Obituary— Mr. J. W. Salter. 477 



large new Plesiosauroid from Kansas, discovered by Wm. E. Webb, 

 of Topeka, which possessed deeply biconcave vertebra, and 

 anchylosed neural arches, with the zygapophyses directed after the 

 manner usual among vertebrates. The former was thus shown to 

 belong to the true Sauropterygia, and not to the Streptosauria, of 

 which Elasmosaurus was the type. Several distal caudals were 

 anchylosed, without chevron bones, and of depressed form, while the 

 proximal caudals had anchylosed diapophyses and distinct chevron 

 bones. The form was regarded as new, and called Polycotylus 

 latipinnis, from the great relative stoutness of the paddle. — He also 

 gave an account of the discovery, by Dr. Samuel Lockwood, of 

 Keyport, of a fragment of a largo Dinosaur, in the clay which 

 immediately underlies the Clay-marls below the Lower Greensand 

 bed in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The fossil represented the 

 extremities of the tibia and fibula, with astragalo-calcaneum 

 anchylosed to the former, in length about sixteen inches ; distal 

 width fourteen. The confluence of the first series of tarsal bones 

 with each other, and with the tibia, he regarded as a most interesting 

 peculiarity, and one only met with elsewhere in the reptile 

 Comjpsognathus and in birds. He therefore referred the animal to the 

 order Symphypoda, near to Compsognathus Wagn. The extremity of 

 the fibula was free from, and received into a cavity of the astragalo- 

 calcaneum, and demonstrated what the speaker had already asserted, 

 that the fibula of Iguanodon and Hadrosaurus had been inverted by 

 their describers. The medullary cavity was filled with open 

 cancellous tissue. The species, which was one half larger than the 

 type specimen of Hadrosaurus Foulkii, he named Ornithotarsus 



OBITTJ^^E,"^. 



John William Saltek, A.L.S., F.G.S. Born December 15, 1820. 

 Died August 2, 1869. — This eminent Palaeontologist, after an educa- 

 tion at a private boarding-school, was, in April, 1835, by his own 

 wish, bound apprentice to the well-known James De Carle Sowerby, 

 with whom he hoped to pursue the study of Natural History (espe- 

 cially Entomology) for which he had, from childhood, an ardent 

 love. He has been known to pull his companions (Wm. and J. 

 Sowerby) out of bed on a cold winter's morning to wade through 

 the snow after some insect, the habitat of which he had just heard 

 of ; or, at other times, knee-deep in the long hay-grass to a favourite 

 pond after water-insects. About this time (1836-7) he wrote his 

 first paper " On the Habits of Insects," read at the "Camden Literary 

 Society." 



With Mr. Sowerby he was engaged in drawing and engraving the 

 plates of " Sowerby's Mineral Conchology," then in progress towards 

 completion; Supplement to "Sowerby's English Botany;" "Lou- 

 don's Encyclopaedia of Plants ;" " Murchison's Silurian System." The 

 figures for these and many other scientific works, engraved by Mr. 

 Salter at this time, being all drawn from the actual specimens, he 



