Review of North American Paleontology. 679 
And now if interest has been awakened in these minutest of the 
pet nurslings of nature, the next step is to collect, examine and 
preserve them. Do not stop at that point let me beg of you, for it 
is but the threshold ; but seek to discover the entire life-history of 
the species around you. Uncounted problems of supremest interest 
await the verdict of those researches. | Only by such work can the 
foundation of a true and permanent classification of the alge be 
laid. Questions of far-reading importance follow regarding their 
relations to the fungi, and to animal life, and their ultimate part in 
the scale of nature. Uses the alge may have, many and as yet 
unknown ; but perhaps none more important will ever be discov- 
ered than their service which science already knows, that of 
furnishing a means by which to learn of the origin and the pro- 
cesses of life. The algæ as among the simplest of living things 
stand close to the gateway whence life first entered into the world, 
and invite the hope that their investigation may yield many im- 
portant additions to the world’s knowledge of what life is. 
REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF NORTH AMERICAN 
PALAONTOLOGY FOR THE YEAR 1887. 
BY JOHN BELKNAP MARCOU. 
] REGRET that, owing to the delay in the publication of the 
Smithsonian report for 1886, my record of North American 
palxontology for that year has not yet appeared, and the date of its 
publication is still uncertain. For this reason I again publish in 
the AMERICAN NATURALIST a brief review of the titles of the new 
works on North American paleontology, which I have collected 
during the year 1887, in order to give the workers in this branch 
of science a brief view of the work of the past year, leaving all 
abstracts, notes and comments to another paper, which will be pub- 
lished either by the Smithsonian Institution or the U. S. Geological 
urvey, y 
Truman H. Aldrich, in Jour. Cincinnati Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. 
