520 General Notes. [June, 



but he is a keen observer, and a piquant writer. He has a 

 charming way of knocking over old conceptions of how things 

 must have been. For instance, the bamboo gridiron becomes a 

 drying-grate; boiling meat in a bamboo pot over the fire is 

 changed to roasting the whole affair, pot and all ; holes in the 

 ground to sleep in, are nothing but children playing burial, etc. 

 For comparative technology, the article is invaluable. The neck- 

 laces described by Dr. Thomson are made from human bones. 



Sir. Bartle Frere's paper, however, is the one of greatest mo- 

 ment. The editor of these notes read a paper on the same topic 

 at the American Association last summer. Sir. Bartle Frere's ob- 

 servations were made in India, where the Aryan peoples have 

 been in contact with uncivilized and more aboriginal races from 

 the earliest times, and in South Africa among the Hottentots, 

 Bushmen, and the Banta Tribes. 



GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 



Ptilodus incdicevus (Naturalist, November, 1881), enables me to 

 correct the table of genera of PIa^\ 1 < icida , givi n in the May, 

 1882, Naturalist. The remarkable mammal in question turns 

 out to have but one huge cutting premolar tooth, and to present 

 considerable resemblance to the supposed " pouched lion " (Thy- 

 lacoleo carnifex) of the Australian Pliocene formation, winch ex- 

 cited so much discussion a few years ago in England. Consid- 

 erable light is thrown on the history of this -roup, which disap- 

 peared so early in Europe and America, to survive in Australia 

 almost up to the present geological age. 

 The genera of the family differ as follows : 







Large premolar « 





b ' " w l ~"™"" ""*" CUKC U "~ reU "^^ ' Thylacoko. 



The phylogeny of these forms, in connection with that of the 

 kangaroos, may be expressed as follows : It is evident that sucn 

 forms as Tkylacoh , ire m »i sp : ' irr ? 



than Plagmulax and t b as the number of teetn 



is reduced, and the cutting function of the premolars is concentratea 

 in a single large tooth. This is quite the same kind of speciahzatioi 



