54 



March 26, 1844. 



The Right Hon. William Sturges Bouriie in the Cliair. 



A letter was read from Anthony White, Esq., describing the mor- 

 bid appearances which presented themselves on examining the body 

 of the Lioa {Felis Leo) which died in the Society's Gaidens on the 

 15th hist. 



A communication was made by Dr. Falconer, conveying the sub- 

 stauce of a paper by Capt. Cautley and himself on the osteological 

 characters and palaeontological history of the Colossochelys Atlas, a 

 fossil tortoise of enormous size, from the tertiary strata of the Se- 

 walik hills in the north of India — a tertiary chain apparently formed 

 by the detritus of the Himalaya mountains. 



A great number of huge fragments, derived from all parts of the 

 skeleton except the neck and tail, were exhibited on the table, illus- 

 trative of a diagram by Mr. Scharf of the animal restored to the 

 natūrai size. 



The communication opened with a reference to the reptilian forms 

 discovered in the fossil slate, among wliich colossal representatives 

 have been found of all the known tribes, such as the Iguanodon, Me- 

 galosaurus, Labyrinthodon, &c., besides numerous forms of which no 

 living analogues exist, such as the Enaliosaurian reptiles and Ptero- 

 dactyles. No fossil Testudinata remarkable either for size or devia- 

 tion from existing forms, have hitherto been found in the fossil statė. 

 The Colossochelys supplies the blank in the first respect, while it 

 difFers so little frora the land-tortoises in the general construction 

 of its osseous frame, as hardly to constitute more than a subgenus 

 of Tes tildo. 



The plastron or sternal portion of the shell afFords the chief di- 

 stinctive character. The epistemal portion in the adult is six and a 

 half inches thick, and contracted into a diameter of eight inches, bifid 

 at the apex, and supplied with a thick cuneiform keel on its inferior 

 side : this keel constitutes one of the principai features in the fossil. 

 The entosternal portion exhibits exactly the form of Testudo, the 

 šame being the case with the xiphiosternal or posterior portion. The 

 plastron in the adult animal \vas estimated to be nine feet four 

 inches long. 



The carapace or buckler of the shell coincides exactly with the 

 general form of the large land-tortoises, of which it exhibits only a 

 magnified representation, flattened at the top and vertical at the sides, 

 ■vvith the šame outline and recurved margin. The shell vvas estimated 

 to have been twelve feet three inches long, eight feet in diameter, 

 and six feet high. 



