43 



Report on Briiish Fossil Reptiles. By Richard Owen, Esq., 

 F.R.S. F.G.S. &c. &c. 



1. IhE British fossil organic remains referrible to the class 

 Reptilia of Cuvier, if they do not indicate more numerous 

 and diversified generic and specific forms, unquestionably ex- 

 hibit more singular modifications of the typical structure of 

 their class than do those belonging to any other primary group 

 of the vertebrate division of animals. 



The review which I have taken of the Saurian remains alone, 

 which are treasured in different collections, has convinced me 

 that they yield only to the Ichthyolites in the number of extinct 

 species which they represent. And when it is remembered how 

 large a proportion of the fossil fishes, described and figured in 

 the classical work of M. Agassiz, includes species which are 

 characteristic of the strata of Great Britain, it may be conceived 

 that a report on our extinct reptiles could not be satisfactorily 

 completed by me without the devotion of the leisure hours of 

 more than a single year, nor be recorded in a brief space. 



However captivathig to the comparative anatomist such a 

 subject must be from the rare and most singular condi- 

 tions of organic structure manifested in the remains of these 

 extinct and often highly developed cold-blooded animals, or 

 however interesting from the important physiological relations 

 traceable between their structural modifications and the condi- 

 tions under which they ones existed, and the parts assigned to 

 them in the theatre of an ancient world, — nevertheless, I could 

 not have ventured to have proposed to myself the ' British 

 Fossil Reptilia' as a subject of continuous and systematic 

 research, without the aid and encouragement which the British 

 Association has liberally granted to me for that purpose. 



Aware that the proposed report was not to be limited to a 

 review of the actual state of the Reptilian branch of Palaeonto- 

 logy, — a comparatively easy task, — but to embrace an account, 

 founded, as far as might be, on actual observation, of those 

 reptilian remains that have been hitherto discovered in differ- 

 ent geological formations of the British Islands, I determined 

 to divide the subject according to the natural families of the 



