ANNIVEESAEY ADDRESS OP THE PEESIDENT. Ixxix 



when the different fragments were put together, nearly six feet 

 across (1'860 metre), was found in a soft marly sand belonging to 

 the Miocene formation, but in which no trace of shells, marine or 

 otherwise, was observed. Having carefully collected all the fi'ag- 

 ments he could obtain, M. Solaro was surprised to find in a small 

 triangular cavity, situated at the side of the cotyloid cavity, the 

 head of a small bone, which he at once suspected to be a raarsu- 

 pial bone ; and on comparing other fragments of a flat angular 

 bone, he found that they all belonged to the head which arti- 

 culated with the ilium. From this he concluded that the bones 

 belonged to a gigantic marsupial Pachyderm. 



He then enters upon the question whether this pelvis really 

 belonged to Dinotherium ; and from the fact that all the fossil 

 bones found on the spot, and in numerous other localities in the 

 neighbourhood, belonged to that animal, he comes to the con- 

 clusion that the pelvis must be that of Dinotheiium. "We thus 

 arrive at this extraordinary result, that this gigantic Dinothe- 

 rium was a marsupial animal; and in allusion to the size of the 

 animal and its habits, he shows why the marsupial bones should 

 have articulated with the ilium, instead of the pubis as in other 

 marsupials. 



He also shows that the Dinotherium must have been a terres- 

 trial animal and not aquatic, and that it must have exceeded the 

 largest known Elephants of India in size. 



M. Pierre de TehihatcheflJ" has published during the last year 

 an interesting volume on the Bosphorus and Constantinople, and 

 the surrounding districts. The second part of the work is de- 

 voted to the Greology of this region. After describing the igneous 

 and basaltic rocks which occur so abundantly on both shores of 

 the Bosphorus, and particularly at its northern extremity, at its 

 entrance into the Black Sea, he notices other instances of erup- 

 tions of dioritic porphyry which have burst out through the 

 Devonian beds on both sides of the Bosphorus, particularly in the 

 Griant's Mountain on the Asiatic side, and to the southward, and 

 which are much more frequent than have hitherto been noticed 

 or supposed. This he attributes to the fact of their being so 

 frequently decomposed, in which case it is difficult, without a very 

 minute investigation, to distinguish them from the sedimentary 

 rocks by which they are surrounded, and he believes that all the 

 round bosses (locally called Tepes or hills) have for their nucleus 

 a mass of eruptive rock, probably diorite. What makes this 

 liypothesis more probable is, that the Devonian beds which con- 

 stitute these hills are generally bent and contorted, and that he 

 has frequeutly found on the surface fragments of crystals of fel- 

 spar and amphibole, derived, in all probability, from the decompo- 

 sition of eruptive diorite at no great depth below the surface. 

 Should this be confirmed, it would prove that these diorites repre- 

 sent the last eflorts of plutonic action, and that they are conse- 

 quently of a later age than the dolerites, basalts, and trachytes 

 which occur at the northern extremity of the Bosphorus. 



