These fossils vary considerably in their size and form : some scarcely 

 exceeding a quarter of an inch, whilst others are full five inches in length ; 

 some heirig triangular and flat; some long, straight, and conical; and 

 others very nearly resembling, in form, the beak of a bird. The great 

 variety in their forms serves to show us, that the animals from which 

 they derived their origin must have differed materially from each other. 



The large triangular glossopetrse, with nearly straight and finely jag- 

 ged edges, rather an obtuse apex, and a flattish or slightly-forked base, 

 appears to have belonged to an animal differing, at least in its magni- 

 tude, from any animal with which we are acquainted, that is furnished 

 with teeth of a similar form. The specimen Plate XIX. Fig. 11, though 

 inferior to many in size, must have belonged to an enormous animal : it 

 is four inches and a half long, and three inches and a half wide at its 

 base. M. Lacepede has made some very ingenious calculations respect- 

 ing the size of the shark to which a fossil tooth in the National Museum 

 had belonged, which tooth was rather smaller than the one here figured; 

 and he concludes, that it could not have been less than seventy feet nine 

 inches in length. 



These teeth have been supposed to approach the nearest in form to 

 those of the white shark Squalus carcharias, Linn.; and calculating the 

 size of the animal, to which some of these fossil teeth have belonged, from 

 the size of the teeth in the white shark of the present time, it cannot be 

 doubted that some of these animals must have been at least an hundred 

 feet in length. 



These teeth, from their supposed origin from these animals, have been 

 named carchariodontes. They have been also called Lfrmiodontts, from 

 these animals having been named Lamia, by the earlier naturalists. They 

 have been found in different parts of the world ; but, in the greatest 

 numbers, in Malta and t^e neighbouring islands. 



Teeth of a nearly similar form, but of much less magnitude, are also 

 frequently found. It is difficult to say whether these have belonged to 

 young animals of the same species as those which bore the teeth, just 



