62 Scientific Intelligence. 



1889, but was not published until 1894. The author has gathered 

 from various sources information regarding all the then known 

 species of the miocene formation of New Jersey. One hundred 

 and four species are recognized ; of these thirty-five species are 

 reported from New Jersey only, and no very close representatives 

 of living species are in the list. " No living forms," the author 

 observes, " have been found in the New Jersey deposits that are 

 not also known to occur in some of the more southern localities." 

 A single species of Discina is the only representative of the 

 Brachiopods, a fact in keeping with the almost complete absence 

 of Brachiopods from the American Atlantic Tertiary. We observe, 

 upon looking over the descriptions, that several species when com- 

 pared with their more southern representatives, are of noticeably 

 smaller size ; as in the cases of Ostrea percrassa, Area centenaria y 

 Astarte clistans, Cardita granulata, Carditamera arata, Cardium 

 craticuloides, Venus staminea, Fasciolaria sulcosa, Tritia biden- 

 tata. This probably indicates that the locality was on the north- 

 ern border of the geographical distribution of the fauna. It 

 would be interesting, geologically, to know what relation the 

 species which still live bear to living representatives in this 

 respect. h. s. w. 



5. The Climates of the Geological past and their relation to the 

 evolution of the Sun ; by Eug. Dubois, pp. 1-167, (Swan, Son- 

 nenschein & Co.) London, 1895. — The author, whose remarkable 

 report on Pithecanthropus has been already noticed in these 

 pages, sets forth in this essay the hypothesis that the climatic 

 chauges, indicated by the geographical distribution of fossils upon 

 the earth's surface, are due to changes in the heat radiated from 

 the sun. Following Janssen, he assumes that differences of the 

 stars, in color and spectra, indicate differences in their temperature, 

 Thus, the stars which are rich in violet rays, like Sirius, are 

 assumed to be at an extremely high temperature ; yellow stars, 

 like Capella, less hot ; while those of red color, like Betelgeuze, 

 are in the third stage of cooling. The numbers of the stars of 

 each color is estimated, and the relation of the numbers is taken 

 as an index of the relative duration of each stage; on this 

 hypothesis the white stage is estimated to have continued 58.5$, 

 the yellow stage 33.5$ and the red stage 8$ of the total luminous 

 existence of each star. The sun, as one of the stars, is assumed 

 to be in its yellow stage of evolution. The author's hypothesis 

 is expressed in the following passage, viz : " Now, since from the 

 sun's history we learn that, during the greater part of its exist- 

 ance as a white star, if was much hotter, and on passing rela- 

 tively rapidly from the white to the yellow stage, it lost much of 

 its heat, we see, on the other hand, that the heat received by the 

 earth underwent the same changes, for after a very long period of 

 warmth, a relatively rapid cooling set in, finally reaching the 

 present condition — then we may assume that the period of the 

 cooling down of the climates coincided with the transition from 

 the white to the yellow stage, the period of rapid cooling of the 



