1030 The American Naturalist. (December, 
Am. Geol., Sept.. 1892.—Prof. F. W. Hutton is inclined to think that 
the Foliated rocks of Otago belong to the archean rather than the 
paleozoic era. The absence of plication and of cleavage oblique to 
the stratification throughout the district are sufficient proofs that the 
foliation is not due to crushing or dynamic metamorphism, while it 
cannot be considered as a region of contact metamorphism, for the 
only eruptive rocks are those near Queenstown, and they have been 
foliated along with the rest. The metamorphic action would, there- 
fore, appear to be due to the internal heat of the earth at a very early 
period of its history, when the temperature gradient was much steeper 
than it is now.—Trans. New Zealand Inst., Vol. xxiv. 
Paleozoic.—In his notes on the Devonian Fish-Fauna of Spitzber- 
gen, Mr. A. Smith Woodward confirms the views published by Prof. — 
Lankester that two distinct horizons—an upper and a lower—are rec- 
ognizable in the Devonian formation of Spitzbergen.—Ann. and Mag. 
Nat. Hist., 1891. Mr. Walcott has obtained data which establish 
the fact that during the Middle Cambrian there was an immense depo- — 
sition of sediments that now form a series of shales and limestones — 
nearly 3000 feet in thickness. The fauna of Middle Cambrian time 
in Tennessee is essentially the same as that of the basal deposits about — 
the Adirondack Mountains, the upper Mississippi Valley areas of 7 
Wisconsin and Minnesota, those about the Black Hills of Dakota,and — 
the Llano Hills of Texas—Am. Jour. Science, July, 1892.——Mr. C. 
A. White agrees with Mr. T. W. Stanton in his conclusion that the 
Bear River formation is not equivalent to the Laramie, but that it 
occupies a position beneath the greater part of the equivalent of the i 
Colorado formation of the marine cretaceous series—Amer. Jour. Sty — 
Vol. xliiiPaleontologists are indebted to W. H. Sherzer for 
monograph of the genus Conophyllum. So vague have been the old 
definitions of the genus that in the ten species thus far assigned to 
Conophyllum there are at least five different genera 
Bull. G. S. Am., Vol. iii, 1892. 
Mesozoic.—A: Cretaceous Flora has been discovered in the ne" 
ne, southern part of Sweden. The fossils consist of silin” 
trunks in place, some small twigs and well preserved pine cones. 
of the species discovered are new, and have been named Pinus "i 
orstit and Cedrozylon ryedalense. Dr, Conwentz has fully dese 
both their external characters and their internal structure m a PY 
recently published in Kongl. svenska Vetenskaps Akademiens- 
Mr. Dumble includes under the name Reynosa a series of 
