DINOSAURS. 99 
swept by some flood into the chasm in which the remains were 
discovered. They were buried in clay interstratified with sand, a 
fact which was interpreted in accordance with the above suggestion. 
M. de Pauw, the accomplished controller of the workshops in 
the Royal Museum of Natural History at Brussels, spent three 
whole years in extracting this splendid series of fossils from the 
pit-shaft, the bones being brought up from a depth of rather more 
than 350 yards. But at the end of this time it was only the 
rough material that had been got together, and every block con- 
taining bones requires a great deal of most careful labour before 
the bones in it are so exposed that they can be properly studied. 
Out of the twenty-three specimens, fifteen had, in the year 1883, 
been chiselled out, eight remaining to be worked at; and although 
five skilled workmen were then constantly at work, progress was 
necessarily slow. 
In 1883, that is after seven years, two huge entire skeletons had 
been set up in a great glass case in the Courtyard of the Museum 
at Brussels, and these exhibit with marvellous completeness the 
structure of the extinct monster.! The work reflects the highest 
credit on M. de Pauw ;? and the director of the Bernissart Mining 
Company, M. Fages, deserves the thanks of all scientific men for 
so liberally aiding this important undertaking. ‘These specimens 
illustrate the conclusion, previously arrived at by Professor Huxley, 
that Dinosaurs, as a group, occupy a position in the great chain 
of animal life intermediate between reptiles and birds. Indeed, 
it is the opinion of this great authority, and of many naturalists 
of the present day, that whenever future discoveries may reveal 
the ancestry of birds, it will be found that they came from 
Dinosaurs, or that both originated from a common ancestor. 
The specimens so skilfully set up by M. de Pauw represent 
1 In August, 1892, Mr. Dollo wrote, in answer to inquiries from South 
Kensington, to say that five are already mounted and exhibited, and five more 
are almost ready for mounting. He also stated that the remains represent 
twenty-nine individuals, not twenty-three, as above. 
2 Geological Magazine, January, 1885. 
