882 General Notes. [September, 
from the north. None arrived from the south because Fuegia 
was not then in existence. In the Upper Cretaceous the land 
shrank to a size considerably smaller than at present. In the 
Eocene, elevation took place, and New Zealand extended out- 
wards in all directions, but remained isolated. Plants and ani- 
mals came in both from the north and from the south. In the 
Oligocene and Miocene periods New Zealand was, except for a 
short interval, a cluster of islands, but was upraised once more, 
and obtained more immigrants from north and south during the 
Pliocene, after which subsidence occurred, and the land through- 
out the South island and southern half of the North island sank 
considerably below its present level, to be again elevated during 
the Pleistocene. 
GEoLoGICAL News, — ¥urassic.—M. Cotteau has studied more 
than 500 Echini from the Jurassic of France. The Jurassic seas, 
not very deep, with broken shores, numerous isles and many ex- 
tensive coral reefs, presented conditions eminently favorable for 
the existence of Echini. The evolution of the fifty genera de- 
scribed by M. Cotteau is of great interest. Some are special to 
the beds they occur in, and nothing in the beds above recalls 
their existence, while others have a curious persistence. Cidaris 
has subsisted from the Trias to the present day. 
Cretaceous——Herr A. Schenk has described the fossil woods 
of the Libyan desert belonging to the Upper Cretaceous. Many 
are petrified. At the Academy of Sciences of Paris (May 
25), M. Hebert presented a note by M. Ch. Velain upon the 
‘Penean formation, which in the Vosges takes a large share in 
the constitution of the secondary chains, filling some very large 
depressions. Except at some points where it is raised to the 
summit of mountains 600 to 800 meters high, it is covered by the 
Vosgian sandstone, and it lies upon the Carboniferous or gneiss. 
It is usually a red clayey sandstone, passing into a fragmentary 
conglomerate which unites it to the Vosgian below. 
ary and Quaternary—The British Eocene land Mollusca 
are treated of by J. S. Gardner, in the Geological Magazine for June, 
1885.——C. Schwager enumerates the foraminifera of the Eo- 
cene of Egypt and the Libyan desert. About sixty new species 
are described, excluding the nummulites which have been mono- 
graphed by P. de la Harpe, and of which twenty-five species occur. 
The Eocene corals of the same region have been described by E. 
Pratz. Messrs. P. M. Duncan and W. P. Sladen have mono- 
_ graphed the Tertiary Echinoidea of Kachh and Kattywar (Pale- 
groups, the two uppermost of which contain Echint. ` 
ulitic group of Kachh twenty-two species were 
Som Oligocene above it five species, and in the Miocene 
xteen species. All the Echini of Kattywar were Miocene, and 
