Nova Acta Academice Naturce Curiosorum. 255 



s^xes, granted to the University of Wilna by the Emperor Alexander, 

 with the view of enabling that body to add to their collection the stuffed 

 skins and prepared skeletons of an animal so desirable both on account 

 of its scarcity and its magnitude. Our authour's illustration of the skele- 

 ton is most complete in all its parts, not only in the text, where every 

 bone is carefully passed in review, but also in the accompanying plates, 

 which exhibit most of the separate bones in various positions and points 

 of view, as well as the whole of them united into an entire skeleton, 

 constructed on the admirable plan, first adopted by Camper, of bringing 

 the animal himself and his osseous support into the same field. 



The only other article which has reference to the vertebrated division 

 of the animal kingdom is entitled " Versuchte herstellimg einiger Becken 

 " urweltlicher Thiere aus dem triimmern der gerippe derselben." The 

 object proposed by the authour. Dr. Ritgen, is the restoration of the 

 pelves of three species of animals from the fossil fragments of their 

 skeletons; and an outline plate, which accompanies the paper, exhibits 

 at one view the broken portions of each in the state in which they were 

 found, and the manner in which the authour professes to re-unite them into 

 a perfect pelvis. The first of them is the Lacerta gigantea of Soemmering, 

 Mosasaurus of Conybeare and Parkinson, for which Dr. Ritgen, without 

 assigning a single reason for the change of name, is pleased to adopt 

 the more than sesquipedalian title of Halilimnosaurus crocodiloides. 

 This appellation, however, may serve in some degree to explain his views 

 of its affinities and original habitation, inasmuch as it shews that he 

 regards it as a lacertine animal resembling a crocodile and inhabiting salt- 

 water marshes, intermediate therefore between the extinct Enaliosauri, or 

 sea-lizards, and the living crocodiles of fresh-water streams. It is, more- 

 over, the Geosaurus of Cuvier*s Ossemens Fossiles. The second animal is 

 the Ornithocephalus brevirostris of Soemmering, a name which also ap- 

 pears obnoxious to our authour's taste, for he changes it without hesitation to 

 Pterodactylus J^ettecephaloides ; while the third and last species here 

 illustrated, the well-known Ornithocephalus longirostris of the same 

 indefatigable Zoologist, is unmercifnlly designated by the breath 

 exhausting appellation of Pterodactylus a-ocodilocephaloides. Surely 

 these German dodecasyllabists have no pity for the unyielding jaws of us 

 poor monosyllabic English ! To speak seriously, we see no advantage. 



