hill of corn has been broken down, that these small creatures have entered the shuck, shelled off the grains, cut out the heart very neatly, leaving the corn in a little heap at one side, looking almost as if it had not been touched. Where corn has been planted alongside of a meadow, their sign is more frequently met with, but never to an extent to cause the farmer to feel any uneasiness on the subject.-GIDEON LINCECUM, Texas.—Communicated by the Smithsonian Institution.

CORRECTION. I

MARINE CRUSTACEA IN LAKE MICHIGAN. desire to correct an unfortunate error in an article on the Mammoth Cave and its inhabitants (vol. v, p. 752, lines 6, 7), and in the separately printed little work "Life in the Mammoth Cave." I there state that a species representing Idotea entomon, found living in the Swedish lakes, had been detected by Dr. Stimpson at the bottom of Lake Michigan. In fact no crustacean of the family to which Idotea belongs is known to exist in our Great Lakes, nor did Dr. Stimpson mention this genus.-A. S. PACKARD, Jr.

ALBINO DEER.-A few days since Henry Wilson of Cape Grove, a short distance from here, killed an albino deer. The head, neck and tail were pure white, while the upper portions of the body and back were so nearly white that you could hardly see the spots. The animal was a fawn of our common Virginia deer, and about three months old. Its eyes were also white.-CHAS. H. NAUMAN, Titusiria P. O., Volusia Co., Fla.

GEOLOGY.

THE PROBOSCIDIANS OF THE AMERICAN EOCENE.-During the past summer, Prof. Cope, in charge of a division of Dr. F. V. Hayden's Geological Survey of the territories, explored the palæontology of the Eocene beds of Wyoming Territory. He obtained many species of plants, mollusks and insects, and eighty species of Vertebrata, of which some fifty are new to science.

One of the most important of the discoveries made was the determination of the type, of proboscidians prevalent in that period. This is exceedingly peculiar and anomalous in many respects. Proboscidian limbs are associated with a dentition of the same type, when the number and position of the teeth are considered. Thus a huge external incisor only occupies the front

of the upper jaw (premaxillary bone); there is no canine, and the molars are few. The incisor is shorter than in the mastodons, etc., and is compressed, trenchant, and recurved, forming a most formidable weapon. The great peculiarity is seen in the structure of the molars, which is nearly that of Bathmodon Cope, an allied Perissodactyl. This type is, however, graded into an approach to Dinotherium in another Perissodactyl, Metalophodon Cope, of which more below.

The type species of this group, called by Prof. Cope Eobasileus cornutus, is as large as the Indian elephant, but stood lower, having proportions more like the rhinoceros. The elongate form of the cranium added to this resemblance. The physiognomy was very peculiar. On either side of the front, above each orbit, rose a stout horn, its base continuous with that of its mate. The immensely prolonged nasal bones overhung the premaxillary, as in the rhinoceros, and supported on each side near the extremity a massive reverted shovel-shaped protuberance, which united at an open angle with its fellow on the middle line in front.

These beasts must have lived in herds, like the elephant of to-day, judging from the abundance of their remains, no less than twenty-five or thirty individuals having left their bones within a short distance of one of the camps of the party. Three species were distinguished: E. cornutus, E. furcatus, and E. pressicornis. The resemblance of the tusks to canine teeth is such as to have induced a late author to have based the description of a supposed carnivore of large proportions on one of them.

THE ARMED METALOPHODON.-This is an extinct odd-toed ungulate discovered by Prof. Cope in the lowest or "Green River" division of the Eocene of Wyoming. The only species found was named M. armatus. It possessed a full series of six superior incisors, and had a formidable knife-like canine, with cutting edges and a groove on the outer face. The premolars are like those of Bathmodon, i. e., with one outer crescent, while the molars differ in having the constituent crest of the single crescent separated on the inner side of the tooth, thus producing two subparallel crests. The lower premolars are singular in possessing one crescent, with a rudimental second by its side. This increases in proportions on the posterior teeth till on the last inferior molar the two are nearly equally developed. Alternate ridges are however on this tooth

reduced and rudimental, leaving a parallel two-crested tooth, approaching a Tapia or Dinotherium. There were probably tusks in the lower jaw.

The animal was about the size of the rhinoceros and constituted another addition to the well-armed ungulates of the Wyoming Eocene. The transitional forms seen in its tooth structure constitute a point of especial interest.

THE FISH-BEDS OF OSINO, NEVADA. Investigations into the geology of Nevada, conducted during the present season by Prof. Cope, of Dr. Hayden's Geological Survey, have resulted in the discovery of an extensive lake basin, which was filled with fresh water during some of the Tertiary periods. Its deposits were thrown into lines of upheaval by the elevation of the Ruby Mountain Range, and the North Humboldt River traverses the deepest portion of the old lake. The Humboldt River Sink is its last remnant, bearing the same relation to the Humboldt River as the Great Salt Lake to the Bear River of Utah.

