892.] Geology and Paleontology. 945 
Mesozoic.—British Cretaceous Foraminifera are receiving atten- 
tion at the hands of various students. A monograph on the Foramin- 
ifera of the Gault by Chapman, published in the Journal of the 
Microscopical Society, is a most valuable reference work, as the author 
has treated the subject in an exhaustive manner. Another series of 
articles on the Foraminifera of the Trias, by Messrs. W. D. Crick 
and C. Davies Sherborn, appears in the Journal of the Northampton- 
shire Natural History Society. According to Hyatt the Jura-Trias 
is well-developed about Taylorsville, California. The age of the Trias 
as indicated by its fossils is that of the Noric and Karnic series in the 
upper Trias. The lower, middle, and upper Jura are all represented 
in the fossil faunas of the region, and particularly in those of Mt. 
Jura, near the center of the area. A scarcity of vertebrate remains 
is a feature of this region in common with the entire column of the 
Trias and Jura along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and the 
Andes. (Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. iii.) Prof. A. Gaudry 
announces the discovery of the snout of a Pythonomorph in the 
upper Cretaceous of Cardesse, not far from Pau, which must have been 
10 metres long. The snout resembles that of Mososaurus giganteus 
of Maestricht, with considerable difference as to dentition. He names 
it Liodon mosasauroides.—Revue Scientifique, Aug., 1892. 
Cenozoic.—The Proceeds. London Zool. Soc. for 1891 contains 
some interesting descriptions and plates of fossil birds by Mr. Lyddek- 
ker. These comprised a new Moa from New Zealand named provis- 
ionally Pachyornis rothschildi, which affords the writer tolerable 
evidence that the typical species of Anomalopteryx and Pachyornis 
were differentiated from a common ancestor; a large extinct stork, 
Propelargus (?) edwardsii, from the Allier Miocene, evidently very 
closely allied to genera still existing ; and several species from the Sar- 
dinian and Corsican Islands——Two mammals, Cervus pachygenys and 
Antilope maupasii, have been added by M. A. Pomel to the list of 
those discovered by him in the Plistocene formations in Algeria. 
Mr. Clement Reid intimates that during the Glacial Epoch there was 
throughout Central Europe a period of dry cold, causing that region 
to resemble the arid wastes of Central Asia. These desert conditions 
seem to have extended in a modified degree into the South of England. 
—WNatural Science, Aug., 1892. 
