The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Zoology, Botany and Geology Volume 11; Incorporating the Journal of Botany (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: cannot be argued that they have perished, for the most delicate bones are preserved, as well as the fmest scales of the Lepisosteus; so that, to say the least, there certainly appears to be a difficulty in referring them to the Crocodile. There are other genera the remains of which are found in the Wealden formation, but very little is known respecting them, and it would be little better than conjecture to refer the scales in question to the Megalosaurus or the Phytosaurus, because there were difficulties in referring them to the Crocodile or the Iguanodon. Before long it may be hoped that other specimens will be found under more favourable circumstances with respect to their determination. III.?On the Discovery of the Remains of a Mastodontoid Pachyderm in Australia. By Prof. Owen, F.R.S. To the Editors of the Annals of Natural History. Gentlemen, I Have lately received a letter, dated April 6, 1842, from Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, Surveyor-General of Australia, in which he announces the interesting discovery of large fossil mammalian remains in that continent. The specimens from the bone-caves in Wellington Valley, described in the second volume of Sir Thomas's work on Australia, were, it may be remembered, remains of extinct species of marsupial genera now existing in that continent, and of a genus very nearly allied to the existing ones; the largest fossil, which had been supposed to belong to a Hippopotamus or Dugong, indicating rather an extinct gigantic Phascolome; and there was not any conclusive evidence of a genus of pla- cental mammal in that collection. The fossils, which my friend has now transmitted, inoon- testably establish the former existence of a huge proboscidian Pachyderm in the Australian continent, referable to either the genus Mastodo...