2 GUIDE TO THE FOSSIL MAMMALS AND BIRDS. 



The series begins on the right-hand side of the entrance to 

 Gallery Kb. 1 and is continued round this Gallery to the 

 left-hand side of the same entrance. The peculiar Mammalia 

 of the Orders Edentata, Marsupialia, and Monotremata are 

 placed in Gallery No. 2. Many of the larger specimens are 

 necessarily mounted on separate pedestals or in separate 

 cases, not in their exact systematic position but as near the 

 allied fossils as possible. 



Bone-Beds. 



Case A. Most of the fossil remains of Mammalia are obtained 



Pier-ease 2. f rom « bone-beds " or great accumulations of bones, which 

 have been formed by the death and rapid burial of large 

 troops of animals, or by the washing together of portions of 

 skeletons by streams and currents. In the Island of Samos, 

 for example, there is an extensive bone-bed of Lower Pliocene 

 age, which seems to have resulted from the destruction of 

 herds of quadrupeds by a fall of volcanic dust from some 

 neighbouring eruption. In Greece there are several bone- 

 beds also of Lower Pliocene age, which must have accumu- 

 lated rapidly in lakes or temporary pools. These have been 

 excavated especially at Pikermi, near Athens, and a fine slab 

 from one of them, presented by Mr. Alexander Skouses, is 

 shown in a special Case A, near Table-case 1. In this small 

 specimen (Plates II, III) there are remains of carnivores, 

 antelopes, gazelles, the three-toed horse (Hijppariori), and 

 two birds, crowded together in red marl, which was originally 

 mud washed down from the neighbouring marble-range of 

 Pentelicon. Many of the bones are in natural association 

 (as, for instance, those of one bent leg of Hippariori), showing 

 that parts of the skeletons were buried rapidly before all 

 the ligaments and muscles which held them together had 

 decayed. At Olivola, in the Carrara Mountains, Italy, there 

 is an Upper Pliocene torrent-deposit filled with bones and 

 pebbles ; and good examples of this are shown in Pier-case 2 

 (top shelf). In many places, in the deposits left by rivers, 

 there are great collections of bones brought together by 

 eddying currents, such as those discovered in the valley of 

 the Thames during the working of brick-fields at Ilford and 

 Crayford. There are also numerous fissures, especially in 

 limestone districts, largely filled with accumulations of bones 

 which have fallen or been washed into them. When these 

 bones are mingled with angular fragments of rock and 



