a 
Bae S 
436 General Notes. [July, 
M. de Mainof, secretary of the ethnographical section of the Russian 
Geographical Society, has announced to the society that he is preparing 
a complete treatise on Russian Ethnography. It will appear in parts, 
each containing a description of one section of the people. 
The April number of Matériaux contains a review of Italian prehis- 
toric bibliography, for 1875 ; Studies on the Megalithic Monuments of 
the Valley of the Ouse; Superposition of the Solutréan upon the Mous- 
tieran at Thorigne (Mayenne); The Lacustrian Tombs of Auvernier, 
and an illustrated article by A. L. Lewis, upon the construction of Meg- 
alithic Monuments in India. Those who have sought for a rational the- 
ory of the manner in which such masses of stone were erected by unciy- 
ilized peoples in Europe, will find a plausible explanation here. 
The Rhind Lectureship in Archwology, in connection with the Society 
of Antiquaries of Scotland, founded by a bequest of the late Alexander 
Henry Rhind, of Sibster, was filled during the last season by Dr. Arthur 
Mitchell, joint secretary of the society, upon the question, “ Do we pos- 
sess the means of determining scientifically the condition of primeval 
man and his age upon the earth?” In consequence of a great many 
coexistences of high and low culture in the same locality, and the im- 
mense changes known to have been wrought within the space of even a 
century, the author comes to the following conclusions : — 
(1.) That the very rudest known form of any art may coexist in a 
nation with the highest. 
(2.) That it would be wrong to conclude from this that the nation 
must be composed part of civilized and part of savage people. 
(3.) That persons capable of receiving the highest culture might 
practice an art which belonged to the most palwolithic people. — O. T. 
Mason. 
GEOLOGY AND PALHONTOLOGY. 
Recent DISCOVERIES or EXTINCT ANIMALS BY PROFESSOR MARSH. 
— In a lecture to the-graduating class of Yale College, delivered in the 
new Peabody Museum, June 3d, Professor O. C. Marsh gave a brief 
résumé of the more important results of his late palæontological researches 
in the Rocky Mountain region. His explorations, which were attended 
with much hardship and danger, have been mainly confined to the Creta- 
ceous and Tertiary formations, and especially to the vertebrate fauna. 
During the past six years, the expeditions under his charge have brought 
to light more than three hundred species of fossil vertebrates new sed 
science, about two hundred of which he has already described. 
Among the extinct animals thus discovered, were many new groups 
representing forms of life hitherto unknown. The most interesting of 
these are the Cretaceous Odontornithes, or birds with teeth, which consti- 
tute a new sub-class, containing two distinct orders, namely, the Od case 
which have the teeth in grooves, and the Odontotorme, with teeth ya 
tinct sockets. The former were swimming birds of gigantic size, 
