556 



7 HE 



[LIST [Vol. XLIV 



Dr. Holland's article is a brilliant, well-illustrated and 

 cruelly convincing polemic in support of the accepted 

 pose of the Diplodocus skeleton, but in the reviewer's 

 opinion he does not at all do justice to the real weight of 

 some of the arguments advanced by Hay and Tornier, 

 especially the former. Serious exception might be taken 

 to the positiveness of some of his assumptions, as well as 

 to the ridicule of his opponents' views. 



Holland shows by aid of a series of photographs and 

 carefully finished drawings that the pose advocated by 

 Dr. Tornier could not have been assumed without an 

 entire dislocation of the important limb joints; that the 

 pelvis of the sauropods is like ' ' the pelves of the dino- 

 sauria in general, distinctly ornithic in type, not lacer- 

 tilian nor crocodilian," that the body is deep, narrow and 

 short as in birds, while in the crawling reptiles it is broad 

 flattened and more elongated; that the scapula and fore- 

 limb differ in important features from those of crocodiles 

 and lizards, and the fore limb can not be articulated in a 

 crawling pose ; that the long heavy tail affords no argu- 

 ment for a crawling posture; that the feet are digitigrade 

 and not plantigrade as asserted by Tornier; that the gen- 

 eral form and proportions of the limbs point to an ele- 

 phantine pose, and that the single known footprint of a 

 Jurassic Sauropod supports the same interpretation. 

 (It is worthy of note that Dr. Lull has carefully examined 

 this footprint and come to the conclusion that it was prob- 

 ably made under water rather than on land.) The whole 

 article is very readable and clearly written, and would 

 seem to close the case so far as the possibility of Tornier 's 

 reconstruction is concerned. 



Dr. Abel's contribution is a careful, thorough and fair- 

 minded consideration of the problem by a high authority 

 upon fossil vertebrates, who has devoted a great deal of 

 time and thought to paleontologic reconstructions. He 

 reviews the principles governing such work, the relation- 

 ships of Diplodocus and the data for the reconstruction, 

 the opinions that have been held in regard to the pose 

 and habits of the Sauropoda, and cites Tornier 's argu- 



