1899] ICHTHYVOSAURUS AT HOME 171 
Ichthyosaurus at Home. 
ONE of the shortest cuts to a realisation of Jchthyosaurus is a journey 
to the Museum in Stuttgart. It may be that the Saurian’s rehabilita- 
tion is still caviare to the general, but there are many accessory attrac- 
tions by the way. The Stuttgart Museum—the Naturalien-Cabinet 
as they call it—is indeed a treasure-house for students of palaeon- 
tology, whether they are interested in tertiary mammals or the teeth 
of Microlestes, crustaceans or Steinheim molluscs, Labyrinthodonts or 
Saurians, and it is said that the thicket of mammoth tusks from 
Cannstadt has proved so impressive that it is mentioned in Baedecker, 
which surely means an Ultima Thule of fame. 
The museum as a whole is painfully suggestive of what museolo- 
gists call “the fat boy,” except in this respect that it seems in no wise 
somnolent. But it puzzles the inquisitive visitor to imagine where a 
single additional specimen could possibly be stored. The most in- 
geniously crowded cases of “Vermes,” for instance, are positively 
heartrending, and one feels that a few more exchanges would leave 
only the labels visible on the ascending staircase of bottles. 
Among the striking features may be noted the extraordinarily rich 
series of Pheasants and Birds of Paradise; the fine representation of 
the Wiirttemberg fauna, including that strange phenomenon—Ratten- 
kénig—of many rats entangled by their tails, and with a wealth of 
duplicates, ¢.g. of Pelias verus, which must surely embarrass anyone but 
a student of variations; a skilfully displayed set of insects injurious to 
herbs and trees; besides various fascinating rarities like the Great 
Auk. 
Yet the feature of the collection is doubtless the series of Saurians 
(in the wide sense) on which Dr. Fraas—one of the custodians of the 
museum—has worked with so much success. It was among these 
that we recently spent two happy forenoons, and it was the wealth of 
species and individuals of Ichthyosaurus—from one measuring twelve 
metres in length to a little foetus within its mother—which suggested 
the title of our note, written not for the learned palaeontologist at 
home, but for the amateur naturalist abroad, in the hope that among 
the thousands of Enelish visitors who pass annually through the 
charms of Stuttgart, this may possibly arrest some to enjoy the 
glimpse into an ancient world which the palaeontological museum 
affords. There are of course many richer collections, but it will be 
hard to find one equally rich of which it can be said that all the 
treasures are local. Perhaps even the Stuttgarters themselves are but 
dimly aware that the Naturalien-Cabinet is a much more marvellous 
treasure-house than even the wonderful Moorish Palace of which they 
are justly proud. Similarly, there are but few elect Dundonians who 
have any notion of the wealth of Prof. D’Arcy Thompson’s collection 
