THE GREAT EISH-LIZARDS. 



39 



neighbourhood, found out some valuable particulars about these 

 remains. The conclusions of Dean Buckland, then Professor of 

 Geology at Oxford, led Sir Everard to abandon many of his 

 former conclusions. The labours of the learned men of the 

 day were greatly assisted by the exertions of Miss Anning, an 

 enthusiastic collector of fossils. This lady, devoting herself to 

 science, explored the frowning and precipitous cliffs in the 

 neighbourhood of Lyme-Regis, when the furious spring-tide 

 combined with the tempest to overthrow them, and rescued from 

 destruction by the S€a, sometimes at the peril of her life, the few 

 specimens which originated all the facts and speculations of 

 those persons whose names will ever be remembered with 

 gratitude by geologists. 



Probably our readers are already more or less familiar with the 

 drawings of the fossilised remains of Ichthyosauri to be seen in 

 almost every text-book of geology. (Fig. 3 is from Owen's British 

 Fossil Reptiles.) But we recommend all who take an interest in the 



■^-'^^•'-^^'^''•'"rff^^ 



Fig. 3. — Ichthyosaurus intermedins. 



world's lost creations to pay a visit to the great Natural History 

 Museum, at South Kensington. The fossil reptile gallery contains 

 a magnificent series of Ichthyosauri, about thirty in number. Of 

 these a large number were obtained through the exertions of the 

 late Mr. T. Hawkins, a Somersetshire gentleman, who was a most 

 ardent collector of fossil reptiles, and who devoted himself with 

 great enthusiasm and unsparing energy to the acquisition of a 



