Mr. T. W. Shore — Discovery of Bos primigenius. 519 

 COiaS-iESIPOIsriDIKlITCE. 



EEMAINS OF BOS FRIMIGENIUS RECENTLY FOUND AT 

 SOUTHAMPTON. 



Sir, — During the progress of the excavation for the purpose of 

 forming a new deep water dock of eighteen acres at Southampton, 

 a fine specimen of the horn cores and part of the skull of Bos 

 primigenms has been found. 



The river mud with which the excavation begins is of a thickness 

 varying from ten to fifteen feet, below which a bed of peat resting 

 on dark angular flint gravel occurs. Both the peat and the gravel 

 vary in thickness, as the gravel is found more or less in ridges, ia 

 the hollows of which the peat attains its greatest depth. It was 

 from one of these thick masses of peat that the remains of Bos 

 primigenius were met with at a depth of nearly twenty feet below 

 the surface of the mud, which formed the bed of the tidal estuary at 

 this spot. 



The skull was found in one piece, and includes the frontal, 

 occipital, temporal, sphenoid (with both wings), and tympanic 

 bones, with fragments of the pterygoids, and of the ethmoids. 



The temporal fossas are preserved, and the roof of one orbit, and 

 part of the other ; the zygomatic arches are incomplete. 



The breadth of the forehead, across the centre, is ten inches, and 

 between the orbits about twelve inches. The length of the forehead 

 as preserved is eleven inches, and the length from the frontal crest 

 to the base of the occipital bone is ten inches. The circumference 

 of the cores of the horns at their roots is sixteen and a quarter 

 inches, and the length of the cores round the curvature about 

 twenty-nine inches. The width apart of the horn cores from tip to 

 tip is thirty-four and a half inches. 



The specimen has been placed in the Museum of the Hartley 

 Institution, Southampton. T. W. Shore. 



PAL^ONTOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE AND THE TRINOMIAL 



SYSTEM. 



Sir, — An answer given not very long ago in an Examination 

 paper was as follows, " Physical Geography is the work of God, 

 Geology is the work of man." No doubt the candidate who wrote 

 this answer failed to receive full marks ; but since the matter was 

 brought to my notice, it has frequently occurred to me that the reply 

 was not altogether inappropriate. Geology and Paleontology are 

 suffering from such an infusion of new and hard names that the 

 ordinai-y reader and even the hard-working student are often 

 bewildered and baffled in their efforts to comprehend the progress of 

 knowledge. It is not my intention now to discuss any of the new 

 terms applied to our formations and their subdivisions ; suffice it to 

 say that most of the suggestions to replace old and well-understood 

 names would, if adopted, be more likely to place obstacles in the 

 path of the inquirer than to assist or encourage his studies. What 

 even more painfully stirs me at the present time is the multiplication 



