Mr. J. C. Pearce on the Embryo of an Ichthyosaurus. 45 
downwards in the quarry, I removed the clay with great care and 
exposed to view an Ichthyosaurus communis? about eight and a 
half feet long, lying on its back in the highest state of preserva- 
tion, and with the exception of a slight dislocation in the middle 
of the tail and the deficiency of its point, every part is most per- 
fectly preserved. In cautiously lifting the laminz of clay between 
the two hinder paddles, my attention was first arrested by a series 
of small vertebree lying on three or four of the posterior ribs ; on 
removing another portion of the clay, ribs, the rami of the jaw, 
and the other parts of the head were visible. In carefully clean- 
ing this delicate little skeleton, it was found to rest on black, 
finely corrugated integument, which is preserved around the 
small skeleton, and passes underneath the posterior ribs and 
some other parts of the large animal. 
The little animal, somewhat dislocated, lies at full length in the 
cavity of the pelvis, with its head towards the tail of the large 
one, and rests on the internal surface of its integument, and on 
the internal surfaces of three of its posterior left ribs, and is about 
five and a half inches long. The rami of the jaw and one of the 
longest ribs (of which only five or six are discernible) are each 
about an inch long; and of the thirty vertebra which can be 
counted, the largest is the eighth of an inch in its longest dia- 
meter. It is bounded on either side by the ilium, ischium and 
pubis, and by the right and left posterior paddles, and on the right 
side by the vertebral column and right ribs ; and while the poste- 
rior two-thirds of the little animal is within the pelvis, the head 
appears to protrude beyond it, and apparently in the act of bemg 
expelled at the time of death. 
So singular a circumstance as the embryo being found in the 
pelvis of its parent in a fossil state, should lead to the greatest 
care in arriving at such a conclusion; but when we consider 
that the large animal was developed on its under surface—conse- 
quently it is nothing that has fallen upon it—and the remarkably 
correct position of the little skeleton in the pelvis, between the 
right and left ribs, with its head protruding, and the little ver- 
tebree so exactly corresponding in shape to the large ones, and 
the other bones resembling those of a Saurian, it appears fair to 
conclude that it cannot be anything else but a foetal /chthyosaurus ; 
and if it be suggested that it may have been swallowed by the 
animal, this involves a much greater difficulty; for so delicate a 
structure would have been dissolved by the gastric juice, and 
could not have reached its present position. 
The Rev. Dr. Buckland and Professor Owen, who have kindly 
written me on the subject, state, that there isno reason why the 
Ichihyosaurus should not be viviparous, although “ analogy of the 
