86 BULLETIN: MUSEUxM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



in 1794 several specimens pertaining to the Balaenidae from the Antwerp 

 Crag, and records having some in his possession from America as well. 1 

 Thereafter, remains of this sort attracted but little attention on the part 

 of naturalists, not even excepting Cuvier, until the late P. J. Van 

 Beneden began his important researches on recent and fossil Cetacea 

 during the third decade of the last century. Indeed, one of the earliest 

 papers of the Belgian cetologist relates to the identification of rorquals 

 from the Antwerp Crag by means of a comparative study of ear-bones : 2 

 and another, published the same year, lias for its title : " Observations 

 sur les caracteres specifiques des grands Cetaces, tires de la conformation 

 de l'oreille osseuse. " 3 During the early forties, fossil ear-bones were 

 discovered in the Red Crag of Suffolk, and on being shown by agricul- 

 tural chemists to contain a large proportion of lime phosphates, the 

 deposits containing them were actively exploited. Owen refers to the 

 economic importance of the strata, estimating that many thousand 

 pounds annually of the superphosphates were derived from its concre- 

 tions, and that "thousands of cubic acres of earlier strata must have 

 been broken up to furnish the Cetacean nodules of the 'Red Crag.' 

 This is a striking instance of the profitable results of a seemingly most 

 unpromising discovery in pure science — the determination of what in 

 1840 was regarded as a rare, unique, and most problematical British 

 fossil." 4 



Although our knowledge of British fossil Cetacea was largely increased 

 by Owen, his attention was only incidentally engaged by ear-bones, and 

 it is to the later investigations of Lankester, Flower, and Lydekker 5 

 that we owe our chief information in regard to English material. 

 Casual references occur to this class of remains in the writings of Amer- 

 ican palaeontologists, but no attempt has thus far been made to collect 

 the results of their scattered observations. Indeed, instances are not 

 wanting where these organs have been entirely overlooked, although 



1 Beschreibung einer neu entdeckten versteinerten Theile grosser Seethieren. 

 Der Naturforscher, 3 Stuck, p. 178-183, 1774. The date of publication is also 

 given as 1794 by Van Beneden and Gervais in their work on Cetaceans, one of 

 their species being dedicated to the Baron, " qui a bien connu ces ossements fos- 

 siles a la fin du sieele dernier." 



2 Mention du gite important d'Anvers. Bull. Acad. Roy. Belg., 1835, 2, p. 67. 



3 Comptes-rendus 1835, 3, p. 401. 



4 Palaeontology, p. 343, Edinburgh, 1860. Hist. Brit. Foss. Mammals, p. 536. 



5 Complete references are given in Dr. Lydekker's paper on Cetacea of the 

 Suffolk Crag (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. (1887), 43, p. 7-18), and in his Supple- 

 ment to the Catalogue of Fossil Mammals in the British Museum (1887). 



