448 Address of the Secretaries of the British Association. 



of reptile life ; while shortly after Buckland established the 

 genus Megalosaurus, and Mantell, Igiianodon and Hylceosaurus, 

 worthy rivals of the Geo-Sauri and Moso-Sauri of Cuvier. 

 The other Englishmen who have best toiled in this field, are 

 De la Beche, Hawkins, and Sir Philip Egerton. 



Yet although this report is on British reptiles, we are fully 

 alive to the great progress which this department has made, 

 and is making, on the Continent, through the labours of Count 

 Minister, Ja'ger, and Hermann Von Meyer. The last-men- 

 tioned naturalist has been for some time preparing a series of 

 exquisite drawings of very many forms unknown to us in 

 England, most of which have been detected in the Muschel- 

 kalk, a formation not hitherto discovered in the British isles. 

 Yet despite of all that had been accomplished in our own 

 country or elsewhere, Professor Owen has thrown a new 

 light of classification on this subject, founded on many newly 

 discovered peculiarities of osseous structure, and has vastly 

 augmented our acquaintance with new forms, by describing 

 sixteen species of Plesiosauri, three of which only had been 

 recognisably described by other writers ; and ten species of 

 Ichthyosauri, five of which are new to science. Such results 

 were not to be obtained without much labour; and previous 

 to drawing up his report, Professor Owen had visited the 

 principal depositories of'Enaliosauri described by foreign wri- 

 ters, as well as most of the public and private collections of 

 Britain. This, the first part of Mr. Owen's report, concludes 

 with a general review of the geological relations and extent 

 of the strata through which he has traced the remains of Bri- 

 tish Enaliosauri. The materials which he has collected for the 

 second and concluding portion of his report on the terrestrial 

 and crocodilean Sauria, the Chelonia, Ophidian, and Batra- 

 chian reptiles, are equally numerous, and the results of these 

 researches will be laid before the Association at our next 

 meeting. Deeply impressed as we are with the value of this 

 report, we cannot conclude a notice of it, without again allu- 

 ding to its origin, in the words of Professor Owen himself. 

 " I could not," says he, " have ventured to have proposed to 

 myself the British Fossil Reptilia as a subject of continuous 

 and, systematic research, without the aid and encouragement 

 which the British Association has liberally granted to me for 

 that purpose." 



Mr. Edward Forbes, whose labours in detecting the differ- 

 ence of species and varieties among the existing marine testa- 

 cea of our shores, have been most praiseworthy, has on this 

 occasion given us a report on the pulmoniferous mollusca of 

 the British isles. The variations in the distribution of the 



