Maeoh 11, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



437 



ured and described by Dr. Abel, had any con- 

 nection with the living Zeuglodon. The os- 

 sicles above referred to are not symmetrical 

 and, therefore, did not lie in the median line, 

 vchile they are entirely too large to have been 

 attached to the paddles. If a few scattered 

 ossicles on a creature sixty feet long consti- 

 tute armor, then Zeuglodon was a mail-clad 

 animal; otherwise he seems to have been un- 

 protected. 



It may not be amiss once more to call atten- 

 tion to the fact that Zeuglodon was so highly 

 specialized that it could not have been in the 

 line of descent of modern whales; also that 

 the same strata which contain remains of 

 Zeuglodon have yielded half a dozen vertebrae, 

 quite like those of a true whale, and indicating 

 some animal from thirty to forty feet long. 

 When more of this animal comes to light we 

 shall probably have better information on the 

 phylogeny of the cetacea than we have at 

 present. 



F. A. L. 



FOSSIL FISEES IN THE AMERICAN MU- 

 SEUM OF NATURAL BISTORY. 

 Under an agreement with the trustees of 

 Columbia University the American Museum 

 has recently received on deposit the John 

 Strong Newberry collection of fossil fishes. 

 And this acquisition is noteworthy, in view 

 of the fact that during later years the museum 

 has been securing other important collections 

 of fossil fishes. Among these are the Cope 

 collection, consisting largely of North Amer- 

 ican forms, from the devonian of Pennsyl- 

 vania, permian of Texas, carboniferous of 

 Illinois and Ohio, and a very rich series from 

 the Green River shales ; the Jay Terrill collec- 

 tion from the devonian of Ohio, a gift of the 

 late Mr. William E. Dodge; and the collection 

 of cretaceous fishes from Mount Lebanon, 

 secured from the American College in Syria 

 by the president of the museum, Mr. Morris 

 S. Jesup. The Newberry collection itself is 

 probably the most important representation of 

 American forms extant; its catalogue includes 

 nearly six thousand numbers, and among these 

 are many of the type specimens described in 

 the ' Monograph on the Paleozoic Fishes of 



North America ' and on the ' North American 

 Triassic Fishes.' 



An exhibition of fossil fishes has become, 

 therefore, a need of the museum. And for 

 its installation the director has recently set 

 aside the corner circular room opening out of 

 the reptile gallery. Its arrangement will be 

 in charge of a new curator. Dr. Bashford 

 Dean, a former student of Professor New- 

 berry. The new gallery will include recent 

 forms side by side with their fossil kindred, 

 and will contain special guide cases to illus- 

 trate the structure and evolution of the more 

 prominent groups. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



Sir John Murray has been awarded the 

 Liitke gold medal of the Russian Geographical 

 Society. 



Dr. H. Struve, director of the Observatory 

 at Konigsburg has been appointed director of 

 the Observatory at Berlin. 



The following fifteen candidates have been 

 selected by the council of the Royal Society 

 to be recommended for election into the so- 

 ciety : Dr. Thomas Gregor Brodie, Major Sid- 

 ney Gerald Burrard, Professor Alfred Cardew 

 Dixon, Professor James Johnstone Dobbie, 

 Mr. Thomas Henry Holland, Professor Charles 

 Jasper Joly, Dr. Hugh Marshall, Mr. Edward 

 Meyrick, Dr. Alexander Muirhead, Dr. George 

 Henry Falkner Nuttall, Mr. Arthur Everett 

 Shipley, Professor Morris William Travers, 

 Mr. Harold Wager, Mr. Gilbert Thomas 

 Walker and Mr. William Whitehead Watts. 



Dr. Frederick Peterson has resigned the 

 position of chairman and medical member of 

 the New Tork State Lunacy Commission. 



Dr. L. E. Dickson, assistant professor of 

 mathematics in the University of Chicago, 

 editor of The American Mathematical Monthly 

 and associate editor of the Transactions of the 

 American Mathematical Society, has been ap- 

 pointed research assistant to the Carnegie In- 

 stitution. The object of his investigation 

 is the application of group theory to certain 

 problems in geometry and function-theory. 



The N. Y. Evening Post states that the 

 grant to the Department of Astronomy, of 

 Princeton University, has been increased by 



