126 The American Geologist. February. 1905 
belongs to the Chelydosauria, and a fine skull enables him to show 
that the group possessed many of the characters of turtles. Dr. 
Case is convinced that the turtles originated through this order of 
reptiles. Dr. W. D. Matthew described a new insectivore from the 
Bridger beds of Wyoming. The teeth resemble those of the most 
primitive creodonts, the skull is most like that of the Centetidae, 
the limbs are specialized for digging, and the tail is long and very 
massive. This insectivore belongs to the genus Pantolestes. Dr. 
R. S. Lull read an interesting paper on "Footprint interpretation." 
He has been able to correlate some of the tracks found in the Con- 
necticut river valley with dinosaurs known from their skeletons. 
Dr. C. R. Eastman sent two papers "Fossil bird remains from Ar- 
missan," and "Anaximandar, the earliest precursor of Darwin." 
Mr. Barnum Brown gave an account of the exploration of a 
Pleistocene fissure in northern Arkansas, from which he has taken 
nearly two thousand identifiable bones. Most of these belonged to 
small animals, many weasels and animals which had been dragged 
into the fissure by these weasels. Remains of some of the larger 
animals also occurred, such as saber-toothed tigers, deer, hogs, the 
musk ox, etc. Although many of the fossil species cannot be 
separated from living forms the large number of extinct species 
places the age of this fauna at some time prior to the middle 
Pleistocene. O. P Hay. 
A Refrence Library. — I have a number of books on Ameri- 
can geologj', chiefly official reports of State and National surveys, 
of which no use is now made because my needs are met by the 
library of the United States Geological Survey. These I should 
like to place in some institution where they will be of practical ser- 
vice. For particulars address, G. K. Gilbert, U. S. Geological Sur- 
vey, Washington. D. C. 
PERSONAL AND SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
The Gneiss of the Pyrenees. According to J. Roussel 
(Bull. Geol. Soc. France, 4th ser., 4th vol.. pp. 380-386, 1904) 
the gneiss in all its exposures is in the form of lenticular 
masses, which shows that it does not exist everywhere at 
the base of the sedimentary rocks. In places it gives way 
suddenly to crystalline schists. 
The great masses of gneiss present all the characters of 
typical gneiss. It is gray; its mica is white or black, and 
always more or less clearly disposed along parallel sur- 
faces, these surfaces being wavy or lumpy by the formation 
of .crystals of feldspar or of quartz. The parallelism of the 
