152 Recent Literature. [February, 
. Professor Marsh then enumerates the characters we should ex: 
pect to find in the ancestral type of birds, the more essential char- 
acters being a free quadrate bone, since this is a universal feature 
in birds, and only partially retained in the Dinosaurs now known. 
“The birds would appear to have branched off by a single stem, 
which gradually lost the reptilian characters as it assumed the 
ornithic type, and in the existing Ratitæ we have the survivors of 
this direct line. The lineal descendants of this aan stock 
___represelited by Pyramid and other lakes in Nevada, and Honey 
Neus eke in California. This system of aes lakes as it.seems to 
ere been, ‘vas “ay wea in number ESTA 
g present lakes of th St Lowe 
an immense ise, 
mountains, the Sierra N 
SO great as to g 
baned . mes must 
e t&al area of the region. 
Twenty-one of these a:tcient, lak. < waich Lake Bonneville 
and aonta IE es wg, have already been 
and at least three of 
omnia int A é northern part, of the 
some a lye are known to have of the south. 
ot eae tufa pa id, thin lake basi nated i in the order 
™ 3 these minerals are 
Ae, ithe H hole valley is Ae 1 À PI. ıx. From the 
_ study of the terraces and tufa or of 
ay hat the lake had 
