138 Reports and Proceedings. 



deposited. If, as was more than probable, there had been during all geological time 

 continental areas somewhat in the same positions as those of the present day, there 

 must hare been large areas of inland drainage in which some such deposits as those in 

 question must of necessity have been formed. 



2. " Note on a large Eeptilian Skull from Brooke, Isle of Wight, 

 probably Dinosaurian, and referable to the genus Iguanodon." By 

 J. W. Hulke, Esq., F.E.S., F.G.S. 



The author stated that the skull described by him was obtained 

 from a Wealden deposit at Brooke, in the Isle of Wight, from which 

 many remains of Dinosauria have been obtained. He described its 

 characters in detail, and remarked that its most striking peculiarities 

 were : — the completeness of the bony brain-case ; the obliteration of 

 the sutures, especially those of the basicranial axis ; the massiveness 

 of the skull ; and the great downward extension of the basisphenoid, 

 with the attendant upward slant of the lower border of the basi- 

 presphenoidal rod. The first of these characters occurs elsewhere 

 among reptiles only in Dicynodon ,• and the first and second charac- 

 ters combined, were regarded by the author as approximating the 

 skull to the ornithic type. The reference of this skull to Iguanodon 

 was founded chiefly on the place from which it was obtained, which 

 has furnished abundant remains of that genus, and on the obliteration 

 of the sutures, which the author stated to be a character of the 

 mandibles of Iguanodon. 



Discussion. — Prof, Huxley congratulated the Society on the progress being made 

 in our knowledge of this interesting group of reptiles and of their ornithic affinities. 



Mr. Seeley remarked on the similarity of the internal cavity of the skull to that of 

 Ichthyosaurus. Some of the external characteristics differed much from what he was 

 acquainted with in other Dinosaurian skulls, which more closely resembled those of 

 ordinary lizards. He considered that the affinities of Dinosaurs were in the direction 

 of Teleosaurus, from which the position of what were supposed to be the optic nerves 

 in this skull materially differed. On the whole, he was not at once prepared to accept 

 this skull as that of an Iguanodon. 



Mr. Hulke briefly replied, and observed that he had limited his speculations to those 

 which legitimately arose from the facts before him. 



III. Geological Society of London. — February 8, 1 871. — Joseph 

 Prestwich, Esq., F.E.S., President, in the Chair. The following 

 communications were read : — 1. "On the Punfield Formation." By 

 John W. Judd, Esq., F.G.S., of the Geological Survey of England 

 and Wales. 



Those formations which have been deposited under ^M■«^o-marme 

 conditions, and which yield at the same time marine, freshwater, 

 and terrestrial fossils, are of especial interest to the geologist, as 

 they furnish him with a means of correlating the great freshwater 

 systems of strata with those of marine origin. 



At the bottom of the Wealden we have one such fluvio-marine 

 series, the well-known Purbeck formation ; at its summit is another, 

 less known, but not less important, for which the name of " Pun- 

 field Formation " is now suggested. Some of the fossils of the latter 

 were first brought under the notice of geologists by Mr. Godwin - 

 Austen in 1850; and their peculiarities have since been the subject 

 of remark by Prof. E. Forbes, Sii* C Lyell, and others. 



