5 
contains the finest collection of the remains of this extinct reptile in 
the kingdom, and a fine suite of footsteps was exhibited to the meeting. 
The majority of these ancient reptiles inhabited the sea, but some were 
terrestrial and of great size, although none of them equalled the 
gigantic mammalian whale in bulk. From a brief review of the marine 
life of the various geological periods, the Lecturer passed on to explain 
the fresh water and terrestrial life of the successive geological epochs. 
Many estuarine ana river shells were found in the Coal, Wealden, 
Purbecks, Stonesfield slate, and fresh water Tertiaries. The fresh water 
races were comparatively few, and extend over large areas. They 
were created after the marine, and the fossil and living forms 
greatly resemble each other. The same may be said to some extent of 
the insects, crustacea, and reptiles in fresh water strata, and adhere 
much to generic and family type. Insects first appear in the Coal with 
a land shell (pupa) and a centipede, and occur more abundantly in the 
Lias and Oolites. The peculiarity of these was spoken of at some 
length. Land plants occur both in marine, but especially in estuarine 
and lacustrine deposits above Silurian rocks. Ferns abounded in the 
Coal and Oolites, of which many are peculiar and extinct. There were 
few fossil birds, the supposed footsteps of them in the new red sand- 
stone of America, have lately been inferred to belong to reptiles; but 
the remains of a bird have been noticed in the green sand at Cambridge. 
(See Owen's Palon, Pp. 291.) It is the lower half of the trifid 
metatarsal of an outer joint of a bird, about the size of a woodcock 
and at Solenhofen in Germany, in the Middle Oolite a considerable 
portion of the skeleton, with- attached feathers, of a remarkable bird 
(Archeopteryx Macrurus) has been described by Professor Owen, and 
is now deposited in the British Museum. Entire skeletons have, 
however, been met with in the Tertiary deposits. Allusion was here 
made to the extinct dodo and gigantic dinornis, very much larger than 
the ostrich, of New Zealand. ‘The first trace of a mammal was shewn 
to bein the Trias of America, the marsupial order first appearing. 
This was followed by the insectiyora of Stonesfield, which partly 
belong to the insectivora and marsupiala, and oneis a vegetable feeding 
pachyderm. These were sueceeded by the insectivora and rodentia of 
the Purbecks, ;which were also partly marsupial. The continent of 
Australia, in its peculiar marsupial fauna, presents probably the nearest 
resemblance to the condition of the earth during the position of the 
Oolités. The inference as to climate from the above facts tends to the 
idea of a more uniform warmth throughout the ancient globe,the plants 
which formed the coal particularly indicating warmth and damp. The 
pachyderms and reptiles, the corals and crinoids, all point to the same 
conclusion. The Lecturer concluded by a brief summing up of the 
facts above noticed, shewing an advance and progress in the succession 
of genera and species in the main, and indicating a definite creative 
plan which binds the whole into one unbroken and harmonious system 
of life. 
A vote of thanks having been proposed by C. Faulkner, 
Esq., and carried unanimously, the meeting was adjourned. 
