Geological Society. 331 



Mr. Owen then describes, with his wonted minuteness and per- 

 fect acquaintance with the subject, other caudal vertebrae found at 

 Blisworth, but it is not possible to abridge the details. 



Among the remains discovered near Chipping Norton are eleven 

 caudal vertebrae without transverse processes, and therefore assigned 

 by the author to the terminal half of the tail. They progressively 

 diminished in transverse diameter from five inches to two inches, 

 but without losing in equal ratio their length, which continues 

 the same, or five and a half inches in the vertebra which has only 

 three inches and three lines of breadth, five inches in that which is 

 two inches and nine lines broad, and four inches in that which has a 

 breadth of two inches. These eleven vertebrae do not constitute, 

 Mr. Owen shows, a regular sequence, but detached links of the ter- 

 mination of the spinal column. In all the existing genera of Cetacea 

 the posterior caudal vertebrae become shorter in proportion to their 

 thickness, and the terminal ones are depressed. The slender elon- 

 gated form of the corresponding vertebrae in the Cetiosaurus, is, Mr. 

 Owen shows, a striking crocodilian character ; and he adds, it is im- 

 portant to observe that not any of the series of caudal vertebrae de- 

 scribed in this paper exhibit the vertical canals or perforations of the 

 side of the centrum or base of the transverse process which so pe- 

 culiarly characterizes most of the cetacean caudal vertebrae. 



In his comparison between the vertebrae of the Cetiosaurus and 

 the Poikilopleuron, Professor Owen states that the caudal vertelirae 

 of the former resemble those of the latter and most other reptiles 

 from strata below the chalk in the articular surfaces being slightly 

 concave ; and the vertebrae of the Poikilopleuron, especially in the 

 elongated and rounded form of the body ; in its median compression, 

 and in the articulation of the haemapophyses to the inferior part of 

 the vertebral interspaces, though they are larger ; on the contrary, the 

 Cetiosaurus vertebrae differ in their proportions, in their structure, 

 as in the absence of the remarkable medullary cavity in the middle 

 part of the centrum of the Poikilopleuron ; in the shortness of the 

 neurapophyses as compared with the centrum ; and in other minor 

 points, which are fully detailed by Professor Owen. 



The author then proceeds to institute further comparisons ])etween 

 the verteljrae of the Cetiosaurus and other reptilia : thus he shows 

 tliat tliey differ from the vertebrae of the Crocodilians in retaining 

 the cylindrical form of the- body to the end of the tail, instead of 

 being compressed and four-sided ; that there is no trace of the ver- 

 tical median division which the bodies of the caudal vertebrre pre- 

 sent in Iguanas, Anolides and other Lacertians ; that they are not 

 only larger than in tlie Megalosaurus, but relatively longer ; that 

 they differ from the anterior caudal vertebras of the Iguanodon, 

 which are nearly as large, in the absence of the well-marked con- 

 cavity below the transverse processes, in the form of the centrum 

 not l)eing so quadrilateral, and especially in the transverse breadth 

 of the inferior surface being less ; and from the posterior caudal 

 vertebrae of the Iguanodon, which slightly increases in length, in 

 being less compressed and the centrum not having a triangular form ; 



Z 2 



