ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XCi 



lake. It receives no streams from the mountains, but, being Supplied 

 from springs, is generally as full in summer as in winter, and appears 

 to Mr. Smith to be the exhausted crater of a volcano. In cutting a 

 ditch from the lake towards the mountains, the fossil bones were 

 found at the depth of 30 feet, the first animal discovered being almost 

 perfect, excepting the head, and another skeleton of smaller size being 

 very near it. Mr. Smith found fossil branches of trees in the same 

 trench ; and as its width was only 12 feet, he naturally concluded 

 that a wider excavation in the alluvial soil would have yielded the 

 remains of other individuals, and in consequence suggests, " may not 

 herds of these creatures have been destroyed whilst feeding on what 

 at that time was an extended plain ?" The teeth of one of these 

 animals are in the museum at Santiago ; and there can be no 

 doubt that the skill of a Falconer would be enabled to determine 

 whether, in South America also, there is a difference between the 

 Mastodons of the East and West, the M. Andium having been found 

 both east and west of the Andes, in Peru and Chili, and the M. 

 Humboldtii in Buenos Ayres and Brazil, or entirely to the east. 

 Without doubt, this wide distribution in the ancient fauna of a type 

 of organization so comparatively restricted at present in its range, is 

 one of the most curious natural-history phenomena which the 

 researches of geology have brought to light. 



In the class Crustacea, two additions have been made to our know- 

 ledge, both of which are interesting, as tending to approximate the 

 faunae of past epochs to that of the present, — a remark I have fre- 

 quently on preceding occasions been led to make. The one is a 

 Decapod from the Lias Bone-bed, described by Mr. C. Gould of 

 the Geological Survey, to which it had been confided for exami- 

 nation by Mr. E. Higgins, of Birkenhead. Mr. Gould after describ- 

 ing carefully the specimen, investigates the affinities of the fossil 

 individual to known genera and species, and points out in what respects 

 it resembles, and in what it differs from, the several great divisions of 

 the Macrura ; he then states that, although there is an affinity in some 

 respects with the genera Nephrops and Scyllarus, he does not think 

 the evidence sufficient for assigning it to those or any existing genus 

 of Macrura, and he therefore constitutes a new genus for its reception. 

 The names assigned to it are Tropifer Icevis, — the generic term (from 

 rpoiris, "keel") expressing the keeled character of the carapace, and 

 the specific its general smoothness. The eyes are large and remote, 

 and the abdomen flattened and sculptured. 



The next was derived from the Coal-measures, and is the result 

 of the examination, by Professor Huxley, of three specimens, two of 

 which belong to Mr. R. S. Cooper, of Bilston, and the third, being the 

 most perfect, to the Manchester Museum, which were obtained from 

 the Coal-shales at Midlock Park Bridge. Professor Huxley describes 

 minutely the structural peculiarities of the specimens, and explains the 

 difficulty of even deciding "which end was the head, and which the 

 tail, and whether the surface exposed to view was the ventral or the 

 dorsal." Assuming the dorsal surface to be in view, his first im- 

 pression was,. that the form combined the characters of several orders 



