194 H. Woodward — Visit to the Brussels Museum. 



especially those in the neighbourhood of Dinant, and bordering the 

 Meuse and its tributaries, explored personally by M. E. Dupont. 



The Antwerp Crag has long been known and its Invertebrate 

 Fauna described by M. Nyst. Eecently, however, the extensive 

 works which have been carried out for the enlargement of the fortifi- 

 cations of Antwerp have led to the discovery and collection of vast 

 numbers of Corals, MoUusks, remains of Sharks, Cetaceans, etc. ^ 



The Mollusca are being worked out by M. Nyst and Dr. M. 

 Mourlon, the Assistant-Naturalist in the Eoyal Museum ; they pro- 

 mise to yield a very magnificent series when fully catalogued and 

 arranged. 



In the basement store-rooms of the Museum I beheld a perfect 

 hecatomb of the remains of the old German Ocean Whales, 

 enough, if ground up into into superphosphate, to have manured all 

 the farms in England and Belgium put together. The ear-bones and 

 vertebree formed the most striking part of the vast series of remains, 

 the former especially testifying to the immense number of indi- 

 viduals represented. 



Viscount du Bus, formerly Director of the Museum (but now a 

 Senator), whose place is so ably filled by the present Director, M. 

 Edouard Dupont, has, we understand, been engaged for some time 

 in working out these very interesting Cetacean remains.^ He has, 

 we understand, already arranged the bones of three entire skeletons, 

 which will be exhibited in due course. 



The Squalid^ or Sharks were well represented in the Antwerp 

 Crag period. M. Dupont informed me they had in the Museum not 

 fewer than 20,000 teeth belonging to these predacious fishes. 



Early in 1860, in digging a canal at Lierre, in the province of 

 Antwerp, the workmen employed found a large quantity of bones of 

 some extinct animal. As many of these were broken, they were at 

 first unwilling to take the necessary trouble to collect them, but 

 others being discovered as the work proceeded, the ground was more 

 carefully excavated, and all the pieces of bone collected together. 



Many of these remains proved of great palseontological importance 

 and may be roughly enumerated.^ They consisted of four large and 

 blackened molar teeth, the two smaller ones being worn at the 

 crown, and having from 15 to 20 plates. The two larger ones, less 

 worn. They are probably the 2 second and 2 third molars of an 

 adult Elephas primigenius (Blum.). With these were found two tusks 

 of the Mammoth, and a vast number of bones probably representing 

 three individuals. The skull, as is usually the case, was represented 



^ For a description of the Antwerp Crag, see Mr. E. Eay Lankester's paper " On 

 the Crag of Antwerp," Geol. Mag., 1865, Vol. II., pp. 103-6 and 149-52; see also 

 paper by Dr. A. von Koenen, " On the Belgium Tertiaries," Geol. Mag., 1867, Vol. 

 IV., pp. 501-507 ; and " On the Kainozoic Formations of Belgium," by R. A. C. 

 Godwin- Austen, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 1866., vol. xxii., p. 228. 



^ See also the published memoirs of Prof, van Beneden, of Louvain, Memoires 

 de I'Acaderaie Royale de Bruxelles. 



3 For a full account of this discovery, see the paper by M. Francis Scohy, 

 " Bulletins de 1' Academic de Belgique," series ii., tome ix., p. 436, etc. From it 

 these notes are partly derived. 



