394 Afioplotherium comvmnefound in the Isle of Wight. 



paramount utility, and few where tlie want of it might be so 

 perilous and fatal. Such a chart of Zetland would be a per- 

 manent one; unlike in this respect to many, regarding other 

 parts of Great Britain, which require to be frequently modi- 

 fied to suit the changes produced by the action of the waves 

 in the formation and dissolution of sand-banks, and where 

 even the best charts can be too often of little other use, from 

 the scarcity of harbours, than to present more distinctly to the 

 unfortunate mariner the locality of his inevitable and impend- 

 ing shipw'reck. (Y.) — Annals of Philosophy. 



ON THE DISCOVERY OF THE ANOPLOTHERIUM COMMUNE IN 

 THE ISLE i)F WIGHT. BY PUOFKSSOR BUCKLAND. 



Since the publication of Mr. Webster's excellent Memoirs 

 on the Geology of the Isle of Wight, and the coasts adjacent 

 to it, no doubt has existed as to the identity of the fresh-water 

 formations that occur so extensively in that island with those 

 described by Cuvier and Bi'ongniart in the vicinity of Paris ; 

 and this conclusion has rested on the similarity of the remains 

 of fresh-water moUuscae and vegetables which these formations 

 respectively contain, and on a correspondence in their sub- 

 stance, and their relative position to other strata of marine 

 origin, quite sufficient to establish the contemporaneous depo- 

 sition of these remaikable strata at the bottom of ancient fresh- 

 water lakes in the districts which are geologically distinguished 

 by the appellation of the basin of Hampshire and the basin of 

 Paris. 



. There was still, however, a further point on which evidence 

 appeared desirable, inasmuch as the remains of the genus 

 Anoplotherium and other large lacustrine quadrupeds which 

 occur in the basir of Paris, had not been ascertained to exist 

 in England. This desideratum I have long felt anxious to sup- 

 ply; and in a rapid excursion to the west of the Isle of Wight 

 two years ago, I sought for the bones of these animals in the 

 cliffs of Headon Hill and Totland Bay, and some adjacent 

 quarries of the interior, without finding any thing more than 

 a small fragment too indistinct to be considered decisive of a 

 point to which no other evidence had yet been adduced. But 

 in the month of November last, whilst occupied in looking over 

 tlie cabinets of Mr. Thomas Allan, of Edinburgh, I discovered 

 a tooth, which he informed me he had himself collected several 

 years ago in the Isle of Wight, in the quarries of Binstead, 

 near Ride, and which immediately struck me as belonging to 

 one of the animals I had been so long in search of; and on 

 my subsequently showing it to Mr. Pentland (who is accu- 

 rately versed in all the details of the fossil quadrupeds of the 



Paris 



