Mat 6, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



in 



An Attempt to Correlate the Marine with 

 the Fresh and Brackish Water Mesozoic 

 Formations of the Middle West: Pro- 

 fessor John B. Hatcheb, Pittsburgh, 

 Pa.- 



1. Marine and fresh-water or other non- 

 marine deposits when present even in the 

 same region, the one superimposed upon 

 the other, do not necessarily represent dis- 

 tinct time intervals. "When considered as 

 formations they may have been deposited 

 contemporaneously and may represent ap- 

 proximately the same time interval. 



2. The Atlantosaurus beds and Dakota 

 sandstones are considered as the possible 

 equivalents of the Jurassic and Lower Cre- 

 taceous. 



3. The relations of the Eagle sandstones, 

 the Judith River beds and the Laramie to 

 the Colorado and the Montana formations 

 are pointed out. 



The Miocene Bodentia of Patagonia: Pro- 

 fessor William B. Scott, Princeton, 

 N. J. 



Becent Advances in our Knowledge of the 



Evolution, of the Horse: Professor 



Henry F. Osbobn, New York. 



The special explorations and studies on 

 the evolution of the horse in the American 

 Museum of Natural History, under the 

 fund donated by Mr. William C. Whitney 

 for this purpose, have considerably ex- 

 tended our knowledge of the evolution of 

 the horse in America in recent years. 



The Oligocene horses have been revised 

 and are shown to embrace a large number 

 of types, among which are the ancestors of 

 at least two of the distinct lines of Miocene 

 horses. In the Miocene it is found that 

 the genera Merychippus, Protohippus and 

 Hypohippus described by Leidy in the 

 middle of the last century all represent 

 distinct lines or stages of evolution. 



The museum exploring parties under 



Mr. J. W. Gidley secured complete skele- 

 tons of Mesohippus hairdii from the Upper 

 Miocene, the new genus Neohipparion 

 whitneyi and the Lower Pleistocene horse, 

 Equiis scotti. The existence of three and 

 possibly four distinct but contemporaneous 

 lines of Miocene horses has been demon- 

 strated. 



The cause of the extinction of the 

 Pleistocene horses in America remains a 

 mystery. No horse remains are found 

 recorded with human remains, as is the 

 case in South America. It is also not 

 positively demonstrated that the modern 

 horse, Equus cahalliis, originated in North 

 America. This remains an open question 

 until we know more of the geology of Asia. 



The Silurian Fauna of Arkansas: Mr. 

 Gilbert van Ingen. (Introduced by 

 Professor W. B. Scott.) 



The Yukaghir Language: Waldemae 



JocHELSON, New York. (Introduced 



by Dr. Franz Boas.) 



The morphological peculiarities of this 

 language may be summed up in the follow- 

 ing main propositions. 



Word-formation is accomplished mainly 

 by means of suffixes; but prefixes are also 

 used (almost exclusively in connection with 

 verbal forms). In this respect the lan- 

 guage differs from those of the Ural- 

 Altaic group, which uses suffixes only, and 

 approaches the American languages. 



The possessive suffix of nouns is but little 

 developed (except in the third person) ; 

 the language thus differing from the Ural- 

 Altaic, as well as from the Eskimo dia- 

 lects. 



Sound-harmony of vowels (a and o 

 should not occur in the same word) is little 

 developed, and in this respect the language 

 resembles some of the Indian dialects, but 

 differs absolutely from the Ural-Altaic 

 languages with their intricate system of 



