REVIEWS. 
191 
with the great Laramie group of the Green River Basin and other portions 
of the region west of the Rocky Mountains/’ he found “the planes of 
demarkation between any of the Mesozoic and Oenozoic groups, from the 
Dakota to the Bridger inclusive, to be either very obscure or indefinable ; 
showing that whatever catastrophal or secular changes took place elsewhere 
during all that time, sedimentation was probably continuous in what is now 
that part of the continent from the earliest to the latest of the epochs just 
named,” a conclusion perfectly in accordance with that indicated in con- 
nexion with Professor Lesquereux’s work. We have a notice here of the 
discovery, by Messrs. Scudder and Bowditch, of very rich deposits of fossil 
insects in the Tertiary Basin of Florissant, Colorado, where Mr. Scudder 
estimates that the insect-bearing shales, “ have an extent at least fifty times 
as great as those of the famous locality at CEningen.” Many thousand 
specimens of insects and plants have now been received from Florissant, and 
others are being sent in from another new locality in Wyoming ; the whole 
will form the materials for a most interesting volume of the Records of the 
Survey. Professor Leidy’s investigations of the Rhizopods, and the researches 
of Sir Joseph Hooker and Professor Asa Gray on the botany of the region, 
are briefly referred to ; as also th£ -investigations that have been made by 
officers of the Survey of the singular cliff dwellings and towns of the ancient 
inhabitants of New Mexico and Arizona, models of the more interesting of 
which are being prepared on a considerable scale. 
We do not know whether we should be right in crediting the Survey with 
the production ot‘ a “ Palaeontological Bulletin,”* two numbers of which we 
have received from Professor Cope. They contain descriptions of vertebrate 
fossils chiefly from Secondary and Tertiary deposits of the western Territories, 
and are evidently advance-copies of communications to the American Philoso- 
phical Society, issued for the purpose of securing priority. With this view one 
number is said to be “ Published December 10, 1877,” and the other to be 
a Printed January 12, 1878.” It is melancholy to see the struggle for priority 
prompting good men to such futile devices ; these books are not published, 
for the very essence of publication consists in the thing published being 
procurable by any student who may hear of its existence. If our American 
friends will persist in racing each other with their descriptions, why don’t 
they adopt the simple method of making the issue of their pamphlets a real 
publication, by simply having a bookseller’s name and address on the title 
page P If they wish to limit the circulation of their productions they can 
easily do so by placing a high price upon them, as Her Majesty’s Geological 
Survey has lately done with distinguished success.! The two numbers before 
U3 of Professor Cope’s “ Bulletin ” contain papers on New Vertebrates from 
* “ Palse ontological Bulletin,” Nos. 27, 28. 8vo. 
t In saying this we do not wish to reflect upon the officers of the Geological 
Survey, knowing well that the absurd prices which have been put upon the 
recent publications of that most valuable institution have been adopted at 
the dictation of an office under whose thumb the insane method of managing 
such matters in England has in this respect placed the control of the Survey’s 
action. It is quite natural that a Stationery Office should contain a plentiful 
supply of red tape, but it is rather hard that its clerks should be allowed 
to employ that commodity in choking one of our few scientific departments. 
