1894.] Zoology. 1049 
Mordacia. In a fourth paper he diseusses the subdivisions and rela- 
tionships of the Salmonid: and Thymallide. 
. D. Cope catalogues? a collection of 42 Fishes from the Rio 
Grande do Sul, Brazil. Of tbese, 17 are new. The species of Chara- 
cinide and Siluridæ, 15 and 14 respectively, predominate. 
BarRAcHIA.—Miss Platt has published * her complete paper on the 
origin of the cartilaginous structures in the head of Nieturus, to which 
reference was made on p. 637 of the present volume. 
Peter has studied? the vertebre of the Cæcilians, and concludes 
that the evidence from these structures justifies the view of Wieders- 
heim (1879) and Cope (1884) that these forms should be assigned to 
Urodela. Regarding Cope's view, adopted by the Sarasins, that in 
Amphiuma we must recognize the ancestral form of the Cæcilians, Peter 
says, ^there is indeed a certain similarity in the vertebrze of Apoda 
and Amphiumide, but no greater than exists between them and Siren, 
so that the view of this student is supported chiefly by developmental. 
conditions." 
Mammats.—Dr. E. A. Mearns describes * as new, Sigmodon min- 
ima, from New Nexico. 
Dr. J. A. Allen points out” that the skull in Neotoma is extremely 
variable, and that “species” founded on certain cranial characters 
are frequently not of varietal rank. 
?! Proc. Am. Philos. Soc., xxxiii, 1894. 
2 Archiv für mikros. Anat., xliii, p. 911, 1894. 
9 Karl Peter. Die Wirbelsäule der Gymnophionen. Dissertation. Freiburg, 
1894. 
2t Proc. U. S, Nat. Mus., xvii, 1894. 
% Bulletin Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vi, 1894. 
