Review of Recent Geological Literature. 181 
January, 1890). This paper is baped on some fossil plants found Vjy 
Mr. R. D. Lacoe in Meshoppen, Wyoming county, Pa. It describes 
Dictyo-cordaites lacoi, and Tylodendron baini. The author unites and 
compares fragmentary material from difi'erent places, published under 
diflferent names, arriving at some condensed staten)ent8 of the aflBn- 
ities of palaeozoic gymnosperms which tend toward the further elucida- 
tion of the history of vegetable life. He concludes as follows : 
1. That the nearest structural affinities of the paheozoic gymnosperms 
with the higher cryptogams lead toward all the groups of acrogens, 
viz : Sigillarise, Calamiteje, Lepidodendrefc, and Ferns. 
2 That the present dominant groups of Conifene proper and 
Cycadacete are absent or slenderly represented in the palseozoic. 
3. That the dominant palaeozoic families are the Noeggerathiae, 
Cordaitete and Taxine^e, and that these occupied a prominent and 
important place, and culminated in the paheozoic and early Mesozoic 
periods. 
4. The two former families, did they now exist, would supply con- 
necting links between the Coniferee and Cycadea^, and between the 
latter and the Acrogens. 
Prof. O. C. Marsh contributes to the London Geological Magazine for 
January a description of one of the new reptilian forms recently 
announced by him from the Cretaceous strata of the western states. 
Prof. Marsh has enriched the American fossil vertebrate fauna with 
many strange forms of extinct life, but probably none of them sur- 
passes or perhaps equals this. Of all the reptiles that marked the 
Mesozoic age the group to which this fossil belongs is one of the most 
peculiar. The Ceratopsidse, or horned family, show us the possibili- 
ties of variation in a most remarkable manner. It seems as if 
nature at the moment when the scepter was passing away forever 
from the type of vertebrates had undertaken to try her hand at produc- 
ing a more monstrous and bizarre combination of characters than the 
age had ever seen. The last reptile sovereign of the Mesuzoic empire 
was at the same time a summary of its ancestors and a prophecy of its 
successors. 
In the very highest of the Cretaceous strata of Wyoming and Mon- 
tana, "fresh water or brackish deposits which form a part of the 
so-called Laramie," are found the fossils from which Prof. INIarsh has 
constructed the genus Ceratops, as the type of the family. His paper 
in the Geological Magazine describes the genus Triceratops by the 
species T. flabellatus and T. horridus. Tlie skull of this genus is the larg- 
est known among land animals recent and extinct. In the former species 
it measures six feet and in the latter eight feet in length. Seen from 
above it reminds one strongly, in general shape of the head, of a bird, 
being round behind and tapering to a sharp point in front. A side 
view suggests at the front the profile of a rhinoceros, by the massive 
nasal bones and the thick short tubercle, representing the ''horn" of 
that animal. At the back the large rounded orbit and the two long 
