1891,] Recent Literature. 725 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Ameghino on the Extinct Mammalia of Argentina.'—We 
have here a monumental work, such as can only be produced under 
circumstances which seldom concur. The conditions are, first, rich 
and newly discovered fossiliferous deposits; second, a man who is 
competent to study and describe them ; and third, facilities for publi- 
cation. Such a coincidence created the Ossemens Fossiles of Cuvier 
in Europe ; a similar state of affairs has produced corresponding works 
in North America ; and now South America has come forward with a 
history and a historian worthy to take rank with anything that has 
gone before. The richness of the Pampean beds of Buenos Ayres has 
been made known to us by Owen and Burmeister, but it has been for 
Ameghino to bring to our notice the extraordinary wealth of the 
Miocene and Eocene beds of the Parana and of Patagonia. Indeed, 
the wealth of Patagonia, of which a few jewels were brought home by 
Darwin, turns out to be extraordinary, and the explorations conducted 
by Senor Carlos Ameghino, brother of the author of this book, have 
been more productive than those of any other known region, those of 
some parts of North America alone excepted. 
The orders of Mammalia most abundantly represented are those of 
which examples had been already brought to light in a comparatively 
small number of representatives by previous explorers. The number 
of genera and species enumerated by M. Ameghino is as follows: 
Genera. | Species. 
? Marsupialia, 8 24 
Edentata, nt qo 188 
Glires, : 71 177 
re areal Se 8 9 
arniv 13 +4 
Chivcpners II 16 
Dao (Litopterna), 14 23 
uadrumana), 4 4 
Toxodontia 28 71 
Diplarthra (Perissodactyla), 7 14 
(Artiodactyla, 18 46 
Cetacea, 13 17 
Incertz sedis, 4 4 
Proboscidia, I 6 
Total, 286 643 
1 Contribucion al Conocimento de los Mamiferous Fosiles de la Republica Argentina 
etc., por Florentino Ameghino. Tomo VI., Actos de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias 
de la Republica Argentinaen Cordoba. Buenos Ayres, 1889. Folio, pp. 1027, with Atlas. 

