fact, the Carboniferous formation in so far as this has been recognized in the interior district of British Columbia, and is the local representative of that formation. GEORGE M. DAWSON. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA, April 10, 1899. ON THE NAMES OF CERTAIN NORTH AMERICAN FOSSIL VERTEBRATES. THE writer, having recently had occasion to examine the literature pertaining to some of the fossil mammals of North America, has made the following notes, which he desires to record : Hemiganus, a genus established by Professor Cope, had for its type species H. vultuosus. The species H. otariidens was described later. Dr. J. L. Wortman has, however, shown (Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., ix., p. 167) that H. vultuosus is a synonym of Psittacotherium multifragum. The species otariidens is, therefore, left without generic name. I hereby propose WORTMANIA, in recognition of the valuable work which has been done by Dr. Wortman in vertebrate paleontology. The species will be Wortmania otariidens (Cope). A similar case occurs among the camels. The type of the genus Protolabis of Cope is P. heterodontus. Dr. Wortman's investigation (Bull. Amer. Mus., x., p. 120) have led him to the conclusion that this so-called species is the same as the earlier described Procamelus robustus. The type species being removed, the remaining species requires a new generic name. I propose MIOLABIS. The type will be M. transmontanus (Cope). It has also been ascertained by Dr. Wortman that the type of the genus Systemodon, S. tapirinus, is really a Hyracotherium, in which genus it was formerly placed. The species which have been associated with tapirinus, viz, semihians, primævus and protapirinus are, therefore, without generic name. I offer HOMOGALAX ('ouoyahas, a foster brother). As type of this genus I take Dr. Wortman's Systemodon primævus (Bull. Amer. Mus., viii., p. 89, fig. 3). Professor Cope has described from the Pliocene of Louisiana a fos-il horse which he calls Equus intermedius (Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., xxxiv., p. 463). This name has, however, been preoccupied for a quaternary horse of Europe. Trouessart (Cat. Mam., 1898, p. 794) quotes it as a synonym of E. caballus. The first mention I find of the name is in Rütimeyer (Abhandl. schweiz. pal. Ges., ii., p. 24, 1877). For Professor Cope's E. intermedius I propose Equus eous. Interea volucres Pyrois Eous et Aethon, Solis equi, quartusque Phlegon, hinnitibus auras Flammiferis implent, pedibusque repagula pulsant. - Ovid. Certain generic names of vertebrates have, without justice, it seems to me, been relegated to synonomy. name. In 1881 Professor Cope established a genus of Condylarthra which he called Protogonia. Later he correctly concluded that this name had been preoccupied, probably by Protogonius, Hübner. He, therefore, proposed to substitute for it Euprotogonia, which name first appeared in a paper by Earle (Amer. Nat., 1893, p. 378, foot-note). In a recent paper Dr. Matthew (Bull. Amer. Mus., ix., p. 303) accepts this At the same time he shows that those remains which had originally been described by Professor Cope as Mioclænus floverianus belong to the earlier described Euprotogonia puercensis. But, for this M. floverianus, Scott had in 1892 (Proc. Acad. Sci., Phila., p. 299) proposed the genus Tetraclænodon. The latter name, therefore, antedates Euprotogonia and must replace it. In the same excellent paper (p. 268) Dr. Matthew adopts Scott's genus Protochriacus, founded in 1892, in preference to Cope's Loxolophus, proposed in 1885. The reason assigned for this preference is that Professor Cope's 'distinctions, so far as made, were based on error.' I do not believe that the best usage among naturalists at this day favors the rejection of generic names because of errors, real or supposed, in the definitions. It seems to me that Loxolophus must be reinstated. With exceptions, few but important, Oreodon has been employed by writers for a well-known genus of Artiodactyles. Flower and Lydekker in their joint work on Mammalia use Cotylops, on the assumption that Oreodon is preoccupied by Orodus of Agassiz, a genus of fossil fishes. Without now discussing this conclusion, I will recall the fact that there is a still older name which is in all respects available. This is Leidy's Merycoidodon, having for its type M. culbertsoni (Proc. Acad. Sci., Phila., 1848, p. 47). Professor Cope has rejected the name on the ground that it is a nomen nudum; but a generic name is hardly nudum when it is supported by a well-defined species and is, moreover, clothed with two pages of description. Merycodus is another of Dr. Leidy's names which must be restored to its rightful position. This was proposed