152 The American Naturalist. [February, 



defined by the cranial characters alone. The resemblance of the lar- 

 val Ichthyophis to Amphiuma is afte i although, as 

 I believe, the Apoda and Caudata may have evolved from a common 

 stock, Amphiuma is certainly not the connecting form between the two 

 as Prof. Cope would have it, for we cannot well assume the scales, lost 

 in the Urodeles, to have reappeared in the Csecilians." 



The above discussion is interesting but troublesome, because it re- 

 quires a reply. In the first place, it ought not to be necessary to re- 

 mark that the presence or absence of scales in the Batrachia is not an 

 ordinal character. On the page following that from which the above 

 is quoted, Bouleuger states that six of the sixteen genera of Apoda 

 (Cseciliida?) have no scales. Further, among the extinct Stegocephali a 

 some genera have scales and some have none, so there is reason to sup- 

 pose that scales may be secondary as well as primary. Moreover, if a 

 a genus of salamanders should be discovered which possesses scales, no 

 one would think of removing it from the Urodela on that account. 

 There is no improbability in the supposition that such a genus may not 

 be found in some of the Mesozoic formations. Second, Prof. Cope has 

 never stated that the genus Amphiuma is the connecting form between 

 the Apoda and Caudata. He has said that the Amphiumoidea prob- 

 ably are, and possibly the Amphiuniidie, but the genus Amphiuma 

 never. 1 He has very rarely alleged that any genus is ancestral to 

 any other genus. There can be no one genus between these two 

 groups, for there is room for several genera. And one may agree with 

 Dr. Boulenger that the Apoda and Caudata have had a common an- 

 cestor, and not disagree with the position that the Apoda belong to the 

 Caudata, for there is no reason why that common ancestor may not 

 probably have been one of the Caudata, unless there is more difference 

 in the cranial characters of the two than has been yet pointed out. — E. 

 D. Cope. 



ENTOMOLOGY. 4 



Heterocera of the Lesser Antilles. — Reporting on a collection 

 ofGeometridae and allied families from the islands of Grenada, St. Vin- 

 cent and the Grenadines, Mr. G. F. Hampson* says. The Geometridre 



1 Batrachia of N. America, 1889, pp. 34-222. 



5 Edited by Clarence M. Weed, Durham, X. H. 



s Ann. and Mag. Kat. Hist., XVI, 329. 



