September 27, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



499 



his assistants, Dr. Broili, with Mr. Charles H. 

 Sternberg, the well-known collector, into the 

 Permian of Texas. The Natural History Mu- 

 seums of London have conducted explorations 

 both in Egypt and in Greece. In the latter 

 country Dr. A. Smith Woodward has been 

 working in the Lower Pliocene of Pikermi, and 

 has secured 47 boxes of valuable fossils, in- 

 cluding horses, rhinoceroses and, of still greater 

 rarity, another specimen of the hyracoid, Plio- 

 hyrax. 



Mr. Charles W. Andrews, of the British Mu- 

 seum of Natural History, went on several ex- 

 peditions into the Nile desert, accompanying 

 the geological survey of Egypt. A year pre- 

 vious he had reported the existence of fossil 

 mammals of undoubted Oligocene age ; during 

 the present expedition he made the most im- 

 portant discovery of early and generalized Pro- 

 boscidea, especially of a small mastodon-like 

 animal, with both premolar and molar teeth in 

 place. Older beds were found to contain a 

 primitive Dinotherium. Since the oldest Di- 

 notherium and Mastodon of Europe are of Mio- 

 cene age, this discovery not only carries the 

 proboscidean phylum further back, but is 

 strongly in favor of the theory of the African 

 origin of this order. Africa has long been the 

 dark continent of paleontology, and one of the 

 results of English occupation will undoubtedly 

 be a succession of paleontological discoveries of 

 the greatest interest. 



The special explorations for fossil horses by 

 the American Museum have been completely 

 successful. The Texas expedition in July 

 secured eight skulls of Protohippus with por- 

 tions of the skeletons associated. They are 

 all in a hard matrix and somewhat crushed. 

 The Colorado expedition has secured a complete 

 skeleton, in a perfect state of preservation, of 

 the large Upper Miocene or Loup Fork horse. 

 This Anchitherium is the first complete skeleton 

 of a horse of this period which has been found 

 in this country. The explorations in the same 

 region seem to demonstrate that there were 

 four distinct types of horses, almost contem- 

 poraneous. It has been reported also that the 

 Carnegie Museum secured some very complete 

 horse skeletons, but these prove to belong to 

 Merycochoerus, an oreodont. 



Another discovery of importance, by the 

 Texas party of the American Museum, is the 

 nearly complete shell of the armored edentate 

 Glyptodon, four feet in length, together with 

 two feet of the armored tail and parts of the 

 skeleton within the shell. Hitherto Glypto- 

 don has only been known from teeth, recorded 

 by Cope from southern Texas, in 1888, and by 

 Leidy from Florida in 1889. The present speci- 

 men is almost identical in its elaborate shell- 

 pattern with the Pampean glyptodons. 



The explorations for Dinosaurs in the Juras- 

 sic have also been very successful. Several 

 discoveries have been reported by the Field 

 Columbian Museum party in western Colo- 

 rado. A Carnegie Museum party has been 

 working in the sandstone of Marsh's old quarry 

 near Canon City, and has secured parts of the 

 skeleton of Morosaurus, and a skull of Stego- 

 smirus. The American Museum has continued 

 its exploration of the Bone Cabin Quarry, in 

 central Wyoming, resulting in the discovery of 

 the skull of one of the large Sauropoda, also 

 the skull of a large carnivorous Dinosaur, and 

 parts of the skulls of two other Dinosaurs, be- 

 sides a quantity of skeletal material. 



The Triassic is still the least known period. 

 Reports ft'om Professor Lester F. Ward of the 

 existence of vertebrate fossils in Arizona led to a 

 party being sent out by the National Museum 

 under the leadership of Professor Ward, assisted 

 by Mr. Brown, of the American Museum, result- 

 ing in the discovery of remains both of Dino- 

 saurs and of the primitive crocodile-like Belo- 

 dons. The Dinosaurs appear to be related to 

 the Stegosaurian division, according to the pre- 

 liminary examination made by Mr. F. A. Lu- 

 cas, and there is also a new genus of Belodon 



in the collection. 



H. F. O. 

 September 9, 1901. 



REPORTS OF FOREIGN 3IUSEU3IS. 

 The report of the Australian Museum, Syd- 

 ney, N. S. Wales, for 1899, shows that institu- 

 tion to be doing good work, although hampered 

 by the smallness of its appropriation. Owing 

 to what the curator terms a ' miserable appro- 

 priation ' for the pui-chase of specimens, the 

 growth of the collections has been principally 



