No. 555] NOTES AND LITERATURE 



187 



No one is more entitled to a view on this subject than Dr. Mat- 

 thew and even if we find it hard to accept his view of such a 

 paradox yet it behooves us not to be too skeptical. 



Dr. Bashford Dean 4 has described a new "fossil aquarium" 

 recently installed in the American Museum of Natural History. 

 Under his direction has been executed a group of Devonian 



all from a single locality (Cromarty) and a single rock layer in the 

 Old Red Sandstone of Scotland, with the best evidences therefore, that 

 the creatures shown really existed side by side. 



The fishes shown seem to be swimming through the water as if 

 alive. It must be a very attractive group to museum visitors. 



A very interesting and extremely useful work on ichthyosaurs 

 and plesiosaurs has been issued (1910) from the British Museum 

 (Natural History) as "A Descriptive Catalogue of the Marine 

 Reptiles of the Oxford Clay," Part I, compiled by Dr. Charles 

 W. Andrews. The catalogue is largely based on the Leeds Col- 

 lection which the British Museum has been acquiring for the 

 past twenty years. The volume is issued in the usual excellent 

 form of all the previous British Museum catalogues, the illus- 

 trative work being photogravure, zinc line and lithograph, all 

 executed with great care and attention to details. 



The frontispiece is a photogravure of a nearly complete, 

 mounted skeleton of a plesiosaur (Cri/ptoclcidus oxoniensis), a 

 dorsal view of which species has been used by Abel for the 

 frontispiece to his " Paleobiologie. " The introduction discusses 

 the taxonomic characters of the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, the 

 fauna of the Oxford clay and the distribution of the vertebrates. 

 A single species of OpthcUmosaurus is discussed, and the details 

 of its anatomy are contained in the first 76 pages of the work, 

 illustrated by 42 text figures (including a restoration of the 

 skeleton) and two lithographic plates. Aside from a discussion 

 of the possible identity of Opthalmosaarus and Baptanodon of 

 America, the writer has confined his remarks to the osteologic 

 details. 



The plesiosaurs are more abundantly represented in species 

 than are the ichthyosaurs. There are four genera discussed in 

 the last 120 pages of the volume, illustrated by 52 text-figures, 

 8 lithographic and one photogravure plate (containing three 

 restorations of the various forms). As in the previous portion 

 4 Amer. Mus. Journal, XI, No. 5, p. 161. 



