INTRODUCTION. 



BETWEEN the years 1915 and 1917 the Geological Department of the British 

 Museum received as separate donations a large and important series of 

 Tertiary Fossils from the Southern Provinces of Nigeria, the specimens 

 having been collected at Ameki in the district of Omobialla, situated on the 

 route of the Port Harcourt Railway (Plate i). The collectors and donors of 

 this material were Sir Frederick Lugard, G.C.M.G., a former Governor- 

 General of Nigeria, Sir J. Eaglesome, K.C.M.G., a former Director of 

 Nigerian Railways, and Mr. A. E. Kitson, C.B.E., Director of the Geological 

 Survey of the Gold Coast, but by far the larger part of the collection was 

 that formed by Mr. Kitson, whose presentation of the same was made in 

 conjunction with Mr. W. Heward Bell, F.G.S. Although these donations 

 were received on three different occasions and therefore constitute separate 

 collections, it should be explained that as the specimens were obtained from 

 exactly the same deposits, they are referred to in the text of this report as one 

 collection, the collectors' names, however, being given under the various 

 specimens described. The whole of the Mollusca collected by Mr. Kitson 

 were obtained from several railway cuttings which were numbered consecutively 

 southwards from Ameki Station, those numbers being quoted in the text as a 

 part of the history of each species, although the author thinks that as the 

 deposits present the same facies throughout, no stratigraphical value can be 

 attached to such numbering. 



Some of the vertebrate specimens have already been referred to in 

 literature by Dr. A. S. Woodward 1 and Dr. C. W. Andrews 2 the former 

 having noted the occurrence of fish-remains belonging to Coelorhynchus rectus 

 Agassiz, Odontaspts aschersoni Stromer, Galeocerdo latidens Agassiz, Pristis, 

 Propristis schweinfurthi Dames, Platyloemus, and Arius (otoliths), an assem- 

 blage which was thought to agree best with that found in the European Middle 

 Eocene (Lutetian) and in similarly aged rocks of Egypt, Tunis and Algeria. 

 Among the remaining vertebrates, Dr. Andrews has described a new Zeuglodont 

 Whale under the name of Pappocetus lugardi, as well as a new Leathery 



