254 PALAEONTOLOGY 



inclined to the former view, on account of the proportions of 

 the head to the trunk. He then enters upon speculations 

 as to how a crocodile could have come into Germany ; and 

 shows the usual effect of a mind biassed by a hypothetical 

 diluvial catastrophe not demonstrated by observation and 

 inductive research, and to the extent of such bias benumbed in 

 the exercise of the faculty for the acquisition of natural truth. 



The seven cervical vertebrae are proportionally larger than 

 in any known recent or fossil terrestrial or aquatic Saurian ; 

 they resemble in this respect the cervical vertebrae of Ptero- 

 dactyles ; the tail is long, and its vertebrae differ from those 

 of all other known reptiles, recent or fossil, in having the 

 spinous processes bifurcate, diverging in the direction of the 

 axis of the body. 



The muscular power of the neck is indicated by traces 

 of bone-tendons. The dorsal vertebrae exceed eighteen in 

 number, and have higher spines than in the modern Monitors ; 

 the dorsal ribs are long, and longitudinally impressed. The 

 hind limb is much longer than the fore limb, and the leg is 

 longer, in proportion to the thigh and foot, than in the Moni- 

 tors. The teeth are sharp-pointed, slender ; there appear to 

 be at least twenty in both upper and lower jaws in Speners 

 specimen. 



It may be concluded, from the length and strength of the 

 tail and the peculiar provision for muscular attachments in 

 that part, and from the proportions of the hind limbs, that the 

 Protorosmcrus was of aquatic habits, and that the strength 

 of its neck and head, and the sharpness of its teeth, enabled 

 it to seize and overcome the struggles of the active fishes of 

 the waters which deposited the old Thuringian copper-slates. 



At Spynie and Cummingstorie, in the neighbourhood of 

 Elgin, N. ]>., in a stratum of a fine-grained whitish sandstone, 



* A character first pointed out in the writer's "Report on British Fossil 

 Reptiles," Trans, of Brit. Assoc, 1841, p. 155. 



