1542 The American Geologist* November, 1893 
combine the pursuit of Science with the ordinary labors of a 
busy life. He was engaged in the cloth-dyeing business and' 
was prominent in many political and educational movements, 
besides being thrice mayor of Halifax, where most of his work- 
ing life was spent. His chief geological work was on fossil 
fishes of the Carboniferous and later rocks. 
Two well-known students of the fossil Polyzoa have passed 
almost together from among us, G. R. Vine and G. AN'. Shrub- 
sole. Both, like Mr. Davis, crowded their scientific labors 
into lives full of the daily business of life — bread-winning — 
and all three may be quoted as encouragement to those who 
plead want of time as an excuse for not gratifying a taste and 
desire for science. If another example is needed it may he 
found in Max. von Hantken, of Budapest, lately dead, who, 
while Hungarian minister of education, found time to act as 
director of the Hungarian survey and professor of palaeontol- 
ogy in the university of the capital city. 
Professor Crag-in's return. — Since the publication, about 
the last of June, of his Contribution to the Invertebrate Pale- 
ontology of the Texas Cretaceous, which forms a part of the 
Fourth Annual Report of the Geological Survey of Texas. 
Prof. Cragin has made a personal examination of the Creta- 
ceous horizons of Texas and Indian Territory, obtaining from 
them a large private collection rich in the new forms recently 
described by him, as well as in others hitherto little known or 
of special zoological or geological interest. Though tempo- 
rarily engaged in geological work in Kansas, his address is 
now again Colorado Springs, Colorado, whither he will return 
to continue his work in Colorado College. 
Dr. W. H. Dall DESCRIBES, in the Proceedings of the V . S, 
National Museum (vol. xvi, 1893, pp. 471-478, with a plate). 
a small collection of marine molluscan shells, which were ob- 
tained and deposited in the museum many years ago from the 
Penjinsk gulf of the Okhotsk sea by Dr. William Stinipson, a 
member of the Ringgold and Rodgers exploring expedition. 
Five of the six species are regarded as new, bul they mostly 
have their closest affinities with tropical or subtropical shells 
of southern Japan, China, western Africa, and Australia. 
Lignite occurs with the shell-bearing strata, which, like the 
marine beds overlying Eocene lignites in Alaska, are prob- 
ably of Miocene age. The climate indicated would have a 
summer sea-water temperature of 70° and a winter average 
of 60°, with a minimum never approaching the freezing 
point; whereas the present climate causes the gulf to be ice- 
bound during mure than half the year. The region lies on 
the opposite side of the pole from the plant-bearing forma- 
tions in Greenland which give abundant testimony of a sim- 
ilar warm Miocene climate. 