in 1854 and had for its type species M. necatus. On the supposition probably that this name is pre-occupied by Owen's Merycodon, it has been ignored. But it is incorrect to assume that any two names ending in odus and odon, but alike in other respects, clash with each other. As to their forms they are different enough to prevent confusion. As to their derivation, as has been suggested to me by my friend Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, of the U. S. National Museum, they are unlike; odus being the Latinized form of the Greek odobs, while odon comes from the Ionic div. The acceptance of this view will relieve us of the necessity of rejecting, on philological grounds at least, either word of many such couples as Menodus and Menodon, Cosmodus and Cosmodon. FOR GASEOUS CELESTIAL BODIES. IT has been long known that an isolated celestial mass of gas rises in temperature as it radiates heat and contracts. Dr. T. J. J. See [Astronomical Journal, February 6, 1899; Atlantic Monthly, April, 1899] points out that the temperature of such a mass of gas is inversely proportional to its radius, provided the mass does not receive accretions of meteoric matter and provided the gas conforms to the laws of Boyle and Charles. When, however, the volume of the gaseous body is very great large quantities of interstellar gases and particles would fall into it and the first condition would fail; and when the gaseous body contracts to small volume it would, perhaps, be far from a perfect gas in its properties, so that the second condition would fail; to say nothing of the probable dissociation and polymerization of the gaseous constituents due to the great changes of temperature which, no doubt, take place. 6 The suggestion of Dr. See that nebulous masses are extremely cold is very plausible, in view of his new law,' which may be assumed to regulate the temperature of every gaseous star in space,' but it is certainly contrary to the indications of the spectroscope; for nebulæ surely are approximately in thermodynamic equilibrium in their smaller parts, if anything in the universe is; if so, there is no known agency, electrical or other, which can cause them to give off persistently abnormal radiations. Radiations (wave-length) are as intimately associated with temperature as are molecular velocities, although both may be temporarily abnormal in a given substance; for example, the velocities of the particles of a gas in a vessel may be made to deviate momentarily from Maxwell's law; a cold substance, such as calcium sulphide, may shine for a while after exposure to sunlight, and a gas in a vacuum tube may remain phosphorescent for a time as the disturbing influence of an electric discharge dies away. But it is hard to think of a certain cubic foot of nebulous matter, surrounded for millions upon millions of miles with similar matter, remote from intense radiant centers, still giving off abornmal radiations after odd millions of years. Of course, such may be the case, but Dr. See's law, in all probability, has nothing so do with nebulæ at all. There is no physical reason why a nebulous mass might not be intensely hot, held together (if, indeed, we must assume it to be a gravitational unit) by the gravitation of refractory nuclei and receiving continually from space as much matter as it throws off, because of the high molecular velocity of its gaseous parts. Dr. See's derivation of his law of temperature is incomplete and confused. It is based upon the assumption, which should be definitely proven, that the function which expresses the density in terms of the radius coordinate r remains of the same form as the external radius p diminishes; and he confuses pressure per unit surface and pressure between given portions of matter. Assuming the invariance of the density function Dr. See's formula may be derived as follows. Let p be the radius of the gaseous mass at a given epoch. Consider the state of affairs when the radius has become p. Gravitational forces (per unit mass) will be quadrupled and, therefore, the pressure between two contiguous portions of given mass will be quadrupled, but the area separating these portions will be quartered so that the pressure per unit area (p) will be 16 times as great. The volume v of each portion will be as great, so that pv will be twice as great. But absolute temperature is proportional to pv, therefore, the absolute temperature will have been doubled when the radius is halved. T= That is, constant ρ "This remarkable formula," according to Dr. See, "expresses one of the most fundamental of all the laws of Nature." In simple truth it is an interesting and suggestive formula, and it may throw light upon some of the knotty questions of celestial