910 



Geological Society : — 



Ox. 



Early. 

 Year. Month. 



Early. 



Year. Month. 



Hog. 



Year. 

 1 

 1 





 

 

 



1 

 1 

 1 

 1 



Month. 







6 



9 



9 



6 

 10 



6 











3 



The symbols of the teeth are explained in the author's paper " On 

 the Homologies of the Teeth," in Reports of the British Association, 

 1848 ; and in Orr's ' Circle of the Sciences,' 8vo, 1854. 



The additional specimens of the Dichodon described in this paper 

 are from the Upper Eocene beds ; one from the Isle of Wight is pre- 

 served in the private collection of Dr. Wright of Cheltenham ; the 

 rest, from Hordwell, Hants, form part of the Collection of Fossils in 

 the British Museum. 



2. " On a Fossil Ophidian from Karabournou, Salonica Bay." By 

 Professor Owen, F.R.S., F.G.S. 



The vertebrae here described, thirteen in number, indicated by 

 their size a serpent of between 10 and 12 feet in length. They were 

 discovered some years since by Capt. Spratt, R.N., in the fresh- 

 water tertiary beds at the Promontory of Karabournou. Supposing 

 them to have been derived from other parts than the anterior fourth 

 part of the trunk, they resemble in the length of the hyjiapophysis 

 the vertebrae of Crotalus, Vipera, and Natrix ; which they also re- 

 semble in the presence of a process developed from both the upper 

 and lower part of the diapophysis. The results of a minute compa- 

 rison of all the parts of the complex vertebrae of ophidian reptiles 

 were given, which rendered it probable that the Salonica fossil ser- 

 pent resembled those genera in which the hypapophysis is well de- 

 veloped from all the trunk vertebrae : the breadth of the base of the 

 neural arch indicates that they have been from about the middle of 

 the trunk. They offer so many points of resemblance with those of 

 the Rattlesnake and Viper, that they may have belonged to a venom- 

 ous species, but they are specifically distinct from those existing 

 serpents : they differ generically and in a very marked degree from 

 the vertebrae of the great constricting serpents {Python and Boa), as 

 well as from the large fossil serpent {Palceophis) of the Eocene Tertiarjj^ 

 formations. A summary of the known existing serpents of Southern 

 Europe and Asia Minor was given, showing that none of the living spe- 

 cies equal in bulk the fossil serpent. " A classical myth embalmed in 

 the verse of Virgil and embodied in the marble of the Laocoon would 

 indicate a familiarity in the minds of the ancient colonists of Greece 



