India, the present home of one of the two types of existing elephants (Elephas Indicus), has also yielded abundant evidence of numerous extinct forms of this animal; two species of Dinotherium, eight species of Mastodon, and seven species of extinct elephants being recorded from the Miocene and Pliocene formations of that great continent.

The classification of the Palæozoic starfishes has long been in chaos. The earlier palæontologists, who founded most of the known genera, made no attempt at a general classification or to indicate the relations between the Palæozoic and existing representatives of the Asteroidea. The first step towards progress was Bronn's division of the extinct genera into three groups—the Ophiurasteriæ (which may be left out of account as Ophiuroidea), the Encrinasteriæ, and the Asterias veræ.

In the abstract of a paper by Mr. Thomas H. Holland, read before the British Association, Section C (Geology), Bristol, 1898, printed in the January number of this Magazine, on “The Comparative Actions of Subaërial and Submarine Agents in Rock Decomposition,” the author brings up again a question which the present writer has often had occasion to face, and has vainly tried to solve in a manner entirely satisfactory even to himself.

A representative collection of fossils from the Middle Cambrian beds of Mount Stephen, Field, British Columbia, has recently been brought back by Mr. S. H. Reynolds, M.A., F.G.S., and presented to the Woodwardian Museum. The fauna has been described by Rominger and Walcott; and the latter has compared it to that from the Highland range, near Pioche, Nevada, and from near Antelope Spring, Western Utah. The section at Field has been described by Mr. E. G. McConnell.

In the Geological Department of the British Museum (Natural History) are preserved a certain number of slabs from Oeningen, exhibiting skeletons of Rodents. Partly owing to unskilful developing, partly to the absence of the counterpart-slab, several of them are in such a crushed and otherwise imperfect condition, that in some cases not even the genus could be made out with certainty; which is equivalent to saying that their interest is little beyond that of mere curiosities. On closer examination it appeared to me that in some instances the case was not quite so hopeless, and that by carefully developing the more important parts still concealed by the matrix, a more satisfactory state of things might be obtained. The following pages are an account of the result arrived at.

Few men have had the satisfaction to see so large a share of their hopes and ambitions in life realized as Sir William Flower.