168 The American Naturalist. [February, 
Dr. Riist (Paleontographia, 1888,) describes the radiolarians that 
have been found in Cretaceous strata. In Germany these organisms 
are very abundant in some of the lower beds, though scarce in the 
higher. From the Cretaceous and Jurassic of Germany 165 species, 
in 74 genera, are now known. 
Cretaceous.—Smith A. Woodward has published a Synopsis of 
the Vertebrate Fossils of the English Chalk. As a result of observa- 
tion and comparison, he gives fifteen species of Reptilia, and eighteen 
Pisces. Of the latter, twenty-three belong to the order Selachii, eight 
to the Chimeeroidei, twelve to the Ganoidei, thirty-six to the Teleos- 
tei, and two doubtful. 
M. Paul Levy (Aza. Sci. Geo., 1889) contributes a memoir upon 
the phosphates of France and other countries, including an account 
of recently discovered beds, and notes upon their uses in agriculture, 
and their assimilation by plants. Phosphates occur in the oldest rocks, 
in sedimentry strata, and in metamorphic beds. They have been 
found in the Archean of Canada, in Estremadura (Spain), in Norway, 
-at Caylux, Lot, etc., in France; in all these cases under the form of 
apatite. The beds most worked in France are the Lias, lower Cretace- 
ous, and upper beds of the Mesozoic era. M. Levy believes that the 
infiltrating water which has separated the phosphates from the carbon- 
ates is of interior origin, and has worked from below upwards, and in 
this belief he differs from many geologists, both French and English. 
The excavations made in the chalk by the waters have, in M. Levy’s 
opinion, been filled by the descent of superior beds. 
M. H. Lasne has contributed to the Annals des Sciences Geologiques 
for the current year a description of the geology of the department of 
Indre, with a map showing the geological structure. This region, 
which furnishes abundant phosphates, is interesting from the number of 
stages that can be observed in a limited space. There are ancient and 
eruptive crystalline rocks, Triassic and Rhaetic, Sinemurian, and Lias 
(rich in vertebrates and molluscs). The phosphates of the Lias of this 
department are in reality composed of fluo-phosphate of a composi- 
tion identical with that of apatite—CaFl3 (P,, 3CaO). He assumes 
that these materials were dissolved in the Liassic sea, and were de- 
posited at the same time with the carbonate of lime by the departure 
of the carbonic acid. Above the phosphate-bearing Lias lie the Toar- 
cian, Bajocian, and Bathonian, and Tertiary strata of Eocene and Mio- 
cene date, as well as in some places Pleistocene beds. 
