May 25, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



811 



made at a time when the obvious material 

 at hand was the specimens of the cabinets, 

 and while they afforded theses on taxon- 

 omy, nomenclature, revision or descrip- 

 tion of species, it was not until the new 

 phase of activity introduced by expeditions, 

 allowed a broader range, and actually made 

 investigation imperative, that this last 

 became fully recognized. Amongst the 

 first contributions in this direction was 

 the publication of the interesting results of 

 Professors Seely and Brainard's examina- 

 tion of the eastern shores of Lake Cham- 

 plain. 



These geologists discovered that the Cal- 

 ciferous and Chazy formations have here an 

 unexpected development, and that there 

 aggregate thickness ranges to near 2,500 

 feet, while a great, group of fossil species 

 forms a new and interesting fauna. The 

 descriptions of the fossils from this region 

 which deceived Professor Whitfield by their 

 close resemblance to the Birdseye Lime- 

 stone, formed perhaps the most important 

 paper in the first volume of the Bulletin. 

 In this paper Professor Whitfield described 

 33 new species and instituted two new 

 genera of invertebrates, while there was 

 shown to be a lower extension of the Tren- 

 ton limestone than had been anticipated, 

 mingling its characters with forms having a 

 cambro-silurian expression. 



Professors Brainard and Seely followed 

 later in the Bulletin of the Geological So- 

 ciety with a careful analysis of the geolog- 

 ical relations of these beds and coafessed 

 their own astonishment at the new views 

 they felt compelled to present. 



Professor Whitfield also in this first vol- 

 ume of the Museum Bulletin enlarged his im- 

 portant suggestion, previously made in the 

 American Journal of Science, that the group 

 of fossils which had been regarded as vege- 

 table in their origin, viz, Dictyophyton, Uphan- 

 tcenia, Cyathophycus etc., were truly spongoid 

 bodies and allied to the Euplectella or glass 



sponge of modern seas, a view coincided in 

 by Dr. J. W. Dawson. 



Professor Whitfield also in this volume of 

 the Bulletin described a ' Fossil Scorpion 

 from the Silurian rocks of America,' the 

 earliest land animal described from Ameri- 

 can rocks, and of great interest as syn- 

 chronous with similar discoveries in Sweden 

 and Scotland. It naturally formed a new 

 genus and was also made the type of a new 

 family. Besides these papers a number of 

 others prepared by Professor Whitfield were 

 purely descriptive. In fact the chai-acter 

 and value of the first volume of the Bulletin 

 were determined by its geological and pale- 

 ontological papers, as the other departments 

 in the museum had then scarcely assumed 

 a scientific direction, and their contribu- 

 tions were few and tentative. Amongst 

 these however. Dr. J. A. Allen's paper on 

 ' The Masked Bob-white of Arizona and its 

 Allies ' easily ranked first. 



In the second volume of the Bulletin a 

 rapid increase of the papers on contempor- 

 aneous ITatural History is observed, out- 

 ranking all other contributions. The rare 

 West Indian Seal {Monachus tropicalis Gray) 

 was described by Dr. Allen. This remark- 

 able animal had previously only been known 

 to naturalists by an ' imperfect skin, with- 

 out skull ' in the Bfitish Museum, and 

 another specimen taken in 1883. In De- 

 cember, 1886, "Mr. Henry L. Ward, of 

 Rochester, son of Professor Henry A. Ward, 

 visited the three little keys off the north- 

 west coast of Yucatan known as The Tri- 

 angles, for the express purpose of securing 

 specimens of this rare animal." 



Tlie Seals were found in considerable 

 numbers but the circumstances were some- 

 what unfavorable. Forty-nine seals were 

 killed, forty- two of which were taken away, 

 but one of them was lost. From these ma- 

 terials Dr. Allen formed his paper. Papers 

 on Collections of Birds from Ecuador, Bo- 

 livia, the Maximilian Types of S. A. Birds, 



