612 The American Naturalist. [July, 
Prof. Osborn’s other qualifications for discussing Cretaceous 
mammals do not seem especially conspicuous. Certainly his 
papers on other Mesozoic mammals do not show that high degree 
of accuracy which a critic should put into them. One or two 
examples will make this evident. 
He began this work in 1886 with borrowing two specimens of 
Dromatherium Emmons, and making a new genus of one of 
them, on insufficient grounds. In a characteristic manner, he 
commenced by criticising Emmons’s work, especially one figure, 
but this he subsequently retracted. His own figures of one of 
these fossils agree neither with each other nor with the specimen, 
as a recent comparison shows. 
He next turned his attention to the Mesozoic mammals in the 
British Museum, beginning with the Triassic Tritylodon from 
South Africa described by Owen. Again Prof. Osborn did not 
agree with the original authority, but announced in print that a 
most important point had not been appreciated by Owen : namely, 
a large parietal foramen, which showed that “the primitive Mam- 
malia, of this family at least, had a pineal eye of some functional 
size and value,’ —a most interesting discovery, if true. A reference 
to the specimen itself proved that there was no foundation what- 
ever for the announcement, and Prof. Osborn was compelled to 
retract it (Science, Vol. IX., p. 92 and p. 538, 1887). 
The results of Prof. Osborn’s further study of the Mesozoic 
mammals in the British Museum were not considered important 
by some of the best authorities there, and some of his observa- 
tions they disproved, in my presence, by referring to the ‘fossils 
themselves. His figures of these specimens, moreover, are not 
accurate, and in some cases are misleading, as a single example 
will show. In his Mesozoic Mammalia, Plate vir., he gives a 
new figure of the type of Phascolotherium, but a comparison with 
the original specimen shows that this fine figure is erroneous in 
at least four important points : namely, the first incisor; the crown 
of the last molar, which is wanting in the specimen; the posi- 
tion of the dental foramen; andthe mylohyoid groove. His very 
objectionable method of regarding different isolated specimens as 
identical, and making a “ composite” drawing of them, as repre- 


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