530 General Notes. [May, 
don ratelit, and the turtle Ptygogaster emydoides, have been made 
for the museum of the Academy of Sciences of Paris. The re- 
mains from which the restorations have been made were put aside 
eighteen years ago by M. A. Milne Edwards, when he wrote his 
great work on fossil birds, and were taken, like most of M. Ed- 
wards’ material, from the lower miocene of Saint-Gerand-le-Puy 
(Allier). Notwithstanding the smallness and great number of 
the pieces, M. Fischer has succeeded in joining together the 
head, all the vertebra, some ribs, most of the members, and a 
great part of the bony plates of Diplocynodon, which M. Vaillant 
believes to be nearly related to Jacare. In the Bulletin de la 
Société Geologique de France, Dr. Lemoine describes two casts 
of the brain mould of the crocodile Zhoracosaurus macrorhynchus, 
These remarkable specimens are much like corresponding casts 
of the modern gavial, but present relatively rather smailer cere 
bral hemispheres. 
Recent.—Herr D. Brauns (Zeit. des Deutsch. Geol. Ges., 1883) 
describes the diluvial mammals of Japan, and arrives at the a 
clusion that the geology, flora, pliocene molluscan fauna, an 
fossil land-fauna of Japan, prove that that country is most inti- 
mately connected with the Palzearctic region, and that it 1 ony 
very recently that it has become a disrupted portion of the 
ern continent. 
BOTANY.! 
AN ENORMOUS PuFF-BALL.—My friend, Professor R. aah 
has handed me a photograph of a puff-ball, the ee 1877, 
The fungus was found by him in Herkimer county, N. gd vate 
and as it was impossible to preserve it, careful mesim a 
made, and photographs of it were taken. It was tg abe- 
in outline, and much flattened, instead of approaching p 
cal form, as is common in the large puff-balls. Its a sis 
ter was five Jeet and four inches, its smallest four fe In refer- 
inches, while its height was but nine and a-half inches. than the 
ring to it Professor Call described it as “ much larger 
largest wash-tub we had at home.” ac known 3$ 
e specimen undoubtedly belonged to the species by fat the 
the giant puff-ball (Lycoperdon giganteum), and it was rements— 
largest of any of which I have been able to find measu 
C. E. Bessey. - are some 
NOTES ON Fune1.—Among the more interesting fung! of which 
of th io in the genus Polyporus, this 
e various forms embraced in the g he species of 
which the common mushroom is a well-known yD hey 
not less interesting in the great variety of the ae ri most com- 
and in the universality of their diffusion. The Po ape or logs 
monly noticed are probably those growing on dea 
l Edised by Pror. C. E, Bessey, Ames, Iowa. 
