PREFACE 



TO THE 



CETACEA FROM THE RED CRAG 



The ' Report on British Fossil Mammals,' prepared at the request of the 

 British Association, and which appeared in the volume issued in 1840, included 

 a description of fossil remains, chiefly teeth, for the study of which I was indebted 

 to the Rev. Professor Henslow, F.R.S. 



The nature of these fossils induced me to devote subsequent leisure to 

 explorations of the localities and to acquisition of specimens, which were added 

 as donations to the Hunterian and British Museums. 



In the localities exposing a worn and abraded Pliocene formation, commonly 

 known as the Red Crag, the chief organic remains consist of portions or fragments 

 of skulls evidencing attrition before having become embedded in the sea-bottom 

 of the period. I therefore preceded their description by abridging the account 

 given by Cuvier of better preserved cranial and dental evidences of extinct 

 Cetacean species to which the British fragmentary fossils were nearly allied. 



The figures denoting the component bones exposed in cranial sections of the 

 subjects of my descriptions, such as that shown in fig. 9, p. 20, are those used in 

 the work entitled ' On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton ' 

 (8vo., 1848). My brief notice of these Cetacean remains in the 'Quart. Journ. 

 Geol. Soc.,' vol. xii, p. 228, and correspondence with friendly Collectors led to the 

 extent of descriptive and illustrated matter which the Council of the Palaeonto- 

 graphical Society deemed worthy of a place in the volume issued in 1870. 



R. 0. 



February 8th, 1888. 



