Sha re 
II. Notice on the Fossil Beaks of four extinct Species of Fishes, 
referrible to the Genus Chimera, that occur in the Oolitic 
and Cretaceous Formations of England. By the Rev. WM. 
Buckianp, D.D. F.G.S., Professor of Geology and Minera- 
legy in the University of Oxford.* 
BOUT six years ago, Sir Philip Grey Egerton procured 
from the Kimmeridge clay of Shotover Hill, near Oxford, 
five remarkable fossil bodies of most curious configuration, in 
some degree resembling beaks of Cuttlefishes and Turtles, but 
not reducible to any known form in either of these families. 
In 1832, the Rev. C. Townsend of Great Milton, near Ox- 
ford, discovered in the Portland stone of that village another 
series of bones, resembling those from the Kimmeridge clay, 
but very much larger, and of a different species. 
On my submitting these specimens to Mr. Mantell, he im- 
mediately compared them with three similar bones in his collec- 
tion,—one from the Chalk marl of Hamsey, and two from the 
Chalk near Lewes. These were obviously the same parts of 
two other species of animals of the same genus. That from 
the Chalk marl had been shown by him to Cuvier, who could 
only recognise in it a distant resemblance to the articulating 
posterior portion of a jaw of a Saurian; but this resemblance 
was not maintained in the more perfect fragments of other 
species which had come into my possession from the Kimme- 
ridge and Portland beds. 
Mr. Mantell permitted me at this time to prepare a draw- 
ing of the fragment from the Chalk marl which he had sub- 
mitted to Cuvier. 
After searching in vain through the best collections in Lon- 
don, and consulting our best comparative anatomists, I could 
find no animal whose beak or jaws corresponded with either 
of the forms of fossil bones under consideration. 
During the last five years I have lost no opportunity of 
submitting these fossils to skilful comparative anatomists, and 
with the same result. My exhibition of several of them to 
some of the most distinguished anatomists of Germany, at the 
meeting of the Naturforscher at Bonn in September last, threw 
no further light upon the subject. The nearest approxima- 
tion that was suggested to me came from Professor Carus, 
who advised me to compare the two smallest of these fossils 
(evidently a pair) with the beak of a Tetrodon. 
In pursuance of this advice, I examined all the Tetrodons 
in every museum I visited after my departure from Bonn, 
and arrived at no other conclusion than the assurance that 
* Communicated by the Author. This paper was read before the Geo- 
logical Society on the 4th of November, 1835. 
