1889.] Results of a Mission to 'South Africa. 5 



the good fortune, owing to his help, of coming upon one of these 

 animals complete, in the skeleton, just as it had been complete in the 

 flesh, left upon the surface of the country, lying embedded in the rock 

 and only needing to be taken out and carried away. This carrying 

 .away was perhaps a little more difficult than we in Cape Town had 

 imagined. We were in the open veldt, where there is no possibility of 

 getting assistance, where you have to hunt along the mountain side 

 until you come to the bones of which you are in search ; theie are 

 very few facilities for bringing away the specimens in the best 

 possible condition, but owing to the aid which was never wanting 

 ;and never grudged in the least, we were able to gather up the fragments, 

 which filled several large cases, and a procession of mule wagons bore 

 away what I trust will some day be one of the most prized ornaments 

 of the British Museum in London. Why were we so anxious to 

 carry away these ? I will tell you. It was because the animals 

 present in the external form of the skull all the characters of the 

 frog tribe, all the characters of that low grade of amphibian life 

 which we place below the reptile, display in the configuration of its 

 shoulder girdle and of its hip girdle the characters of a higher 

 mammalian type. We knew, as I say, nothing whatever of its limbs, 

 and were anxious to contribute this element of knowledge in order to 

 see whether there was that connection which seemed to be probable 

 between the amphibian and the mammal, to see whether there had 

 been a development of the higher mammal from the lower amphibian, 

 without passing through the intervening grades of reptile and bird, 

 -and the result was that when the matrix was cleared away — and I. 

 may tell you it was no easy matter, for the rock was very hard — as 

 the matrix was cleared away and the bones laid bare, and I secured 

 them, I found to my amazement that although the proportions of the 

 Jbones and the fore-limbs were extremely heavy, heavier perhaps than 

 in any other known mammals, yet the forms of the bones were entirely 

 ^mammalian. Let me say exactly what this means ; there is, in the 

 hinder and the lower end of the upper part of the arm, in what we 

 -call the humerus, a great cavity, into which a projecting bone of the 

 elbow fits, which in England is popularly known as the f unnybone, but 

 which is correctly known as the olecranon process of the elbow which 

 works into the cavity. Now no reptile shows that process, yet we 

 found not only was that process developed in this animal of the Karoo 

 fully, but as fully so as we find it in any mammal. It was fashioned 

 exactly upon the mammalian plan. There was another point of great 

 Talue and interest, .which is this : in reptiles the ulna is usually 

 the stouter bone of the lower arm, and the radius is the smaller bone 

 of the fore-arm, whereas in mammals the reverse proportions obtain, 

 -and the radius is the strong bone and the ulna the more slender, so 



