212 PROF. T. M’KENNY HUGHES, M.A. 
surroundings. Some are recent and were obtained from 
native tribes who still make them. 
But I would submit that if these saurian bones now 
exhibited had been found in a cave with harpoons and 
various carved and manufactured objects, there would be no 
question as to their being of human workmanship. These 
bones would be thrown in with the rest as scored and cut by 
man, though for what purpose we might not be able to tell. 
But I procured this bone 17 feet down in the Kimmeridge 
Clay, near Ely. 
The first suspicion is, of course, that there must be some 
mistake ; that it was a bone from the Kimmeridge Clay lying 
on the surface, which had got scored by man or striated by 
ice action, and that it had fallen from the top as the work- 
men were excavating,—a very common source of error. 
Although there is boulder clay about, we may dismiss the 
suggestion of ice action, as the marks have not the character 
of glacial scratches; but they certainly do resemble the work 
of man. 
We are, however, able to prove that they are due neither 
to glacial nor human agency, and that there is no mistake as 
to the derivation of the specimen, but that the cut bone really 
did he in the Kimmeridge Clay; for here and there on the 
scored surface there are shells of a small oyster (Hxogyra 
nana), and a Polyzoon [ Berenicea (Diastopora) |, of Jurassic age, 
which attached themselves to solid bodies on the sea bottom, 
and grew on them, taking their form. So these fossils have 
the impress of the cuts upon them, which were in this manner 
stereotyped, as it were, in the Jurassic sea, and still survive 
to teach us caution.: 
The other saurian limb bone which I exhibit is from the 
same series at Ely. It is similarly cut and grooved; while 
overlapping the striz there extends a caleareous incrustation 
not uncommonly found on bones in place in the Kimmeridge 
Clay. This also must: have received the markings in the 
Jurassic sea. 
Now for a few words of speculation. What can have made 
the marks? In talking the matter over, Baron von Hugel 
told me he once saw sharks playing with large bones thrown 
out to them, not bolting them at once, but now one and now 
another catching them. He could not tell what the bones 
looked like when they had done with them, but we may infer 
that a fresh bone would certainly yield to the bite of the 
conical-toothed fish and saurians of the Kimmeridge age, 
even though we may not credit them with the cutting power 
of the hyena jaw, the toughness of the otter’s tooth, that 
