1897.] Recent Literature. 823 
no reason for the rejection ; on the same ground nearly every name in 
Biology above the specific would have to be rejected. 
Although Dr. Wortman makes excellent use of the material at his 
disposal, and throws much light on the characters of some of the genera, 
the evidence for the reference of the Tzeniodonta to the order Edenta- 
ta, must be considered as yet very obscure. But the reference to that 
order of Conoryctes and Onychodectes is still more difficult, if not im- 
possible. If proper, a new definition of the Edentata must be forth- 
coming. I am still of the opinion that the best provisional place for 
these two genera isin the Creodonta, next the Tzeniodonta, to which 
they have probable affinities. The position of Dr. Wortman is based 
on the scientifically untenable assumption that because forms probably 
stand in the relation of ancestor and descendent they must therefore 
belong to the same genus, family, order, etc. He goes so far as to 
place Esthonyx in the Tillodonta, to which it is probably ancestral, 
although it does not possess the essential character of that order or 
suborder—incisors growing from persistent pulps. For equally valid 
reasons all the genera of a phyletic line might be regarded as a single 
genus. This kind of formulation casts to the winds all taxonomy, and 
the effect of it is seen in this instance in Dr. Wortman’s failure to de- 
fine the order Edentata. It was the consideration of such forms as 
Conoryctes and Onychodectes with Esthonyx and the Tzeniodonta and 
certain Insectivora, that led me to propose the comprehensive order of 
Bunotheria, which is the source of all the Unguiculate orders of later 
time. 
. Professor Marsh’s article is a much needed description of his genus 
Stylinodon, of which he has obtained some important parts of the skel- 
eton. It looks more like an Edentate than any of the other Tenio- 
donta, with which I placed it in 1889. The figures which he gives, 
will prove valuable to paleontologists, but more light will be neces- 
sary before its relation to the Edentata can be determined. Prof. 
Marsh cannot let the opportunity pass without proposing a new sub- 
ordinal name, “Stylinodontia,” which he does not characterize, al- 
though there are already two other names in the field before him, one 
of which, Tzeniodonta, was proposed and defined twenty-one years ago. 
The rambling discussion as to the origin of the Edentata which closes 
this paper adds nothing to our knowledge of the subject, especially as 
it includes the names of genera which he has never defined, and which 
are so far unknown to science.—E. D. Corr. 
