4 Professor Seeley. — Some Scientific [Sept. 16, 



of work of Mr. Thomas Bain, arid his collections have been sent 

 partly to the British Museum, where they remained unworked and 

 unnoticed for a period of 10 years till, on the retirement of Sir 

 Richard Owen from his connection with the museum, I felt myself at 

 liberty to turn attention to a branch of study which he had made 

 peculiarly his own by the great contributions to knowledge w r hich he 

 had elaborated in relation to South African geology, and then I 

 learnt the wonderful natures of the animals among which Mr. Bain's 

 collections had been made. I have here some diagrams which may 

 serve to give you an indication of the form of some of these animals 

 but the diagram will give no conception of the size. This figure, in 

 the transactions of the Royal Society of London, represents the upper 

 and under sides of an animal which Sir Richard Owen had named the 

 Pareiasaurus bombidens. It is, you will observe, known by its skull 

 and vertebral column, the vertebras being incomplete from the 

 beginning of the neck to some distance down the tail ; there are also 

 parts of the bones connected with the shoulder's girdle, but very 

 imperfectly preserved, so that we knew a little, but not much, of the 

 apparatus by means of which the anterior limbs were supported ; 

 then there are slight indications of the ribs, and further on an 

 indication of those bones of the hip girdle by means of which the hind 

 limb was supported. Well, that figure is about one quarter the natural 

 size, so that this animal, in the condition in which it is preserved, is 

 something like 11 feet in length. We were very anxious to obtain 

 better knowledge on this, as on the other kinds of fossil life, 

 and as we travelled to the northward of Prince Albert-road Station r . 

 and entered the region of the Karoo rocks by the neighbourhood of 

 Tamboer and the country which extends northward, to the Nieuveldt 

 range, we found these saurians very widely distributed. The Dutch 

 farmers, ever on the alert for natural history phenomona, had 

 anticipated my coming, and at the first indication that we were likely 

 to visit a certain spot, every specimen that could be in any w r ay of 

 interest to us was obtained, so that our labours were very much 

 lightened. However, we were somewhat anxious on the score of this 

 collection of specimens. For what has been done hitherto has been 

 this : whenever a bone has been found, such as a skull, the skull 

 has been taken away, and as the skull has been disconnected from the 

 rest of the body, the consequence w r as that we found that there were 

 about fifty skulls in the British Museum, and no indications of the 

 bodies to which the skulls belonged, and so we were desirous of 

 coming across the animal with which the skull might be connected, 

 and we went on very well, owing to the friendly co-operation of a 

 gentleman of Tamboer, Mr. John Marais, w r hose labours in the cause 

 of science will, I am sure, receive full recognition hereafter. We had 



