194 
natural history attracts the attention by its height 
and a fine Gothic front. It owes its existence to a 
gift of Peabody, the well-known philanthropist. The 
first story is occupied by a collection of minerals 
most excellently arranged, by the private laboratories 
of Professors Dana and Brush, and by lecture-rooms 
and common laboratories. The middle floor contains 
the geological and paleontological collection. The 
highest floor contains collections for zodlogy and 
prehistoric ethnography. 
The centre of interest at New Haven is a collection 
of fossil vertebrates founded by Prof. O. C. Marsh. 
Not only the whole first story, but also cellar and 
attic, are filled with fossil bones. Long rows of piled- 
up boxes contain the paleontological treasures. 
Only a very strict order makes it possible to find 
every thing in these crowded rooms, where a number 
of assistants are busy in preparing and combining 
the objects which so often arrive in fragments. Ina 
small additional building a German modeller forms 
casts of the finest specimens, and afterwards these 
casts are sent with the greatest liberality to American 
and foreign museums. ‘Toalarge extent, the Peabody 
museum owes its fine condition to the self-sacrificing 
activity of Professor Marsh. 
What at the beginning of this century Cuvier did 
in Europe for the knowledge of antediluvian ver- 
tebrates, has been done in America by Professor 
Marsh, and his not less active rival Professor Cope 
in Philadelphia. The great variety of fossil verte- 
brates in America corresponds with the vastness of 
the country. Whole cartloads of bones have been 
dug out in the Bad Lands of the far west: they were 
carried on the backs of mules hundreds of miles, be- 
fore they reached the railroads which brought them 
eastward. For months Professor Marsh and _ his 
assistants were camping in the reservations of the 
Indians, protected by an escort of cavalry. With the 
great chiefs of the Sioux, ‘Red Cloud,’ ‘Red Dog,’ 
he used to smoke the pipe of peace: against others 
he had to defend himself, revolver in hand. Pro- 
fessor Marsh’s collection of fossil remains of verte- 
brates, brought together within about fifteen years, 
is not less complete, and not inferior in value to the 
collection of the British museum in London. It is 
infinitely more than all the material ever seen and 
studied by Cuvier during his whole life. During my 
visit at New Haven there were about twenty-five 
gigantic skulls of Dinocerata in the professor’s lab- 
oratories. Several lithographers were occupied in 
making plates for the publications in which the fossil 
mammals and reptiles of America will be described. 
In an adjoining room a whole series of teeth, and 
bones of the foot, illustrate the development of the 
horse species. Though the Indians made the ac- 
quaintance of the horse only through the Spanish 
‘conquistadores,’ there is no country where remains 
of antediluvian horses are so often found as in 
America. A series of fossil species shows the changes 
which the ancestors of the horse underwent, before 
the present type of the solidungulate was attained. 
Europe, also, has some of the intermediate forms, 
but not somany. The American predecessors form a 
SCIENCE. 
[Vou. III., No. 
nearly uninterrupted series. 
mass of antediluvian mammals I can mention here 
only the oldest forms from Jura and tertiary strata, 
which have been discovered lately in America. Up 
to that time we knew only several lower jaws found 
in England, and a few teeth from the keuper of 
Wurttemberg. 
Professor Marsh has brought from Wyoming rem- 
nants of at least three hundred specimens, and not 
only lower jaws, but also skulls, and other parts of the 
skeleton. They belong, without exception, to little 
marsupial-like species, usually of the size of a rat or 
squirrel. In contrast with these dwarfish forms, the 
reptiles of the Jura and chalk formations excel 
usually by their gigantic size; and it is just the 
largest and the clumsiest of them that show a re- 
markable combination of reptilian and avian pecul- 
iarities. New Haven has the largest collection of 
such dinosaurians. There you may see a complete 
skeleton of the curious Brontosaurus, — an animal 
with a small head, a long neck, long tail, high hind- 
legs, and short fore-legs. 
The upper part of the femur of the gigantic Atlan- 
tosaurus is about twice as long as the corresponding 
bone of an elephant. The curious Stegosaurus, thirty 
feet long, was covered with an armor of enormous 
bone plates, and armed with thick spines. The cavity 
of its brain was of a minimum capacity; but, in 
compensation therefor, the spinal marrow in the os 
sacrum is swollen into a second brain-like enlarge- 
ment. Another little saurian (Coelurus) has ring- 
shaped vertebrae which are entireiy hollow. Hadro- 
saurus has shining teeth, jagged on the sides like 
shark’s teeth, in several rows above each other, and 
side by side, so that they come into use only one after - 
another. Besides these dinosaurians, some snake- 
like saurians of the sea, with short swimming-feet 
(Mosasauridae), attract our attention. A slab three 
metres high contains a complete well-preserved skel- 
eton of such an animal, On the whole, Professor 
Marsh may have parts of about sixteen hundred 
specimens. 
America has also flying saurians; though the skele- 
tons are not often so completely preserved as those in 
the lithographic slate of Bavaria, but they are of 
considerably larger size. The skull of a Pteranodon, 
for instance, is three feet long. While this flying 
saurian differs from its European relatives by tooth- 
less jaws, there are in the chalk strata of America a 
number of birds with well-developed teeth. Profes- 
sor Marsh has given a description of these curious 
creatures in a very elegantly executed monograph. 
A visit at the Peabody museum, under Professor 
Marsh’s guidance, arouses very mixed feelings in a 
European colleague. Together with sincere admira- 
tion, he necessarily has the disheartening conviction, 
that, whereas the time of great discoveries has begun © 
in America, it is overin Europe. The character of 
greatness and magnitude which we find in many 
conditions of American existence is also prominent 
here. 
nishes, uninterruptedly, new and unexpected objects 
From the enormous ~ 
Compared with the paucity of the discoveries — 
in our own country, the virgin soil of America fur- 
