FOSSIL REPTILES. 345 



he then compared to that of sharks, and was more and more 

 inclined to conclude that it was a fish. 



But^ after two years more, some pieces were collected by 

 different individuals, and the attention of Sir Everard was 

 drawn to them by Dr. Buckland. These acquainted him with 

 the nature of the sternum, the clavicle, and the coracoid bone, 

 as well as with the relations of these parts to those of the orni- 

 thorhynchus, which bear no indistinct resemblance to the same 

 parts in the lizard tribe. Sir Everard then abandoned the 

 notion of the ichthyosaurus having been a fish. In the same 

 article he states the probable existence of more than one spe- 

 cies. 



In 1819, some magnificent specimens — and, among others, 

 an entire skeleton, discovered by Mr. de Labeche, and Colonel 

 Birch, of Lyme — enabled Sir Everard to perfect his description, 

 and particularly to convince himself that the ichthyosaurus 

 had four feet. But a head, in which the nostrils were closed 

 up, led him into an error, and made him think, wrongly, that 

 what he had hitherto taken for these apertures was simply the 

 effect of accident. In the Transactions of the same year, the 

 author, in consequence of the resemblance of the concave faces 

 of the fossil vertebrae with those of the proteus, the siren, and 

 the axolotl, proposed for his animal the name o( proteosaurus. 



Lastly, in 1820, the indefatigable researches of Colonel Birch 

 furnished Sir Everard with materials, from which he determined 

 the composition of the vertebrae, and the mode in which the 

 annular part is articulated with the body, and likewise the sin- 

 gular structure of the fins. 



This series of articles and notices renders it impossible to 

 avoid acknowledging that the entire honour of having com- 

 pletely acquainted naturalists with this extraordinary genus is 

 owing to Sir Everard Home. Messrs. Conybeare and Labeche, 

 however, must come in for their share of acknowledgment, hav- 

 ing added many interesting particulars and extensive details to 

 what this scientific anatomist had already advanced upon the 

 subject. 



