182 General Notes. [ March, 
domestic customs. The author favors the view of Mr. Park Harrison — 
and Professor Owen that migrations to America proceeded by the Sand- 
wich and Easter Islands as well as by Behring Strait. He concludes 
by affirming that “the whole of the phenomena of man in America 
represent an arrested development of civilization, cut short, as compared 
with Europe and Asia, at-a time so remote that in the Old World the 
great religions of the globe, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, had time 
to cover the Eastern hemisphere, while until the Spanish conquest the 
Americas had in the flux of centuries never heard their revelations.” — 
O. T. Mason. 
GEOLOGY AND PALHONTOLOGY. 
Tue BRAIN or tHE Dinoceras. — This extinct animal, discovered 
by Professor. Marsh in the Eocene beds of Wyoming, nearly equaled the 
elephant in size, but the limbs were shorter. The head could reach the 
ground, and there is no evidence that it carried a proboscis. Professor 
Marsh figures the skull in his second memoir, entitled Principal Charae- 
ters of the Dinocerata (American Journal of Science, February, 1876). 
(Fic. 9.) SKULL OF DINOCERAS, SHOWING RELATIVE SIZE OF THE BRAIN. 
The accompanying cut (Fig. 9) gives an outline of the skull (seen from 
above, one eighth the natural size) of Dinoceras mirabile. The central 
figure near the base of the skull illustrates the remarkably small brain. 
Says Professor Marsh, “The brain-cavity in Dinoceras is perhaps the 
most remarkable feature in this remarkable genus. It proves conclusively 
that the brain was proportionately smaller than in any other known mam- — 
mal, recent or fossil, and even less than in some reptiles. It was, in fact, 
the most reptilian brain in any known mammal. In D. mirabile the et- 
tire brain was actually so diminutive that it could apparently have been 
drawn through the neural canal of all the presacral vertebre, certainly a 
through the cervicals and lumbars.” : 
Movunrtain-Makina. — An abstract of Professor Suess’s memoir — 
the Origin of the Alps has been furnished the American Journal of See 
ence by Mr. E. S. Dana, which we further condense, often using the e* — 
act language of the abstract. According to the views of the early geol- 
