THE GREAT FISH-LIZARDS 63 



In the year 1814 a few bones were found on the Dorsetshire 

 coast between Charmouth and Lyme Eegis, and added to the 

 collection of Bullock. They came from the Lias cliffs, undermined 

 by the encroaching sea. Sir Everard's attention being attracted 

 to them, he published the notices already referred to. The analogy 

 of some of the bones to those of a crocodile, induced Mr. Kouig, of 

 the British Museum, to believe the animal to have been a saurian, 

 or lizard ; but the vertebrae, and also the position of certain open- 

 ings in the skull, indicated some remote affinity with fishes, but 

 this must not be pressed too far. The choice of a name, there- 

 fore, involved much difficulty; and at length he decided to call 

 it the Ichthyosaurus, or fish-lizard. Mr. Johnson, of Bristol, who 

 had collected for many years in that neighbourhood, found out 

 some valuable particulars about these remains. The conclusions 

 of Dean Buckland, then Professor of Geology at Oxford, led Sir 

 Everard to abandon many of his former opinions. The labours 

 of the learned men of the day were greatly assisted by the exertions 

 of Miss Anning, an enthusiastic collector of fossils. This lady, 

 devoting herself to science, explored the frowning and precipitous 

 cliffs in the neighbourhood of Lyme Regis, when the furious 

 spring-tide combined with the tempest to overthrow them, and 

 rescued from destruction by the sea, sometimes at the peril of her 

 life, the few specimens which originated all the facts and specula- 

 tions of those persons whose names will ever be remembered with 

 gratitude by geologists. 



Probably our readers are already more or less familiar with the 

 drawings of the fossilised remains of Ichthyosauri to be seen in 

 almost every text-book of geology. (Fig. 8 is from Owen's British 

 Fossil Reptiles.) But we recommend all who take an interest in 

 the world's lost creations to pay a visit to the great Natural 

 History Museum, at South Kensington. The fossil reptile gallery 



