ROOM III. SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 137 



Turtles, Batrachians, Crocodilians, and Saurians, and some 

 splendid specimens of Plesiosauri ; these fossils are, for the 

 most part, from the tertiary and secondary formations of 

 England. 



This department of Palaeontology is of surpassing interest 

 in a physiological point of view, for it reveals to us colossal 

 forms of the class Reptilia, presenting anomalous and most 

 unexpected modifications of structure, belonging to species and 

 genera which inhabited the lands and waters through count- 

 less ages, and have long since been obliterated from the face 

 of the earth. Of the remains of many of these remarkable 

 types of cold-blooded vertebrata, the collection in the British 

 Museum contains most valuable and instructive examples. 



ROOM III. 



(85 feet long.) 



SYNOPSIS OF CONTEXTS. 



ORGANIC REMAINS. 



WALL-CASES A. [1.] Swanage Crocodile. (Goniopholis 

 crassidens.) Affixed to the wall are two slabs of fresh- water 

 limestone, being the corresponding parts of the same block of 

 stone, exposing a considerable number of the detached parts 

 of the skeleton of a reptile allied to the Crocodile. This is 

 a most interesting specimen from the Wealden strata at 

 Swanage. Detached bones and dermal plates of the same 

 species from the strata of Tilgate Forest are placed on the 

 shelves below. On the lowest shelf is the cast of a portion of 

 the lower jaw with teeth of the Megalosaurus Bucklandi, 

 from the lower Oolite of Stonesfield ; the original is in the 

 museum at Oxford. 



In the angle of the case (marked Batrachians) on the upper 

 shelf, is the celebrated (Eningen Salamander, (Cryptobranchw 

 diluvii testis,) the subject of Scheuchzer's treatise, "Homo 

 Diluvii Testis et Theoscopos." 



On the middle shelves there are many fine examples of 