physics. Dr. See, in his Atlantic Monthly article, says among other things : "It is somewhat remarkable that, while the law of gravitation causes bodies to describe conic sections, the law of temperature for every gaseous body is represented by a rectangular hyperbola referred to its asymptotes, and thus by a particular curve of the same species." Now, it would have been quite as well, or even better, for Dr. See to have said frankly ŭm-ta-ra-ra-bum-te-a, or words to that effect; for, seriously, the object of popular scientific writing is to develop proper and significant associations, and the bane of popular science is verbal sense which by association becomes absolute nonsense. IN the Astronomical Journal for April 8th Dr. C. M. Woodward calls attention to some of the manifest inaccuracies of Dr. See's derivation of the temperature formula. He points out that the gaseous globe cannot be assumed to have a bounding surface of definite radius p; he calls attention to the fact that the gravitational force at a point does not determine the pressure, but the pressure gradient at the point; and he claims that the hydrostatic pressure at a point varies inversely with p2, not with p', as indicated in the above derivation of the temperature formula. In the above derivation, however, the pressure is said to increase 16 times, not at the same point in space, but at a point one-half as far from the center. The objections raised by Dr. Woodward seem to be removed as follows: Consider the gaseous mass at the epoch t. Assume that during the contraction the radius coordinate of every particle decreases in the same proportion (this is what is meant in the above discussion by the invariance of the density function.) Consider the gaseous mass at a subsequent epoch t' when the radius coordinate of every particle has been reduced to one-half its initial value. The density at a distance r from the center at epoch t' is eight times as great as at distance r from the center at epoch t, and the gravitational force is four times as great. Therefore, the weight per unit volume is thirty-two times as great, and this weight per unit volume is the pressure gradient. In integrating the pressure gradients at epoch t and t', respectively, imagine the paths of integration to be broken up into homologous elements. The elements at epoch t' are then half as long as at epoch t, and, therefore, the integral at epoch t' from infinity to r is sixteen times as great as the integral at epoch t from infinity to r. Therefore, the pressure at homologous points is increased sixteen times when the mass of gas has contracted to half its initial dimensions, as stated in the above derivation. W. S. FRANKLIN. NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. AN attempt is described in the Chemiker Zeitung, by Johann Walter, to concentrate solutions by means of a centrifugal apparatus. But while even very light and finely divided precipitates are rapidly separated by centrifugal force, an examination of different portions of a solution, taken while the machine was in rapid motion, showed that the composition was constant. The same was found true in the case of gaseous mixtures, no tendency being found for the denser constituent to collect in the most rapidly rotating portion of the vessel. This affords an interesting experimental confirmation of what might have been theoretically expected from the laws of gases and of solutions. THE heat of formation of anhydrous oxid of calcium has lately been redetermined by Henri Moissan from the action of water on crystallized metallic calcium. The value was found to be Ca + 0 = + 145 cal. This value is greater than that for the oxids of potassium (+ 98.2) and sodium (+100.9), from which it appears that calcium can replace these metals in their oxids. It is also slightly greater than that of the oxid of lithium (+141.2). Corresponding to this, metallic lithium was obtained by heating the oxid with metallic calcium at a red heat. The heat of formation of magnesium oxid as found by Thomsen is +143.4, but the previous observations of Winkler were confirmed, that at a low red heat calcium is freed from its oxid by magnesium. It is suggested, therefore, that the observation of Thomsen is erroneous, owing to impurities present in the metal used. It is interesting to find a paper from a Spanish chemist in a recent Comptes Rendus. J. R. Mourelo, of Madrid, describes the preparation of phosphorescent strontium sulfid from the carbonate. Finely powdered strontianite and sulfur were heated in boats in a porcelain tube while a current of nitrogen was passing. In no case was a crystalline sulfid obtained. If the strontium carbonate was pure, especially free from alkalies, the sulfid was not phosphorescent. If