in the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh. 185 



A scramble of this nature, in reference to such a fatal result, not a little re- 

 sembles the every-day occurrence of workmen who, in the course of digging, have 

 fallen upon some ancient urn which contains the cremated ashes of our Celtic or 

 Teutonic progenitors. The pick-axe is supposed to have been resisted by " a pot 

 of money ;'"— a tremendous scramble ensues; the urn is broken into a thousand 

 pieces, and the antiquary resigns himself to despair. 



Under these circumstances, I took the first occasion in my power to obviate a ca- 

 tastrophe which appeared so imminent. 



In addition to recommendations which I drew up for the public journals, urging 

 the patrons of the College Museum, or the Council of our leading scientific institu- 

 tion of Edinburgh, to exert a fostering care over the quarry, and to prevent the dis- 

 persion of its relics, I took an early occasion, at one of the meetings of the Royal 

 Society, to make a personal appeal on the subject. 



Upon this occasion, I stated, that the great French naturalist, to whom geology 

 has been most indebted, laboured under no difficulty so great as in his endeavours to 

 counteract the dispersion of osseous relics of comparatively little value in a separate 

 state, but most important to science when collected together with a view to the appre- 

 ciation of the whole in their united condition. This difficulty I illustrated by a few 

 passages from the writings of Cuvier, which shewed the almost incredible labours 

 to which he was obliged to resort, before he could reassemble certain dispersed frag- 

 ments necessary for him to come to a satisfactory conclusion respecting the fossil sau- 

 rian animal of Honfleur. 



" Having been apprised,'" he remarks, " by these two lower jaw-bones, that there 

 might exist two species at Honfleur, my first object was to regain the skull and the 

 upper jaw-bone. The collection which I had received from Rouen afforded me some 

 fragments ; but the original owner had entertained the unfortunate notion of getting 

 them cut and polished ; and he had even distributed a part of them among other 

 cabinets. It is by a series of almost incredible events, that I have collected and been 

 able to reunite six fragments, which had belonged to the same cranium, of which two 

 had been in the possession of the Abbe Bachelet, two had found their way into 

 M. de DreVs museum, while two others had been sent to me from Geneva by the 

 late M. de Jurine, without his ever suspecting their importance in this particular 

 inquiry. By means of these six pieces, I succeeded in reconstructing a considerable 

 portion of the cranium containing the occiput, the greatest part of the upper face, 

 and sides, as far as the snout. It is by similar accidents that I have collected three 

 fragments, which had belonged to one and the same snout, and of which I had only 

 given two in my first edition. These two last were in the museum of the late Abbe 

 Besson ; the third was in that of M. Faujas, to whom Besson had given it, with- 

 out perceiving that, along with the two others, it only formed one entire whole." 



The force of this quotation I urged, in connection with the remark, that it would 

 be chimerical for a single individual like myself, perfectly unsupported, to suppose 

 VOL. XIII. PART I. A a 



