VI PREFACE. 



were mounted on tablets of a conspicuous colour, we found that 

 they could be safely put into their proper places in the series, 

 and that it was better to display on the top of the cabinets 

 those specimens which best showed generic and specific cha- 

 racters, and were thus of greatest educational value and 

 general interest. 



In addition to indicating in the museum the importance of 

 such specimens, it is most desirable to publish a catalogue of 

 them, so that specialists may know where to find the types, and 

 this task has been most ably performed for the Woodwardian 

 Museum by Mr H. Woods, whose knowledge of the Museum 

 and of Paleontology, eminently qualified him for the work. 



Besides the types and other figured fossils, there are a great 

 number of specimens referred to. An author mentions for 

 instance, that there is in the Woodwardian Museum, in such 

 and such a series, a fossil which illustrates some point under 

 discussion. These specimens have been labelled as 'mentioned.' 



There is another series, the acquired importance of which is 

 often almost equal to that of types, namely, the specimens 

 which have been determined for us by high authorities, and we 

 have endeavoured to indicate this in the case of all those which 

 we have recently acquired, or which have been lately deter- 

 mined, but it will be long before we can overtake the work of 

 indicating by labels who is responsible for the determination of 

 each specimen, even of those for which we know or can ascer- 

 tain the authority. But in a museum of any antiquity, the 

 authorities for the determination of the larger number of the 

 specimens must remain for ever unrecorded. 



We have not included, in this catalogue, the described and 

 figured fossils in the collections of the seventeenth century, now 

 in our Museum. For instance, incorporated into the original 

 museum of Dr John Woodward, we have the collection of Agos- 

 tino Scilla, a distinguished painter and naturalist, who was born 

 at Messina in 1639. He subsequently removed to Rome, where 

 he became President of the Academy of Painting. A few of 

 his pictures are to be found in Rome, and the churches of 



