PN ee 
Miscellaneous Intelligence. 159 
d be necessary to assume first that giant land tortoises were 
mat distributed all over South America and Africa, where no 
. of them now existed; secondly, to suppose that the Gala- 
gos were formerly united to America; and thirdly, that the 
Midabra reef had once formed part of land that was joined to the 
African coast. But even then all the difficulties would not wile 
been surmounted, for it appeared that the Mascarene form of thes 
tortoises was more nearly allied to that of the Galapagos than to 
that of Aldabra. It would further have ~ ee assumed therefore, 
in order to bring these facts into harmony with the usual theory, 
that the Mascarene ancl had r ers CO witha to the African 
coast after the Aldabra reef had pe separated from it. 
ese six cases were vie selected instances of the many diffi- 
culties met with in endeavoring to account for all the known facts 
of serageagae by the Nines es of the derivative origin of 
speci It would be easy for those who had studied distribution 
in ae group of animals to add to them almost indefinitely. 
Two other more general phenomena of distribution, which it 
appeared to be d iffeult to reconcile with the derivative hypothe- 
sis, were also briefly adverted to, these were the ex xistence of 
both hemispheres, and the presence of several closely allied 
species in the same area. In the first case, it was difficult to 
sO aaa separated. In the second place, it never x sits to 
have been explained sntiohanesrity how more than one form could 
areas, and had come together into the same area by immigration, 
“peared, in some cases to be almost untenable. 
and other minor difficulties had led the author rather to 
aes “ehother identity of structure must be taken, w/thout 
parentage. At any rate, the subject seemed to be one still open 
as some recent writers had appeared to 
a 
5. —— of the Atlantic.—G. Lindstrém haa: deseribed and 
figured several new corals from the Atlantic bed, in a paper in 
the Wacsan sss of the Swedish Academy, vol. xiv, 1877. 
IV. MisceLLANEous SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. 
1. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and 
Sciences, Vol. III, Panta 2.—This part closes the volume . It con 
Ny § K. Thac sher, 
Medinn and Paired Fins, a eo iueitastian to the paisa of vie 