the temperature was too high (above a bright red heat), or if the nitrogen current was too rapid, the same was the case. The best results were obtained by using a strontianite which contained 96.12% strontium carbonate, 2.03% calcium carbonate and traces of water, manganese and iron. Particularly are the traces of manganese necessary if the strontium sulfid is to be highly phosphorescent. A STUDY of aluminum has been made by P. Degener as to its use for culinary utensils, and published in the Hygienische Rundschau. While aluminum is but slightly acted on by weak acids when they are pure, in the presence of sodium chlorid it is rapidly attacked, as, for example, by sulfur dioxid, acetic acid, and even by alum. The inference is that some considerable danger attends the use of aluminum vessels in the preparation of many kinds of food. Whether, as a matter of fact, the amount which would be dissolved would do injury in the sys tem remains a mooted question. While many experiments seem to indicate that aluminum salts have a somewhat detrimental effect upon digestion, yet it is well known that the inhibition of large quantities of alum water is often found very beneficial to health, and many alum springs enjoy a high reputation. J. L. H. THE NAPLES ZOOLOGICAL STATION. WE have recently received from Professor Anton Dohrn, the Director of the Zoological Station at Naples, a complete list of the American biologists who have worked at various times at the Naples Zoological Station. It is probable that the future demands upon the Naples tables will be quite as great as the present and the past, and the three tables, or rather two and one-half tables, which are now supported by subscriptions from this country, should be continued. Professor Dohrn has never raised any technical question of rights, but has always welcomed every American investigator. The least we can do in return is to extend to his institution the strongest support. The Americans who have worked in the Zoological Station, the Tables they have occupied and the periods during which they were in attendance are as follows: 7 95 3 95 The three tables now being supported in this country are as follows: Smithsonian Table.-Applications should be addressed to Professor S. P. Langley, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. University Table.-The main subscription is by Wm. E. Dodge, Esq., of New York, in the name of Columbia University. The American Society of Naturalists has also subscribed $50 towards this table for the year 1899. Applications should be addressed to Professor T. H. Morgan, Bryn Mawr, Pa. Women's College Table.-Supported by subscriptions from colleges, associations and private individuals. Applications should be sent to Miss Ida H. Hyde, 91 Langdon St., Cambridge, Mass. Students and investigators intending to visit the Station should apply to Dr. Anton Dohrn for a printed circular giving them all the necessary information as to preparation and the procedure to be observed on arrival. 30 596 24 3 96 6 11 96 ton Dr. MacFarland, California..11 Dr. E. Meek, Washington ....19 3 97 .... Harvard College. Mr. E. Rice, Middletown....23 3 94 Dr. C. Child, Chicago...... 4 6 94 Prof. W. E. Ritter, Berkeley..14 9 94 Prof. J. Reighard, Michigan.. 2 4 95 Prof. C. C. Nutting, Iowa..... 1 6 95 Dr. R. T. Harrison, Baltimore. 1 2.96 Dr. R. C. Coe, New Haven.... 17 3 96 Dr. A. Weysse, Boston.......19 3 96 4 12 96 5 5 97 25 6 97 25 5 97 3 12 97 24 4 98 18 4 98 28 4.98 12 5 94 6 12 94 29 12 94 3 6 95 17 8 95 1 596 6 5 96 18 6 96 SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. AT a recent meeting of the Board of Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania the Provost was authorized to extend an invitation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science to hold its meeting in 1900 at the University. THE medical department of Johns Hopkins University has sent a party to Manila to study the tropical diseases prevalent there in the hot season. - The party includes Dr. Simon Flexner, recently elected professor of pathology in the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. L. F. Barker, associate professor of anatomy at Johns Hopkins University. THE field work of the United States Biologwill ical Survey during the present season be mainly in Texas and California. Vernon Columbia University, One-Half Year (Resp. University Bailey, chief field naturalist of the Survey, has Table). begun work on the coast of Texas, and will work westerly to and across the Staked Plains. he will join Dr. Merriam in California. Later Nature states that Mr. J. Stanley Gardiner, Balfour student of the University of Cambridge, and Mr. L. Borradaile have gone to the Island of Minikoi, situated between the Maldive and |