585 



II. Extract of a Letter from Professor KREIL of Vienna, to 

 Major-General SABINE, Treas. and V.P.R.S., dated Nov. 26, 

 1858. Communicated by Professor W. H. MILLER, For. 

 Sec. U.S. 



" I am returned after an absence of nearly six months, during 

 which I have been travelling in the Danubian Principalities, in 

 Turkey in Europe, and along the south-west and north coasts of the 

 Black Sea, in order to make magnetic observations, and to determine 

 more accurately the geographical position, as well as the magnetic 

 declination, of many points of the coast." 



III. " Fossil Mammals of Australia (Part I.). Description of a 

 mutilated skull of a large Marsupial Carnivore (Thylacoleo 

 Carnifex, Ow.), from a conglomerate stratum, eighty miles 

 S.W. of Melbourne, Australia." By Professor R. OWEN, 

 F.R.S., &c. Received September 18, 1858. 



In this paper the author gives a description of a fossil skull and 

 certain of the teeth of a quadruped of the size of a lion, in which he 

 points out the characters indicative of its carnivorous habits and of 

 its affinities to the marsupial order. 



The large size of the temporal fossae, meeting to form a low crest 

 on the parietal bone, and bounded behind by a strong occipital crest ; 

 together with large carnassial teeth in both upper and lower jaws, 

 evince the carnivorous habits of the extinct species. Its marsupial 

 nature is, in the author's opinion, demonstrated by the following 

 cranial structures : A large vacuity in the bony palate ; a propor- 

 tionally large lacrymal bone extending upon the face and perforated 

 by the lacrymal canal, anterior and external to the orbit ; three ex- 

 ternal precondyloid foramina ; the perforation of the basisphenoid by 

 the entocarotid canal ; the great interval between the foramen ovale 

 and foramen rotundum ; the separation of the tympanic from the 

 petrous bone ; and the development of the * bulla auditoria ' in the 

 alisphenoid ; the position of the outlet for a vein from the lateral 

 sinus behind and above the root of the zygoma ; finally, the low and 

 broad occiput, and the very small relative capacity of the brain-case. 



