FOSSIL MAMMALIA FROM THE STONESFIELD SLATE. 407 



On the Fossil Mammalia from the Stonesfield 



Slate. 



By 



E. S. Ooodiicli, F.L.S., 



Assistant to the Liuacre Professor of Comparative Anatomy, Oxford. 



With Plate 26. 



Ever since the discovery, made some eighty years ago, of 

 Mammalian remains in the Stonesfield Slate near Oxford, 

 these fossils have excited the interest of naturalists, and have 

 been the subject of much discussion amongst geologists and 

 palaeontologists both in England and abroad. Nevertheless 

 something still remains to be described in the few specimens 

 which exist; and, while one of them has not yet been figured 

 at all, others have been only inaccurately represented. I 

 therefore propose to write a short history of each fossil, as far 

 as it is known, giving figures when necessary; and to sum up 

 the most important results which have been reached with 

 regard to them by previous authors, together with some 

 remarks as to the bearing of the facts ascertained by a careful 

 study of the teeth belonging to these remains on the general 

 question of the origin and homology of the cusps of Mam- 

 malian teeth. 



Besides the fragment of the multituberculate form Stereo- 

 gnathus, which I shall mention later, there are only twelve 

 undoubted fossil Mammalian remains from the Stonesfield 

 Slate at present known; ten of these are lower jaws, two are 

 limb bones. Six of the fossil jaws are in the Oxford Museum, 

 one in the York Museum, one in the private collection of 



