THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE IV. VOL. VIII. 



No. XI.— NOVEMBER, 1901. 



oiaic3-iisr.A.iL jli^ticxjES. 



L — On the Bone-beds of Pikermi, Attica, and on similar 

 Deposits in Noethern Eubcea. 



By A. Smith "Woodward, LL.D., F.R.S. 



AT the suggestion of the British Minister at Athens, Sir Edwin 

 H. Egerton, K.C.B., the Trustees of the British Museum 

 recently undertook a series of excavations in the well-known bone- 

 beds of Pikermi, in Attica, and I was honoured by being entrusted 

 with the supervision of the work. The owner of the estate, 

 Mr. Alexander Skouses, former Minister of War, most cordially 

 assented, and gave every possible facility for the undertaking; 

 while Sir Edwin Egerton's unflagging interest and zeal combined to 

 ensure the greatest success. My wife and I went into residence at 

 the farm of Pikermi early in April, and we continued to occupy the 

 simple but comfortable room which Mr. Skouses had kindly placed 

 at our disposal, until the cessation of digging in the middle of July. 

 During much of the time we were accompanied by Dr. Theodore 

 Skouphos, Conservator of the Geological Museum in the University 

 of Athens, which claims some share of the results of all such 

 excavations made in Greece. We have to thank him for much 

 help in dealing with the workmen, who spoke only a language with 

 which I was at first unfamiliar. 



The bones are occasionally exposed by the small stream in the 

 ravine of Pikermi, and they seem to have been first observed by 

 the English archaeologist George Finlay, who presented some to 

 the Athens Museum in 1835. Three years later a Bavarian soldier 

 took a few specimens to Munich, where Pikermi and its fossils 

 were first brought to the notice of the scientific world by Professor 

 Andreas Wagner. Within the next decade, more bones were sent 

 to Munich by Lindermayer and described by Wagner; while during 

 the Winter of 1852-53 the young Bavarian naturalist Roth made 

 the great collection which was described by himself and Wagner 

 in 1854, and still constitutes one of the chief treasures of the 

 Munich Old Academy. About the same time Choeretis presented 

 a few specimens to the Paris Museum ; while the late Professor 



DECADE IV. VOL. VIII. — NO. XI. 31 



