316 [Dec. 18, 



December 18, 1862. 



Major-General SABINE, President, in the Chair. 

 The following communications were read : 



1. "Description of a new Specimen of Glyptodon, recently ac- 

 quired by the Royal College of Surgeons of England." 

 By THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, F.R.S., Hunterian Professor 

 of Comparative Anatomy at the College. Received No- 

 vember 14, 1862. 



In the present brief preliminary notice I propose to give an account 

 of the more remarkable features of the skeleton of a specimen of the 

 extinct genus Glyptodon, recently added to the Museum of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons. 



The specimen was obtained in 1860, by Signor Maximo Terrero, on 

 the banks of the River Salado, and was presented to the College by 

 that gentleman, through the instrumentality of the late President of 

 the College, J. F. South, Esq. 



It arrived in England in an extremely broken and mutilated con- 

 dition; but, by the exercise of great care and patience, Mr. Waterhouse 

 Hawkins, to whom the President and Council of the Royal College 

 of Surgeons entrusted the task of adjusting the scattered fragments, 

 has succeeded in restoring to their natural condition the greater part 

 of the vertebral column, the limbs, and much of the head. In the 

 execution of this laborious undertaking Mr. Hawkins has had, from 

 time to time, all the anatomical aid that Mr. Flower, the Conservator 

 of the College Museum, and I could afford him ; and the authorities 

 of the College have finally entrusted me, as one of the Professors of 

 the College, with the duty of describing the specimen. 



This duty I propose to discharge by preparing a full description 

 of the skeleton in a memoir to be presented (accompanied by a 

 draught of the requisite illustrations) to the Royal Society. But as 

 the preparation of such a memoir will require some time, I wish, at 

 present, to lay before the Royal Society a preliminary account of 

 those particulars in the structure of this animal which must interest 

 anatomists in general as much as the special student of the fossil 

 Edentata, in the hope that the notice may appear in the * Proceed- 

 ings' of the Society. 



