412 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
logical papers occupy tlie greater part of these two numbers, and the first of 
them is a most important contribution from the pen of Dr. J. A.. Allen on 
“ The Geographical Distribution of the Mammalia,” in which he upholds his 
opinion, originally put forward in 1871, that life is distributed over the 
earth’s surface “in circumpolar zones, which conform with the climatic 
zones, though not always with the parallels of the geographer.” It will he 
seen that Dr. Allen is diametrically opposed in principle to Dr. Sclater and 
Mr. Wallace, whose opinions he criticizes pretty freely. His proposed pri- 
mary divisions are as follows : — 
I. An Arctic, or Circumpolar. 
II. A North Temperate, divided into two regions and eight provinces. 
III. An American Tropical, with three regions. 
IY. An Indo- African, with two regions and five provinces. 
V. A South American Temperate, with two provinces. 
VI. An Australian, with three regions, one of them divided into two pro- 
vinces. 
VH. A Lemurian. 
VIII. An Antarctic or South Circumpolar. 
The ichthyologist will find in these two numbers some valuable notes by 
Dr. D. S. Jordan on a collection of fishes from the Rio Grande, and a com- 
plete catalogue of the freshwater fishes of North America by the same 
author. 
Of entomological papers there are several, the most important of which is. 
Dr. Le Conte's article on “ The Coleoptera of the Alpine Region of the 
Rocky Mountains.” In this paper the author remarks briefly upon the con- 
ditions which have governed the distribution of these Alpine beetles, and 
describes many new species belonging to various families, gives a list of cole- 
optera collected in the Rocky Mountains at elevations of 6,000 feet and up- 
wards, and characterizes in an Appendix the known North American species 
of Nebria. Dr. Cyrus Thomas has some notes on orthoptera collected by 
Dr. Coues in Dakota and Montana, with remarks on the natural history of 
Caloptenus spretus, one of the most destructive of the North American 
locusts ; followed by papers on the rhynchota and lepidoptera, collected at 
the same time by Dr. Cones, by Dr. Ukler, and Mr. W. H. Edwards. Mr. 
A. R. Grote contributes the first of a series of papers on North American 
pyralidae, which promises to be of great value. Dr. Elliott Coues himself 
gives a long account of the birds observed by him in Montana and Dakota in 
1873-74, in which the ornithologist will find many valuable notes on the 
habits of birds. 
The palaeontological papers in these two numbers are not numerous. 
Prof. Cope furnishes descriptions of new vertebrates from the Upper Tertiary 
and Dakota formations, chiefly mammalia and chelonia, but including also 
some other reptiles and species of Graculus, Anser , and Cygnus. Among the 
mammals we note a new pliocene Auchenia and a new genus ( Ticholeptus ) of 
Oreodontidae from the Miocene of Montana. Mr. Scudder gives a preliminary 
notice of some of the fossil insects which he has lately obtained in such 
astonishing abundance from the Tertiaries of Colorado and Wyoming, in- 
cluding a remarkably perfect fossil butterfly, which still shows the pattern 
of its markings, and which he names Prodryas persephone , a dipterous fly 
