102 Prof. H. G. Seeley on the 



XTI. — On the Type of the Genus Massospondylus, and on 

 somelWiehrcp artd Limh-hones o/M. (?) Browni. By H. G. 

 Seeley, F.R.S.* 



In 1854 the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons re- 

 ceived from the Harrisraith district, on the border of Natal in 

 tlie Drakensberg range, a series of bones presented by 

 Dr. R, J. N. Orpen and Mr. Joseph Millard Orpen. No 

 further remains of tliis animal have since been recovered. 

 Mr. J. M. Orpen, Member of the Legislative Assembly, Cape 

 of Good Hope, on August 5, 1889, wrote for me the following 

 further memorandum on the locality from which they came : — 

 " The spot where I obtained some large bones of a saurian 

 about 1853, which my father sent home, was on a hill capped 

 by sandstone on the east boundary of the farm Beaucherf, in 

 the district of Harrismith, on the watershed of the Drakens- 

 berg. Below the sandstone is a chocolate-coloured shale. I 

 think more of the bones would be found on the spot by exca- 

 vating. The fossils were on the east face of the beacon-hill 

 which is nortli-west of Beaucherf House." I was unable to 

 visit this locality, and the genus rests still upon the materials 

 collected by Mr. Orpen, which have never been figured. 



Fifty-five fragments or bones, numbered 331-386, were 

 selected by Sir R. Owen and briefly described in the 

 ' Descriptive Catalogue of the Fossil Organic Remains of 

 Reptilia and Pisces contained in the Museum of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons of England' (4to, London, 1854), 

 pp. 97-100. They were then regarded as indicating three or 

 more genera or species of large extinct carnivorous reptiles, 

 combining in their vertebras and bones of their extremities 

 both Crocodilian and Laceitilian characters, with an indica- 

 tion of a structure of the sacrum like that seen in Dinosauria. 

 The species were named Massospondylus carinatus^ Pachy- 

 spondylus Orpeni^ and Leptospondylus capensis. They were 

 grouped under the Lacertilia in 1854. In Owen's ' Palajon- 

 tology,' 2nd ed. 1861, p. 300, Massospondylus is mentioned 

 under the Crocodilia and placed in the suborder Amphicoelia 

 or Teleosauria. A later reference to the type is made in 

 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxxvi. 1880, p. 415, where all 

 the genera are compared with the Anomodont reptile Platypo- 

 dosau)-us, but only to indicate differences. 



An examination of the remains shows that they are not all 



* Read before the Geological Society of London as Part 6 of " Con- 

 tributions to Knowledge of Sauriscliia," June 22, 1892. 



