106 
TOPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
age the cervine antler consisted of a simply forked crown, whilst in the 
Upper Miocene it became more complex, although still small and erect, 
like that of the Roe Deer. In the Pliocene it becomes larger and more 
complex, some forms, such as the Cervus dieranios , Nesti, being the most 
complicated of known antlers. The successive changes are analogous to 
those observed in the development of the antlers of the living deer with 
increase of age. In the Miocene we have the zero of antler-development, 
and the Capreoline type is older than any other. The nearest living 
analogue of the Miocene Deer is, according to the author, the Muntjak 
(i Styloceros ), now found only in the oriental region of Asia, along with the 
Tapir, which also coexisted with Cervus dicranoceros in the Miocene forests 
of Germany. The Pliocene Deer, again, are generally most nearly allied 
to the oriental Axis and Rusa Deer, the only exception being Cervus cusanus, 
the antlers of which resemble those of the roe, an animal widely spread over 
Europe, and Northern and Central Asia. The alliance of these Pliocene 
Deer with those now living in the Indian region is regarded by the author 
as a further proof of the warm climate of Europe in Miocene times, con- 
firmatory of the conclusions arrived at by Saporta from the study of the 
vegetation. 
A New Bird from the London Clay . — Professor Owen has recently de- 
scribed before the Geological Society some remains of a large bird obtained 
by Mr. W. H. Shrubsole from the London Clay of Sheppey, consisting of parts 
of fractured humeri, belonging to the right and left side of the same species or 
perhaps individual, and including the head of the bone, with portions of 
the upper and lower parts of the shaft. The texture of the shaft, the thin- 
ness of its bony wall, and the large size of the cavity recall the characters 
of the wing-bones of the large Cretaceous Pterodactyles. The author in- 
dicated the characters which led him to regard the remains under con- 
sideration as those of a volant bird, most nearly approaching the genera 
Pelecanus and Diomedea ; and as the evidence derived from the cranium of 
JDasornis would indicate a bird too large to be upborne by wings to which 
these bones might have belonged, whilst the skull of Odontopteryx is far too 
small to have formed part of a bird with wings as large as those of the 
Albatross, and Lithornis and Pelargornis are excluded by the characters of 
their remains, the author concluded that the bones obtained by Mr. Shrub- 
sole furnished indications of a new genus and species of flying birds, for 
which he proposed the name of Aryillornis longipennis. He regarded it as 
probably a long- winged natatorial bird, most nearly related to Diomedea, but 
considerably exceeding the Albatross ( D . exulans) in size. — Proc. Geol. Soc., 
19 Dec. 1877. 
A Fossil Fungus. — Mr. Worthington G. Smith has given a long descrip- 
tion, with figures (“Gardener’s Chronicle,” 1877, p. 499) of what appears to 
be a parasitic fungus allied to Peronospora, found traversing the scalariform 
axis of a Lepidodendron. The mycelium is formed by slender threads with 
numerous joints or septa, and bears upon short branches a considerable 
number of spherical oogonia or zoosporangia, within many of which the 
zoospores can be clearly distinguished. Singularly enough, both the oogonia 
and their contained zoospores are of precisely the same size as the corre- 
sponding organs in the existing Peronospora infestans , the fungus of diseased 
