118 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



At the meeting of the Zoological Society, held on March 3rd, Mr. 

 Rudolf Martin read a paper on some remains of the Ostrich (Struthio 

 karatheodoris), found in the Upper Miocene deposits of Samos. The 

 author stated that the existence of an Ostrich in Samos was of interest 

 because a comparison of the fauna of Samos with that of the Siwalik 

 Hills showed that the latter was younger, and consequently S. kara- 

 theodoris was of a greater geological age than 8. asiaticus. The hypo- 

 thesis, therefore, that the family of Ostriches had been developed in 

 Southern Eurasia and emigrated at a later period to Africa and 

 Southern Europe could not be sustained. The discovery of S. kara- 

 theodoris in Samos showed rather that the specialization took place in 

 Africa, and that the existence of such forms in India and Southern 

 Europe was due to a secondary immigration from Africa. Most 

 probably, however, there was the same relationship between the whole 

 fauna of Samos and that of the Siwalik Hills — i. e. the latter was a 

 transformed and later generation of the former. 



We have received ' The Census of the British Land and Freshwater 

 Mollusca,' by Lionel E. Adams, published by authority of the Concho- 

 logical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and issued by Dulau & Co. 

 We extract the following pars, from the prefatory remarks : — 



" It would be superfluous to point out the value of a complete 

 Census showing the distribution of each species, and it is to be hoped 

 that the present publication of the Census up to date will show 

 conchologists where the gaps are that need filling up, and encourage 

 them to assist in the work. It will be noticed that Scotland is still 

 very poorly explored, but that the Irish lists, on the other hand, are 

 now very fairly full, mainly through the exertions of Messrs. R. Welch 

 and P. H. Grierson. It will be remembered that the last Census, 

 which was published in my ' Collectors' Manual of British Land and 

 Freshwater Shells,' in 1896, was the compilation of Messrs. W. Deni- 

 son Roebuck and John W. Taylor — a monument of valuable labour. 

 The great merit of the system of authentication is the uniformity of 

 value which it gives to the records, all specimens passing under the 

 eye of the recorder. It does not follow that other records are not 

 equally reliable, but for the sake of uniformity of value it is necessary 

 to confine the tables to such records as have been submitted to and 

 passed by the Society's Referees, otherwise a wide door would have 

 been opened to errors of determination, the avoidance of which is the 

 object aimed at in instituting the authentication system. The areas 



