INTRODUCTION. 
T may appear somewhat unphilosophical at first sight 
to adopt insignificant topographical features of the 
present era as the boundaries of a region of the earth to 
be treated from a Paleontological point of view, since many 
of the specific types met with among the extinct faunze 
represented in British rocks are well known to occur in 
the corresponding beds of other parts of the world. From 
the vastness of the subject, however, it is necessary to 
assign. definite narrow limits to the area under consider- 
ation when attempting to record the actual state of 
knowledge of any great group of extinct animals; and 
in this work, which deals exclusively with the Fossil 
Vertebrata, it has therefore been deemed advisable to refer 
only to forms occurring in Britain. The restriction does not 
detract so seriously from the value of the result as might 
be supposed; for British Paleontology is an epitome of 
that of the whole world, and, although in some groups the 
British fossils are comparatively fragmentary, there is no 
other area of equal extent in which more variety is dis- 
played. Almost every type of importance seems to have 
some representative in our rocks. 
The earliest work of reference of a similar character is 
the Synoptical Table of British Organic Remains, by 
Samuel Woodward, published in 1830. At this date two 
pages sufficed for the enumeration of the known British 
Fossil Vertebrata; and the progress of the next twenty 
years is well illustrated by Professor John Morris’ Catalogue 
of British Fossils, which first appeared in 1843, and com- 
prised thirty pages devoted to the same group. In lag 
