ON THE FOSSIL ICHTHYOSAURUS. 233 



mer times be fully explored and appropriated : Bach, Handel, and 

 their cotemporaries will supersede on every piano-forte the wretch- 

 ed collections of harmonized aids, miscalled Psalm-tunes ; and Sun- 

 day evening, instead of being the last refuge of dullness, will re- 

 sound with strains worthy of the object they commemorate, and 

 which will assist in raising the soul to a contemplation of that pure 

 and happy state where beauty transcending far the poet's dream, 

 and harmony more exquisite than minstrel ever wrought, shall re- 

 ward us for temptations resisted and difficulties overcome. 



Y. D. AND T. W. 



ABSTRACT OF A PAPER ON THE FOSSIL 

 ICHTHYOSAURUS 



latelr purchased for the birmingham philosophical institution, 



Read on the 1st of May, 1837. 



The Lias, from which the interesting specimen we are going to 

 describe was taken, is one of the members of the secondary strata in- 

 termediate to the oolites and new red sandstone, upon which it lies 

 unconformably, to use a geological phrase — that is, it does not fol- 

 low, in the planes of its stratification, the elevations and depressions 

 of the upper surface of the sandstone, but fills up the latter, and 

 rests upon the former, in a way that proves that the deposition of 

 the Lias took place long after that of the sandstone. It extends in 

 a broad curve laid across the kingdom diagonally from Lyme in 

 Dorsetshire, through llie counties of Somerset, Gloucester, Worces- 

 ter, Warwick, Leicester, Nottingham, and York, to Whitby. It 

 consists of nearly horizontal beds of white, blue, or blackish lime- 

 stone, occasionally hardening into marble, and of various thickness, 

 alternating with layers of stifi' argilaceous shale or blue clay. 

 Sometimes the beds of limestone contain nodules of the same sub- 

 stance imbedded in clay, that separates them from the surround- 

 ing stone ; and it was in one of these nodules that the present spe- 

 cimen was enclosed, in a manner to which we shall have occasion to 

 revert hereafter. The stone contains from sixty to ninety per cent. 



