i88i.] Analyses of Boohs. 361 
their thoughts are recoverable.” Thing and think ! The con . 
nedtion is suggestive. 
Concerning the validity of Mr. Massey’s speculations we can 
form no decisive opinion from the mere fragments of his work 
before us. The criticism which we should suggest would first 
and foremost involve an inquiry how far the origin of mankind 
and of civilisation in Africa agree with known fadts and laws, 
geological and biological. We may provisionally declare that 
equatorial Africa is a very likely place for the origin of mankind, 
and here, accordingly, geological research should be pressed 
forward. 
We salute Mr. Massey as a fellow Evolutionist, though knowing 
nothing of him save what we glean from these pages, and we 
trust his views will meet with that impartial scrutiny which, we 
are sure, is all he demands* 
Bulletin of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey 
of the Territories. Vol. VI., No. 1 . Washington : Govern- 
ment Printing-Office. 
This volume contains the report of Prof. Asa Gray and Sir J. D 
Hooker on the Vegetation of the Rocky Mountains, in comparison 
with that of other parts of the world. This elaborate and cele- 
brated document has already been widely circulated in England, 
and accordingly gives little scope for comment. Many readers 
must have been no little surprised at the richness of the Japan 
Manchurian forest flora, which in number of species so far ex- 
ceeds that of the Atlantic American forest, not to speak of the 
far poorer forests of Europe and of the Pacific Slopes of North 
America. These features of distribution are shown to depend 
not on present conditions of the climates, but on their meteoro- 
logical history. “ Vegetable archaeology,” as Prof. Gray terms 
it, is a new and promising field for botanical research. 
That able and indefatigable palaeontologist Dr. E. D. Cope 
has furnished memoirs on certain new Batrachia and Reptilia 
from the Permian beds of Texas ; on a Wading Bird from the 
Amyzon Shales ; on the Nimravidae and Canidae of the Miocene ; 
and on the Vertebrata of the Wind River Eocene Beds of 
Wyoming. The Nimravidae are a group composed of seven, or 
perhaps eight, exthuft genera, which the author separates from 
the true cats as having the carotid and condylar foramina entirely 
distin<5l from the foramen lacerum posteriuS, and as having, fur- 
ther, an alisphenoid canal and post-glenoid and post-parietal 
foramina, which are wanting in the Felidae. He suggests that 
the Oxycenidae may have been the ancestors both of the Felidae 
and Nimravidae, though several intervening forms are missing 
VOL. HI. (THIRD SERIES). 2 B 