The strata are in many places exceedingly thin and paper-like, resembling the braun kohle of Prussia. Two seams of a cannellike coal, of about three feet each in thickness, have been exposed by excavations. This is the most western locality for coal east of the Sierra Nevada. The shales contain great numbers of fossil fishes, insects, plants, etc. The fishes are all of fresh water types; one of them is related to the existing type of Catostomida (sucker), and has been called Amyzon mentale. It is a sucker with the sucking mouth "left out;" that part resembling its prototype in ordinary fishes. Another species is related to the "Bullminnows" (Cyprinodontidae), but differs from known genera in having bristle-like bodies instead of ordinary scales. It is called Trichophanes hians. The insects are chiefly mosquitoes and longlegged flies (Tipula).

The age of the beds was thought to be Green River or Lower Eocene.

On the northern ridge bordering the Humboldt valley, Nevada, there are completely opalized portions of trunks of trees which were at least five feet in diameter. The ground is strewn with black, yellow, red, purple or porcelain-white colored fragments. The age of the remains is probably Tertiary and the trees are mostly dicotyledons.

ANTHROPOLOGY.

ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA.-The discoveries that are constantly being made in this country are proving that man existed on this continent as far back in geological time as on the European continent; and it even seems that America, really the old world geologically, will soon prove to be the birthplace of the earliest race of man. One of the late and important discov eries is that by Mr. E. L. Berthoud, which is given in full, with a map, in the Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences for 1872, p. 46. Mr. Berthoud there reports the discovery of ancient fireplaces, rude stone monuments, and implements of stone in great number and variety, in several places along Crow Creek in Colorado, and also on several other rivers in the vicinity. These fireplaces indicate several ancient sites of an unknown race differing entirely from the mound-builders and the present Indians, while the shells and other fossils found with the remains make it quite certain that the deposit in which the ancient sites are found is as old as the Pliocene and perhaps as the Miocene. As the fossil shells found with the relics of man are of estuary forms, and as the sites of the ancient towns are on extended points of land and at the base of the ridges or bluffs, Mr. Berthoud thinks the evidence is strongly in favor of the locations having been near some ancient fresh water lake, whose vestiges the present topography of the region favors.

MICROSCOPY.

FUNGOUS GROWTH IN SHELLS.-"In a paper read before the Manchester Philosophical Society on the 26th of February, Mr. Mark Stirrup exhibited sections of shells of mollusca, showing so-called fungoid growths. He referred to Dr. Carpenter's report on shell structure, presented to the meeting of the British Association in 1844, in which especial mention is made of a tubular structure in certain shells, Anomia being cited as a characteristic example. In the last edition of The Microscope,' Dr. Carpenter he said, withdraws his former explanation of this structure, and now refers it to the parasitic action of a fungus. Mr. Stirrup showed sections of this shell penetrated by tubuli from the outer

to the inner layers of the shell, and it is upon the inner layer that the curious appearances of sporangia, with slightly-branched filamentous processes proceeding from them, present themselves. The parasitic view is strengthened by the fact that these markings are not found in all parts of the shell, and are certainly accidental. Professor Kölliker maintains the fungoid nature of these tubuli in shells as well as in other hard tissues of animals, as fish scales, etc. Mr. Wedl, another investigator, considers the tubuli in all bivalves as produced by vegetable parasites, and that no other interpretation can be given. This view does not seem to be borne out by the section of another shell which was exhibited, Arca navicula, in which the tubuli are always present forming an integrant part; they are disposed in a straight and tolerably regular manner between the ridges of the shell; moreover, they have neither the irregularly branched structure nor the sporangia."- Monthly Microscopical Journal.

ADVANCING DEFINITION OF OBJECTIVES.-Tolles has lately made a immersion objective for the United States Army Medical Museum, with which Dr. Woodward has produced photographic prints (of Nobert's bands) that far excel any previous work of the same kind. The transparencies on glass are remarkably clear, and the paper prints give the lines in such a startling appearance of relief that it is difficult, even after feeling of the paper, to realize that the lines and the spaces between them are all printed on the same plane. This lens seems likely to replace the now famous as a standard of comparison, the first appeal and the last, for high-power lenses of great pretensions for oblique-light work. If any maker has made or can make, of which last there is no doubt, a lens that will define Nobert's lines better than this, he will confer a favor by presenting to the world proof of the fact. The following note from Dr. Woodward explains itself.

RESOLUTION OF NOBERT'S BAND.—I desire to make public the fact that, since February, 1872, I have received for inspection from Mr. R. B. Tolles of Boston, several objectives ranging from to (maker's nomenclature) which resolved the nineteenth band of the Nobert's plate in my hands. Last month I received from Mr. Tolles an objective made to fill an order of long standing for the Army Medical Museum. The immersion front of this objective (marked by the maker) separates the lines of Nobert's