ANNIVERSARY ADDRE8S OF THE PRESIDENT. 6 1 



by Prof. H. G. Seeley of an extremely fine coracoid ascribed by him 

 to the genus Ornithosis, and one by myself describing an ischium 

 and pubis referable to the same genus, which contains the largest 

 and most singularly constructed of all our Dinosauria. These 

 fossils confirm the close parallelism between some of our Wealden 

 Dinosauria and certain North-American forms of Prof. 0. C. Marsh's 

 suborder Sauropoda, to which attention has been called by Prof. R. 

 Owen, myself, and others. This resemblance will be yet more 

 clearly shown, I believe, when the magnificent memoir on the 

 North-American Dinosauria, illustrated by ninety 4to plates, upon 

 which Prof. 0. C. Marsh is now engaged, is published. 



I cannot dismiss the Dinosauria without commending to your 

 notice the excellent " Note premiere sur les Dinosauriens de Ber- 

 nissart," par M. Dollo, Aide-Naturaliste au Musee Royal d'Histoire 

 Naturelle de Belgique, extrait du Bulletin du Musee Royal, t. i. 1882, 

 pi. ix. Here now are first depicted the shoulder- and hip-girdles with 

 the fore and hind limbs of Iguanodon Mantelli, and also those of a 

 bulkier species with which M. Dollo, with much probability, iden- 

 tifies my 1. Seelyi. It was with no small pleasure that I saw repro- 

 duced in natural articulation the arrangement of the ventral bars 

 of the hip-girdle, of which I have diagrammatically given a figure 

 at p. 365 of vol. xxxii. of our Quarterly Journal for 1875. 



M. Dollo, in this note, calls attention to the edentulousness of the 

 praemaxilla in Iguanodon, which constitutes an important distinction 

 from Hypsilophodon. He shows that the " radial spine " of Prof. 

 Owen is the modified ungual phalanx of the thumb (as may, indeed, 

 be seen in the figure in the fossil reptilia taken from Mr. Beccles's 

 specimen). M. Dollo's figures demonstrate that the number of the 

 phalanges in any toe of the pentadactyle fore foot does not exceed 

 three, a frequent number in Amphibia, the dominant number in 

 Chelonia, and that characteristic of the higher vertebrates, a point 

 worth noticing. In a " Deuxieme Note " which he most courteously 

 sent me a few days since, M. Dollo proposes to make known the 

 sternum, of which he writes, " je dirai d'abord que je ne connais 

 aucun reptile vivant ou fossile possedant un appareil sternal qui puisse 

 etre mis en parallele avec celui des Dinosauriens de Bernissart," a 

 remark which will be echoed by every one who looks at the diagram 

 made by Mr. W. R. Jones from M. Dollo's figure (fig. 17). Pending 

 the confirmation of M. Dollo's restoration of the shoulder-girdle by 

 other skeletons of Iguanodon in the Brussels collection yet un- 

 shipped of matrix, if I were disposed to speculate, taking as my 

 guide the coracoids of Sphenodon or Chamceleon, which in their 

 simplicity most nearly resemble those of Iguanodon, I should put 

 a crescentic lip of cartilage on the mesial border of the latter 

 (representing prae- and epicoracoid), intercalate between them a 

 rhomboidal sternum, and attach to the posterior margins of this 

 some of the foremost ribs (fig. 18) ; that M. Dollo has rightly inter- 

 preted the bones marked S. in his figure of the sternum, I confess to 

 feeling some doubt ; they are the bones which Prof. 0. C. Marsh 

 considered clavicles, but which I myself had thought to resemble 



vol. xxxix. f 



