260 0. C. Marsh — Discovery of Cretaceous Mammalia. 



Postscript. 



After Parts I and II of the present series were published, I 

 made a communication on the subject before the British 

 Association, at the Leeds meeting, Section D, September 5, 

 1890. The title of the paper was " On the Cretaceous Mam- 

 mals of North. America." These were fully discussed so far 

 as then known, and a series of specimens of the principal 

 forms discovered was exhibited to the section, and shown to 

 many other members interested in the subject. An abstract of 

 this paper will be found in the Report of this meeting, p. 853, 

 1891. 



The first announcement of Mammals in the Cretaceous of 

 Europe has recently been made before the Zoological Society 

 of London, November 17, 1891, by Smith Woodward, of the 

 British Museum, who described a single molar tooth from the 

 Wealclen of Hastings, under the name Plagiaulax Dawsoni. 

 An abstract is given in Nature, p. 164, December -IT, 1891. 

 It seems strange that discoveries of similar remains have not 

 been made before in the Wealden, but now others will proba- 

 bly follow. A more promising field is in the fresh-water 

 Gosau beds of Austria, where the Ceratopsidce occur, and other 

 fossils allied to those in the Laramie. When a student in Ger- 

 many, years ago, I searched in them myself for mammals, 

 without success, but have ever since been expecting that 

 some one would announce the discovery. 



In this country, the discoveries of Cretaceous Mammals as 

 announced by me in 1889 were not altogether approved by Prof. 

 H. F. Osborn, who, while my investigation was still in progress, 

 wrote a criticism of the two parts already issued, although he 

 had seen none of the specimens described. This review 

 was read before various scientific bodies, among them the 

 Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, to which it was 

 presented January 20, 1891. Part of it was accepted for pub- 

 lication, and appeared in the Proceedings, pp. 121-135, 1891. I 

 received a separate copy March 13, 1891, but had previously 

 heard the review read by Prof. Osborn at the Biological 

 Society of Washington, February 7, 1891. At this meeting, 

 I exhibited a series of specimens of Cretaceous mammals that 

 disproved the main points then asserted by Prof. Osborn, but 

 he declined to examine them. 



The review as subsequently published was discourteous, 

 unjust, and erroneous in so many points, that I prepared a 

 short reply under the title " Note on Mesozoic Mammalia," 

 and sent it to Dr. Leidy, President of the Philadelphia 

 Academy, who presented it to that society April 14, 1891, and 

 informed me that it would soon be printed. As chairman of 



