1857.] OWEN PLIOLOPHUS VULPICEPS. 55 



the same individual, including the right humerus, PL IV. figs. 1-4, 

 the right femur, ib. figs. 5 and 6, a great part of the left femur, the 

 left tibia, PL IV. figs. 10-13, and three metatarsal bones, ib. fig. 14, 

 apparently of the same hind foot. There have, also, been extracted 

 recognizable portions of the pelvis, and some fragments of ribs ; 

 other fragments of ribs, vertebrae, and small bones are left in the 

 matrix. The osseous tissue is silicified and partly impregnated with 

 pyritic matter. 



This, therefore, is the most complete and instructive mammalian 

 fossil of the age of the London Clay which has hitherto been dis- 

 covered, and its study is replete with peculiar interest. 



In the course of last winter Mr. Colchester, the able and success- 

 ful explorer and collector of organic remains of the eocene sands at 

 Kyson, Suffolk, brought to the British Museum for my inspection 

 one of the nodules of the Roman-cement bed of the London clay, 

 near Harwich, from which nodule a portion had been chipped off, 

 exposing on the fractured surface the faint outline of a skull, in size 

 and shape like that of a fox. 



This appearance had arrested the further progress of the breaking- 

 up of the nodule by the workmen, and the specimen came into the 

 possession of the Rev. Richard Bull, M.A., Vicar of Harwich, by 

 whom it was intrusted to Mr. Colchester for my opinion respecting 

 the nature of the fossil, and by whose liberal permission the subse- 

 quent operations were carried out, by which I am enabled to com- 

 municate to the Society the following description of a new genus and 

 species of perissodactyle pachyderm, for which I propose the name 

 of Pliolophus vulpiceps*, or Fox-headed Plioloph. 



The nodule presented the common subspherical form, and was 

 about a foot in diameter. On closely inspecting the fractured sur- 

 face, indications of other bones, besides the skull, were detected, and 

 as the work of exploration proceeded, it plainly appeared that the car- 

 case, or great part of the carcase, of a quadruped, about the size of a 

 fox, had formed the nucleus round which the clay, modified by the 

 chemical constituents of the dissolving and decomposing flesh, had 

 become aggregated and consolidated. 



I have rarely broken up any septarian nodule of the London clay, 

 which, thus altered, forms the chief material of the f Roman cement,' 

 without detecting some organic relic which seemed to stand in the 

 relation of a nucleus to such compact spheroid mass. 



The hardness and compactness of the matrix are extreme ; but, by 

 the aid of the lapidary's saw and the skilful and careful use of the 

 chisel, Mr. Dew, by whom most of the Sewalik fossils in the British 

 Museum were brought to their present instructive state, succeeded 



* Accomplished Palaeontologists of France having included one of the elements 

 of the term Lophiodon (XoQiov a small crest, odovs a tooth) in the names of sub- 

 genera of the Lophiodont family, as, e. g., in Pachynolophus, the same principle 

 has guided to the choice of the term Pliolophus for the present accession to the 

 family. By it I simply mean that it is more near to the Lophiodont type than 

 its close ally the Hxjracotherium. But the sooner a term becomes an arbitrary 

 sign the better. 



