FOSSIL MAMMALIA FROM THE STONESFIELD SLATE. 425 



On the Primitive Mammalian Molar. 



Before closing this paper I should like to make a few 

 remarks with regard to the " Tritubercular theory," which has 

 been so zealously put forward by several eminent American 

 palaeontologists, and which has been so generally accepted in 

 Europe. There are two important questions involved in the 

 discussion : firstly as to the character of the primitive mam- 

 malian molar ; secondly as to the origin and homology of the 

 particular cusps. As before, only the teeth of the lower jaw 

 will here be dealt with. Professor Osborn, in his illustrations 

 of the theory of the origin of the tritubercular molar, has made 

 large use of the Mesozoic mammals found in England ; one can 

 therefore stand on firm ground while criticising his conclusions 

 and his interpretations of the facts. 



school-fellow thirty-two years ago, I took the specimen to Professor Huxley 

 at Jermyn Street, who cleared it from matrix and came to the conclusion 

 that it was a second example of Stereognatlius. The jaw was a fragment, 

 but there were four molars present instead of three, the number in the type 

 specimen. My first appearance in the field of scientific literature was as the 

 author of a letter to the ' Geologist,' vol. iv, 1861, recording the discovery of 

 this jaw. Much to my annoyance at the time my signature appeared as that 

 of a Mr. E. Ray, residing at the town of Lanbeater. Whether such a town 

 exists, or whether the name was a pure invention on the part of the printei-'s 

 devil, I have never ascertained. 



Further disappointment fell on me in connection with this jaw. Before 

 Huxley had had time to figure or describe it, I took it home for a few days 

 in order myself to make a lithograph of it. The anguish and despair of a 

 schoolboy on finding that he had broken to powder the treasure the 

 detection of which had been the pride of his life may be imagined. The 

 crowns of the molars, so carefully cleared from the matrix by Huxley, were 

 rubbed from the specimen — wrapped though it was in cotton wool — in my 

 pocket. I carried back the now mutilated and comparatively worthless 

 specimen to Jermyn Street, and speechless placed it in Huxley's hands, who 

 was only a little less grieved than I was. It was put aside in some cabinet 

 in the "den" then tenanted by the Naturalist to the Survey, and has never 

 been seen since, though searched for some twelve years later. There is a 

 possibility that in the course of time it may turn up either at Jermyn Street 

 or at the College of Science, South Kensington, whither my revered friend 

 and master — for so he became from the day when he took my Stonesfield jaw 

 in hand — migrated in 1870. — E. Ray Lankestee.] 



