APPENDIX. 45 



son), close to the town of Woodbridge, in Suffolk, is repre- 

 sented by figure 1. The drawing for this engraving , 

 has been taken from the original specimen, by M. 

 Dinkel, a natural-history draughtsman of well-known T 

 celebrity. The view is one looking down upon the 

 crown of the tooth ; and the figure is larger by half 

 a diameter than the fossil itself. This tooth, imme- 

 diately upon its passing from the hands of the finder 

 (a lad employed in the quarry), into the possession 

 of Mr. Colchester, was shown by that gentleman to 

 me ; and Mr. Colchester, upon that occasion, learned from 

 my examination of it, that the tooth was that of a mam- 

 miferous animal ; I also mentioned to him the high geolo- 

 gical value it would possess, if the stratum from which it 

 came were really what it appeared to be, a bed of the 

 London-clay formation. I should at once have made pub- 

 lic the circumstance in the ' Magazine of Natural History,' 

 had it not been that no other fossils were present to aid in 

 determining the age of the bed, and under these circum- 

 stances I left it in the hands of its possessor, with an un- 

 derstanding that at any future time I was at liberty to 

 make it known. 



Subsequently to this, Mr. Lyell became acquainted with 

 Mr. Colchester through a note of introduction from me ; and 

 during an excursion to Suffolk last year, he borrowed this 

 tooth for the purpose of showing it to Prof. Owen. AVhen, 

 however, it. was removed from Mr. Colchester's cabinet it does 

 not appear that anything was said by Mr. Lyell about his 

 intended publication. The tooth accordingly was taken to 

 the College of Surgeons, and Prof. Owen pronounced it to 

 belong to one of the " mixed feeders", and ultimately decided 

 that it was the tooth of an Opossum of the restricted genus 

 Didelphis. Mr. Lyell then went into Scotland, and having 

 possession of the tooth, and as he supposed, a knowledge of 

 the genus to which it belonged, he resolved to announce the 

 discovery at the meeting of the British Association, then 

 shortly about to be held at Birmingham. 



Subsequently to Mr. Lyell's going into Scotland, but prior 

 to the Birmingham Meeting, a second and much larger mam- 

 miferous tooth, with a considerable portion of the jaw re- 

 maining attached to it, came through Mr. Colchester into the 

 hands of Mr. Searles Wood. This second tooth was found 

 in the same quarry as the former one, and upon being shown 

 by Mr. Wood to Prof Owen, he compared it with the cor- 

 responding tooth of a well-known monkey, with which, as 

 Mr. Wood confidently asserts, he pronounced it to be iden- 

 tical. (See fig. 2.) 



