B24 Scientifie Intelligence. 
digious violence; but these conditions would have favored the 
making of a arge proportion of very coarse-grained sedimentary 
rocks, contrary to the fact among the pailieat: of fossiliferous 
strata. 
Tides having twice the height of modern tides (such as existed 
when the moon wa fth nearer the earth than now) would have 
aided much in degradation during Archean times, by increasing 
the vertical ran f wave and current action and the working 
range 
force of tidal currents flowing through shallow seas or channels; 
and this action together with that of erosion resulting from lar. ge 
recipitation, are the chief geological effects over the earth’s sur- 
tace which Mr. Darwin attributes to the cause mentioned. Geolo- - 
gists have here no reason to question Mr. Darwin’s eee wake 
Another effect is also mentioned in the original paper, and r 
ferred to here again: that ‘‘the ellipticity of figure of the Peas 
must have been ‘continually diminishing, and thus the polar regions 
must have been ever rising and the equ uatorial ones falling ; ut 
as the ocean always elses these changes, they might quite well 
have left no geological traces.” 
2. Contributions to i History of the Vertebrata for the Lower 
Eocene of ged and New Mexico, made during 1881; by 
E. D. Corr. Read before the Amer. Phil. Soc., Dec. 16 , 188i. 
Cope’s Patmontalogical Bulletin, No. 34.—This paper by Profes- 
sor Cope treats especially of the Lower Eocene of the basin of the 
Big Horn River. e upper drainage basin of the Big Horn 
River, which was examined in 1859 by Dr. Hayden and then pro- 
nounced Lower Eocene, ers explored in 1880 by a party under 
L. Wortman, sent out by Professor Cope. From the speci- 
garded as peculiar to eac ow ips on the same river 
north of the chs — Mountains, ts 18 1, Mr. Wovens under 
the same auspices, made further ee of the region, an 
obtained numerous e aictinet vertebrates from the Lower Eocene hor- 
izon. These ete e beds “ca een be less than 4000 feet in verti- 
IT 
new genera, and they are stated to réprenent fully the Wasatch 
fauna ih) little admixture of earlier or later forms. In place of 
the characteristic Middle Eocene (Bridger) genera, Hyrachyus, 
phn Sea: A agg and the Zillodonta, there are Phenaco- 
dus, Hyracotherium, Coryphodon and Teeniodonta, as in New 
Mexico ; ak several genera are, as elsewhere, common to the two 
horizons, and two species from both, Hyopsodus paulus and H. 
ALERT cannot be distinguished by the parts preserved. The 
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