706 | General Notes. [July, 
antiquity. The watershed separating it from the southern por- 
tion of the Arabah is 660 feet high, while the highest point of 
the Vale of Jezreel is only 285 feet. Marl deposits exist in the 
Dead sea basin at an elevation of 1400 feet above the present 
Dead sea level, and the old marls of the Jordanic lakes are not 
entirely unfossiliferous, as three Melanidæ have been found in 
them. 
Silurian.—Figures of the now celebrated fossil scorpions found 
in the Silurian rocks of Scotland and Gothland by Dr. Hunter 
and Professor Lindstrom, are given in Mature (Jan. 29), and Mr. 
- N. Peach gives in the same number a compendium of our 
knowledge of these ancient air-breathers. The first Paleozoic scor- 
pion found was described in 1835, by Count Sternberg, from a 
specimen obtained in the coal formation of Chonile, near Rad- 
nitz, in Bohemia. Three years later Corda described another 
(Microlabis) from the same locality. In 1866 Messrs. Meek and 
Worthen described two new species from the Coal Measures of 
Mazon creek, Illinois. In 1873, Dr. H. Woodward showed that 
the genus Eoscorpius (one of those found at Mazon creek) occurs 
in the English Coal Measures and in the Carboniferous limestone 
_ the present age. Mr. Peach asks, What were the victims of these 
ancient murderers? The dragon-flies of the Middle Devonian of 
New Brunswick were thought to be the oldest land animals until 
Mr. Peach, in 1882, showed that chilognathous myriapods were far 
from uncommon in the Lower Old Red Sandstone of Forfarshire, 
in Scotland. There is but a short step from this to the Silurian, 
and M. Brongniart has found in the Silurian limestone of Calvados 
a fossil Blatta. Perhaps a habit of feeding on the eggs of animals 
left bare by the tides may account for the embedding of these air- 
reathers in marine strata. 
Devonian —Hystricrinus carpenteri, a crinoid with articulating 
spines, is described by G. J. Hinde in the Ann. and Mag. Nat. 
Hist, March, 1885. “The genus is identical with Arthrocanthus 
(Williams), a name preoccupied among the Rotatoria. Apart 
from the possession of articulating spines it is near Hexacrinus. 
The specimens are from calcareous shales of Middle Devonian at 
2e g sa is cre A ‘that in three out of the eleven 
_€xamples a shell of the genus Platyceras is attached to the vault 
of the perteesy g tyce to the 
