70 Dr Buckland's .Address. 



on the outer and inner surface, are more complex than those of any known 

 edentate, and indicate a passage from that family into the toxodon. 

 The ungual phalanges are wholly unlike those of the Megatherium, and 

 most nearly resemble those of Dasypus, but are short, broad, and flat, 

 and seem to have been covered with hoof-like claws. The form of the 

 foot most nearly resembled that of the fore-foot of the mole. Having ap- 

 propriated to the Glyptodon the armour supposed to belong to the me- 

 gatherium, Mr Owen next proves that the latter animal was unprovided 

 with any such bony covering, arguing from a comparison of its vertebral 

 column and pelvis with that of the armadillo ; and from the absence of 

 the oblique processes, which in the loricated edentata resemble, as to 

 form and use, the tie-bearers in carpentry, that support the weight of a 

 roof. The vertebral conditions of the Megatherium are nearer to those of 

 the sloths and ant-eaters. We have accounts of twelve skeletons of Me- 

 gatherium, not one of which was found to be accompanied by bony ar- 

 mour. Cuvier considered the Megatherium more nearly allied to the ant- 

 eaters and sloths than to the armadillos. 



Captain Martin has found that many parts of the bottom of the English 

 Channel and German Ocean contain in deep water the bones and tusks 

 of elephants. They have been dredged up between Boulogne and Dunge- 

 ness, in the mid-sea between Dover and Calais, and at the back of the 

 Goodwin Sands ; also midway between Yarmouth and the coast of Hol- 

 land. In 1837, a fisherman inclosed in his net a vast mass of bones be- 

 tween the two shoals called Varn and Ridge, that form a line of subma- 

 rine chalk-hills between Dover and Calais. Captain Martin says these 

 bones do not occur on the top of banks or shoals, but in deep hollows or 

 marine valleys. Sir John Trevelyan possesses the molars of a large ele- 

 phant from gravel in the bed of the Severn, near Watchet, and we have 

 long known that the bones of elephants occur in great abundance in the 

 oyster grounds off Yarmouth. 



In subterranean ornithology three important discoveries have been made 

 during the past year ; the first in the eocene formation by Professor 

 Owen, who has recognised the fossil vulture before alluded to in the Lon- 

 don clay of Sheppey ; the second by Lord Cole and Sir P. Egerton, who 

 have acquired from the chalk of Kent the humerus of a bird most like 

 that of an albatross, but of larger and longer dimensions ; the third by 

 Professor Agassiz, who has found in Switzerland a nearly entire skeleton 

 of a small bird (not unlike a swallow), at Glaris, in the indurated blue 

 slate-beds of the lower regi >n of the chalk-formation. We know that the 

 bones of a wader, larger than a heron, have been found by Mr Mantell 

 in the Wealden formation of Tilgate Forest ; and that the Ornithichnites 

 in the new red sandstone of Connecticut have been referred to seven 

 species of birds. 



We have an interesting accession to our knowledge of the anatomy of 

 the Ichthyosaurus in Mr Owen's description of the hinder fin of an Ichthyo- 

 saurus communis, discovered at Barrow-ou-Soar by Sir Philip Egerton ; 



