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counties. By virtue of this authority they held sessions of oyer-and- 

 terminer and gaol-delivery alternately at York, Newcastle and 

 Pontefract, heard and decided causes between party and party, and 

 pronounced judgment in criminal cases without the intervention of a 

 jury. Even at the ordinary assizes some of the members were 

 present and took part in the proceedings. The Duke returned to 

 the South in 1527, but the Council continued to exercise the same 

 powers as before. When the insurrection called the Pilgrimage of 

 Grace broke out, in 1536, it was still in existence and exercising its 

 powers; but in 1537 the king converted it into a standing court, 

 which bore the title of the Great Council of the North, and by its 

 arbitrary and almost irresponsible powers, exercised an iron rule for 

 more than a century over that part of England which lies between 

 the Trent and the Tweed. Henry VIII., when he remodelled the 

 Council and gave it a permanent character, might wish to have the 

 credit of being its author, but it really originated from the master 

 mind of Wolsey. 



May 9. — Mr. Charlesworth, Keeper of the Museum, read a 

 paper respecting the Ichthyosaurus Platyodon from the alum strata 

 at Kettleness, lately presented to the Museum by the Rev. D. R. 

 Roundell. The Whitby district has long been known for its Saurian 

 remains, and within the last ten or fifteen years has produced no less 

 than five perfect, or nearly perfect, Plesiosauri; but of the allied 

 genus, the Ichthyosaurus, no large or remarkably perfect specimen 

 has been found there until now. The largest previously known, 

 tolerably complete Ichthyosaurus is the I. platyodon from Lyme 

 Regis in the British Museum. Its absolute length is 1 8 feet ; its 

 computed length, when perfect, 20 feet. The Whitby specimen is 

 23 feet long, and its computed length 28 feet. It therefore surpasses 

 in total length any skeleton, of corresponding completeness, yet 

 discovered. From the structure of the paddles, form of the teeth, 

 vertebrae, &c., Mr. Charlesworth considered it to agree more nearly 

 with I. platyodon than any other described species ; but as a large 

 proportion of the saurians and other fossils found in the Yorkshire 

 Lias are distinct from those found in the South of England, its cha- 

 racter should be very rigorously investigated, before it is confidently 

 referred to this or any other published species. 



