383 Mr. R. Walker on the Skeleton of a Seal 



having a dark areola^ and there is a very great difference in the 

 form and extension of the marginal (and especially of the ante- 

 rior marginal) plates. 



Along with the above specimen, Capt. Speke has also sent to 

 the British Museum a specimen of Testudo pardalis, which dif- 

 fers from the general ventricose form by being elongated, like 

 the Indian Testudo stellata. It is very solid for its size, and the 

 black mark forms rays rather like the Indian species above- 

 named. There are the head and feet of a Testudo in the same 

 Collection, in spirits, which are believed to belong to the above 

 shell. They agree with T. pardalis, which is peculiar for having 

 the head covered with small scales, and only a pair of rather 

 small thin frontal shields just over the ends of the nose. 



XXXIX. — On the Skeleton of a Seal (Phoca Groenlandica ?), and 

 the Cranium of a Duck, from the Pliocene Beds, Fifeshii-e. By 

 Robert Walker. 



Fossils have not heretofore proved common in any of the Plio- 

 cene beds of the east of Fife ; and although some of our clay- 

 beds have been worked for many years, the discovery of fossil 

 remains in any of them is of rare occurrence ; and when they 

 happen to be met with, it is always in the upper clays, no fos- 

 sils of any kind, so far as I know, having ever been found in the 

 boulder-clay of this district. In the spring of 1857, a nearly 

 entire skeleton of a Seal was discovered in the red brick-clay of 

 Stratheden, about nine or ten miles inland, and ranging from 

 100 to 150 feet above the level of the sea. This specimen was 

 exhibited, and a paper on its discovery read, by Mr. Page, at the 

 meeting of the British Association in Leeds : the specimen is in 

 the Natural History Museum, Edinburgh. Another Seal, in 

 fully a better state of preservation, was found in the same clay- 

 pit in April 1859, and is now in the Natural History Museum, 

 St. Andrew's. This skeleton, as well as the preceding one, had 

 belonged to a young animal, and had evidently been imbedded 

 in the clay while all the ligaments, if not the muscles, were en- 

 tire. That this was the case may be inferred from all the boues 

 being in their respective places, any little derangement of posi- 

 tion being merely due to subsequent pressure. This skeleton 

 measures about 3 feet 2 inches in extreme length. The vertebral 

 formula is — 7 cervical, 15 dorsal, 5 lumbar, 3 sacral, 13 caudal. 

 The skull, which is very thin in this as well as in most of the 

 Seal family, was completely crushed ; and it was found impos-. 

 sible to restore more than the occipital and part of the parietal 

 and temporal regions. The cervical vertebrae are all in good. 



