REVIEWS. 
409 
VICTORIAN ORGANIC REMAINS.* 
T HE second decade, like the first, noticed in a previous number (Popular 
Science Review, April 1875), is varied in its contents and interesting 
as containing a continuation of the more characteristic fossils of each forma- 
tion, of which good specimens are preserved in the national collection at 
Melbourne. The plates illustrate fossils of different geological periods. 
The decade includes a new species of Squalodon, from the tertiary sands of 
Cape Otway, a genus of carnivorous whales, hitherto only found in the 
Miocene tertiaries of Malta and Bordeaux, two species of Carcharodon from 
Geelong, also found in the miocene of Europe. Three plates illustrate some 
Mesozoic coal ferns, of which one, the Pecopteris Australis, is considered by 
Professor McCoy to be allied to, if not identical with, an oolitic fern from 
Yorkshire. Some curious forms of Cyprcea are described from beds of pre- 
sumed Oligocene age, differing in character from the usual living and 
Pleiocene species of that genus, but somewhat resembling the one figured in 
Count Strzlecki’s “New South Wales.” Also two tertiary species of 
Trigonia, a genus hitherto only known as abounding in the Mesozoic strata 
and at present in the Australian seas, “but the complete absence of which, 
in the intermediate tertiary periods, in all localities examined, was looked 
upon by geologists as a most curious exception to the general palaeonto- 
logical law of the distribution of genera in time — an exception we can now 
remove.” (Preface, p. 5.) Further illustrations of the species of graptolites 
from the gold-field slates are continued in this part, all of which (with one 
exception, the Retiolites Australis , McCoy, from the Upper Silurian) are 
identical with examples of the same species occurring in rocks of the same 
age in Scotland, North Wales, Bohemia, and North America. The critical 
determinations of the fossils by Professor McCoy, made during the progress 
of the geological survey under Mr. R. Brough Smyth, will not only be of 
importance to the colony, but of much interest to the European and Ameri- 
can geologists, as enabling them to observe the resemblance or difference of 
the fossils in strata of presumed similar geological age in the Northern 
hemisphere. 
AMERICAN GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS.! 
T HE reports of the different geological surveys become more important 
and interesting, as showing the annual progress made in the explora- 
tion of each State, not only as regards their physical features, geological 
structure, and agricultural character, but also as to the distribution and 
* “ Prodomus of the Palaeontology of Victoria.” By Frederick McCoy, 
F.G.S. Geological Survey of Victoria. Melbourne : 1875. 
t “ United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, 
embracing Colorado.” By F. V. Hayden. Washington: 1874. “Bulletin 
of the same Survey.” No. 4. Second Series. 1875. “Fifth Annual 
Report of the Geological Survey of Indiana.” By E. T. Cox. Indianapolis : 
1874. 
