0. Meyer — Species in the Southern Old-tertiary. 67 



the name of Gorbula Aldrichi, n. sp. It has radiating strise on 

 the umbonial part of the surface, a characteristic which I had 

 not seen before in a Corbula. 



4. " Contributions to the Tertiary Greology and Paleontology 

 of the United States."* As the author is curator of the collec- 

 tion of the Philadelphia Academy, where so many type speci- 

 mens of Tertiary invertebrates are said to be, I had looked 

 with eagerness for this work, announced a long time si nee, f 

 hoping to receive much information concerning many doubtful 

 points, especially in connection with Conrad's descriptions. 

 But I found that a study of the paleontology of the Southern 

 States had not been attempted in it. The book contains 

 nothing but reprints of previous essays of the author, increased 

 by a "succinct statement of the Tertiary geology of each of 

 the several States," and a map. How did Professor Heilprin 

 map the Southern Old-tertiary % E. A. Smith has given a map 

 of Florida,;}; where he carefully makes a distinction between 

 the few localities where limestone with Orbitoides has been ob- 

 served and the large area where this limestone is supposed to 

 exist; all this is colored Oligocene by Professor Heilprin. The 

 risk of mapping in this way can perhaps be fully appreciated 

 only by one who has, like myself, tried to get a clear opinion 

 of the Oligocene formation by studying for years its typical 

 localities in Europe. Further, Professor Heilprin traces the 

 Oligocene (p. 3 and p. 4), connecting link after link, from the 

 Mississippi River through Florida, Jamaica, Antigua, Trinidad 

 and St. Bartholomew, to the Vicenza deposits in Italy and the 

 Mayence Basin in Germany, and ends this speculation by the 

 words (p. 4) : " we thus have the parallelism established 

 between our Vicksburg or Orbitoidic bed and those of the 

 typical Oligocene of Southern Europe." Having in my pos- 

 session more than four hundred species, which I collected my- 

 self at both ends of Professor Heilprin's long chain, in the 

 Mayence Basin and at Vicksburg, I ought to have found at 

 least some identical forms, but as yet I have not noticed a sin- 

 gle one. Considering the difficulty of determining the relative 

 age of two localities only, such as Vicksburg and Jackson, 

 which are situated near each other and contain hundreds of 

 well preserved fossils,§ we may ask, what guided Professor 

 Heilprin through thousands of miles? The answer is, the Fora- 

 rninifera Orbitoides. It is scarcely necessary to repeat, what 



* By A. Heilprin, Philadelphia, 1884, published by the author. 



f C. A. White wrote 1880 (Am. Naturalist, p. 255): "Mr. Heilprin has begun 

 the preparation of a monograph of the Tertiary fossils of Eastern North America." 



% This Journal, III, vol. xxi, 1881, p 305. 



§ Conrad described 34 species from Jackson; I collected there about 150. 

 Having received during the printing of this article additional material from this 

 locality, I think that this number must be increased, perhaps considerably. 



