■Scudder.] 
468 
[Feb. 5, 
tliey are mostly in excellent condition. Twenty-nine species have 
been obtained, some of them in considerable numbers. Five fam- 
ilies and fifteen genera are represented ; they are largely Carabidse, 
there being six or seven species each of Platynus and Pterostichus, 
and species also of Patrobus, Bembidium, Loricera and Elaphrus. 
The next family in importance is the Staphylinidse, of which 
there are five genera, Geodromicus, Arpedium, Bledius, Oxyporus 
and Lathrobium, each with a single species. The Hydrophilidse 
are represented by Hydroclms and Helophorus, each with one spe- 
cies, and the Chrysomelidse by two species of Donacia. Finally a 
species of Scolytidse must have made the borings under the bark 
of juniper to which reference has elsewhere been made . 1 
Only two of these beetles, besides the scolytid, have been de- 
scribed , 2 but most of the others will be published and figured in a 
forthcoming government report. Looking at them as a whole and 
noting the distribution of the species to which they seem to be most 
nearly related, they are plainly indigenous to the soil, but would 
perhaps be thought to have come from a somewhat more northern 
locality than that in which they were found ; not one of them can 
be referred to existing species, but the nearest allies of not a few 
of them are to be sought in the Lake Superior and Hudson Bay 
region, while the larger part are inhabitants of Canada and the 
northern United States, or the general district in which the deposit 
occurs. In no single instance were any special affinities found 
with any characteristicalty southern form, though several are most 
nearly allied to species found there as well as in the north. A few 
seem to be most nearly related to Pacific forms, such as the Ela- 
phrus and one each of the species of Platynus and Pterostichus. 
On the whole, the fauna has a boreal aspect, though by no means so 
decidedly boreal as one would anticipate under the circumstances. 
Prof. F. W. Putnam spoke of early man in America and brought 
forward some new evidence of the contemporaneity of man with 
the mastodon and mammoth. This evidence is a rude figure un- 
questionably representing a mammoth, scratched on portion of a 
Busycon shell found under peat in Clairmont County, Delaware. 
Professor Putnam also spoke at length on early man of both sides 
of the American continent and of the relationship of the modern 
Indians to the early peoples of America. 
1 Can. ent., xviii : 194-196 (18S6). 
2Bull. U. S. Geol. Surv. terr., lii : 763-764 (1877). 
