 describes nine new genera and thirteen new 

 species, and also replaces the nomen nudum 

 Apterodytes by Paleoapterodyies. Dr. Wiman, 

 who is very conservative, states that his speci- 

 mens may represent more than the five species 

 described since, owing to the conditions under 

 which they were found, it has not been pos- 

 sible to correlate the bones. Adding to the 

 nineteen genera and thirty-one species ad- 

 mitted by Ameghino, the seven additional 

 genera and eighteen species given in Sharpe's 

 hand list, we have a total of twenty-six genera 

 and" forty-nine species of penguins. None of 

 the existing genera, comprising seventeen 



species, have as yet been found in a fossil 

 state. 



Dr. Wiman ascribes the formation from 

 which his specimens came to the Eocene, but 

 in a note states that Dr. Wilckens, basing his 

 opinion on the marine invertebrates, considers 

 them as Oligocene or Lower Miocene. This 

 agrees pretty well with the views of Ameghino, 

 who holds that Seymour Island is geologically 

 a portion of Patagonia and the horizon of 

 Wiman's specimens Miocene. The point of 

 greatest interest is that both authors state 

 that the earlier species of penguin, so far as 

 shown by their limbs, and especially by the 

 tarsi, are much more generalized than the 

 living species and Wiman, in particular, says 

 that his specimens show a much closer re- 

 semblance to the corresponding bones of 

 carinates than do the same parts of modern 

 penguins. The tarsi, it may be said, are com- 

 paratively longer in the fossil species than in 

 recent forms and their component bones much 

 less clearly indicated. This is exactly the 

 reverse of what should be found, if the gen- 

 erally accepted theory that the tarsus of the 

 penguin is a survival of the primitive free 

 condition of the tarsal bones, is correct, and 

 further discoveries may, of course, bring to 

 light forms ancestral to the penguins in which 

 the tarsal bones are free. Still it is to be 

 remembered that in Archceopteryx the tarsals 

 are fused and this is also the case with the 

 known cretaceous birds in some of which the 

 tarsus is highly specialized. The above facts 

 agree with my own view that a large portion 

 of the characters which have been held to place 

 the penguins in a group apart from other 

 Euornithes, are purely adaptive and while the 

 adaptive features of the short broad tarsus 

 may not at first be evident, it is very likely 

 correlated with the habit of sitting with the 

 tarsus on the ground when at rest. In walk- 

 ing, the tarsus is held upright as in any other 

 bird. Eight here, it may be well to say a 

 word "or two in regard to the tarsus of Cera- 

 tosaurus, which is referred to by Dr. Wiman, 

 and to state that Dr. Baur was entirely correct 

 in ascribing the union of the tarsals in this 

 genus to pathological causes. The type of 

 this genus is in the U. S. National Museum 



