v1 PREFACE. 
were mounted on tablets of a conspicuous colour, we found that 
they could be safely put into their proper places in the series, 
and that it was better to display on the top of the cabinets 
those specimens which best showed generic and specific cha- 
racters, and were thus of greatest educational value and 
general interest. 
In addition to mdicating in the museum the importance of 
such specimens, it is most desirable to publish a catalogue of 
them, so that specialists may know where to find the types, and 
this task has been most ably performed for the Woodwardian 
Museum by Mr H. Woods, whose knowledge of the Museum 
and of Paleontology, eminently qualified him for the work. 
Besides the types and other figured fossils, there are a great 
number of specimens referred to. An author mentions for 
instance, that there is in the Woodwardian Museum, in such 
and such a series, a fossil which illustrates some point under 
discussion. These specimens have been labelled as ‘mentioned.’ 
There is another series, the acquired importance of which is 
often almost equal to that of types, namely, the specimens 
which have been determined for us by high authorities, and we 
have endeavoured to indicate this in the case of all those which 
we have recently acquired, or which have been lately deter- 
mined, but it will be long before we can overtake the work of 
indicating by labels who is responsible for the determination of 
each specimen, even of those for which we know or can ascer- 
tain the authority. But im a museum of any antiquity, the 
authorities for the determination of the larger number of the 
specimens must remain for ever unrecorded. 
We have not included, in this catalogue, the described and 
figured fossils in the collections of the seventeenth century, now 
in our Museum. For instance, incorporated into the original 
museum of Dr John Woodward, we have the collection of Agos- 
tino Scilla, a distinguished painter and naturalist, who was born 
at Messina in 1639. He subsequently removed to Rome, where 
he became President of the Academy of Painting. A few of 
his pictures are to be found in Rome, and the churches of 
