296 Chronicles of Science. [April, 



was devoted to an historical sketch of Greenland from the time it was 

 first colonized by Norsemen emigrants from Iceland, when trees grew 

 on the hill sides and a milder climate clothed those desolate shores 

 with a verdure which made them attractive to many a roving 

 Scandinavian Viking. Two districts were once colonized in this 

 manner ; but the Esquimaux came, war ensued, but little or no inter- 

 course took place between the mother-country and its puny offspring 

 thrust forth into a cold world ; a deep sleep seems to come over Iceland, 

 and now all the remains of this once flourishing colony, or the still 

 more distant voyagers to Vinland farther south, are a few Eunic 

 inscriptions on the coast of Greenland and some of the seaboard of 

 Continental America, and a saga or two carefully stored away among 

 the most interesting relics of the Society of Northern Antiquities at 

 Copenhagen, published, or to be published, by the learned members 

 of that body, who have done so much towards elucidating the early 

 history of all branches of the Scandinavian family. 



' VII. GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY. 



{Including the Proceedings of the Geological Society.) 



Paleontologists are now and then startled by some one proposing an 

 interpretation of a fossil altogether at variance with that commonly 

 current. Such views are often received with scant courtesy, and not 

 unfrequently excite some amount of ridicule. But really earnest 

 students of nature require little inducement to replace this sort of 

 argument by one better calculated to establish truth and advance 

 science, for palaeontologists cannot but remember how many appa- 

 rently outre opinions have afterwards turned out to be strictly correct. 

 We doubt not, therefore, that the case we are about to record will 

 receive in good time either confirmation or disproval from able hands. 



A little pamphlet of 19 pages, by M. Sanno Solaro, a priest of 

 the " Company of Jesus," has recently been published at Toulouse. 

 It is entitled " Memoire sur le premier bassin de Dinotherium decou- 

 vert dans le departement de la Haute-Garonne," and is illustrated by 

 three quarto plates. In it is recorded the discovery of a number of 

 remains of Dinotherium at Escanecrabe, in the said department, during 

 the construction of a road from that place to Lilhac. Amongst them 

 was an enormous pelvis, quarried out under the superintendence of 

 the author himself; it measured about 6 feet across the crest of the 

 iliac bones, was nearly complete, and evidently belonged to a huge 

 Dinotherium. 



Now we come to the remarkable point. At the side of the coty- 

 loid cavity, M. Solaro discovered another, of a triangular form, con- 

 taining the articular extremity of a small bone, which fitted into it. 

 This he considers to be a portion of a marsupial bone, notwithstand- 

 ing that it was articulated to the ilium instead of the anterior branch 

 of the pubis, as in other marsupials. 



