DINOSA URS. 99 



swept by some flood into the chasm in which the remains were 

 discovered. They were buried in clay interstratified with sand, a 

 fact which was interpreted in accordance with the above suggestion. 



M. de Pauw, the accomplished controller of the workshops in 

 the Royal Museum of Natural History at Brussels, spent three 

 whole years in extracting this splendid series of fossils from the 

 pit-shaft, the bones being brought up from a depth of rather more 

 than 350 yards. But at the end of this time it was only the 

 rough material that had been got together, and every block con- 

 taining bones requires a great deal of most careful labour before 

 the bones in it are so exposed that they can be properly studied. 

 Out of the twenty-three specimens, fifteen had, in the year 1883, 

 been chiselled out, eight remaining to be worked at ; and although 

 five skilled workmen were then constantly at work, progress was 

 necessarily slow. 



In 1883, that is after seven years, two huge entire skeletons had 

 been set up in a great glass case in the Courtyard of the Museum 

 at Brussels, and these exhibit with marvellous completeness the 

 structure of the extinct monster. 1 The work reflects the highest 

 credit on M. de Pauw ; 2 and the director of the Bernissart Mining 

 Company, M. Fages, deserves the thanks of all scientific men for 

 so liberally aiding this important undertaking. These specimens 

 illustrate the conclusion, previously arrived at by Professor Huxley, 

 that Dinosaurs, as a group, occupy a position in the great chain 

 of animal life intermediate between reptiles and birds. Indeed, 

 it is the opinion of this great authority, and of many naturalists 

 of the present day, that whenever future discoveries may reveal 

 the ancestry of birds, it will be found that they came from 

 Dinosaurs, or that both originated from a common ancestor. 



The specimens so skilfully set up by M. de Pauw represent 



1 In August, 1892, Mr. Uollo wrote, in answer to inquiries from South 

 Kensington, to say that five are already mounted and exhibited, and five more 

 are almost ready for mounting. He also stated that the remains represent 

 twenty-nine individuals, not twenty-three, as above. 



2 Geological Magazine, January, 1885. 



