October 31, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



713 



admirable character, and it was plainly in 

 connection with the state of mind thus in- 

 duced that the vision occurred. I am, there- 

 fore, not surprised that he should have 

 modestly suggested that that I had ' over- 

 done ' the sketch, but I could not then, and 

 can not now, admit the correctness of that 

 suggestion. His visional call upon me to 

 acknowledge the receipt of the articles I had 

 sent him was in exact accord with what he 

 would surely have done if we were yet living 

 as neighbors. His commendation of those 

 articles may perhaps be regarded by some 

 persons as a reflection of my own egotism; but 

 I prefer to regard it as a reflection of my 

 foreknowledge of what his opinion would be 

 when he read them, and of his manner of 

 expressing it personally. 



Nothing is more common than the appear- 

 ance of absent and deceased friends in dreams, 

 but noteworthy features of the one here 

 recorded are its coherence, congruity and 

 absence of every unpleasant feature except the 

 disappointment occasioned by the sudden 

 termination of the interview. In these re- 

 spects it was equal to any that I have ever 

 known or heard of, and even Coleridge's 

 vision of Kubla Khan was not more remark- 

 able in those features. But Coleridge was in 

 ill health when he saw that vision; my health 

 was normal. His sleep and vision were esti- 

 mated by himself to have been three hours 

 long; mine was so short as to cause me to 

 suspect that it was almost momentary. His 

 vision was wholly fanciful; mine was a 

 counterpart of ordinary interviews which 

 actually occurred long ago. The chief subject 

 of his vision was, in a sense, accidental; the 

 chief subject referred to by my shadowy 

 visitor was precisely that which he would have 

 introduced had he been living. In short, it 

 is the matter-of-fact character of this vision, 

 coupled with the distinctness and long con- 

 tinuance of impressions caused by friendly 

 intercourse that gives to it peculiar interest. 

 Faithfully yours, 



Charles A. White. 



Smithsonian Institution, 

 October 2, 1902. 



RECENT ZOOPALEONTOLOQY. 



A REMARKABLE NEW MAMMAL FROM JAPAN. ITS 

 RELATIONSHIP TO THE CALIFORNIAN GENUS 

 DESMOSTYLUS, MARSH.* 



In a recent number of the Journal of the 

 College of Science, Imperial University, 

 Tokyo, S. Yoshiwara and J. Iwasaki give a 

 full and well-illustrated description of a re- 

 markable fossil skull discovered in 1898 

 in apparently marine beds of Miocene age, 

 in the province of Mino. Photographs and 

 eketches of this skull were sent to the writer 

 of the present notice about a year ago, the 

 authors at the time referring the animal to 

 the Sirenia; it seemed to the writer to present 

 more resemblances to the Proboscidia, and this 

 view is adopted by the authors. 



A study of this more complete account of the 

 fossil, and comparison with a supposed fossil 

 Sirenian described by Marsh from California 

 in 1888, under the name Desmostylus hesperus, 

 lead to tlie belief that the reference of this 

 animal at present is somewhat uncertain; it 

 is possibly Proboscidian, it is possibly Siren- 

 ian. The possible community of origin of 

 these two orders of ungulates was, in fact, 

 suggested by De Blainville, and has received 

 some support from the recent discoveries of 

 ancient types of Mastodon and Sirenians in 

 Egypt. The authors fully recognize the Siren- 

 ian as well as Proboscidian resemblances in 

 this animal, and rightly conclude that these 

 may be primitive characters due to the remote 

 common ancestry of these two orders of un- 

 gulates. 



Whatever its affinities, this new fossil mam- 

 mal is certainly most remarkable. The skull 

 is about eighteen inches in length; the upper 

 and lower jaws are greatly produced anteri- 

 orly, as in the Proboscidia and Sirenia, the 

 premaxillse bearing two forwardly directed 

 tusks, while the lower jaw bears two pairs of 

 tusks — a larger outer incisor and a smaller 

 median incisor. These tusks point forward, 

 and are completely invested with enamel. The 

 enamel is also extremely thick upon the grind- 



* ' Notes on a New Fossil Mammal,' by S. 

 Yoshiwara and J. Iwasaki, Jowr. of the Coll. of 

 Science, Imperial Univ. of Tokyo, Vol. XVI., Art. 

 6, 1902. 



