ME. E. LYDEKKEE OJST THE CETACEA OF THE SUFFOLK CEAGr. 



7 



2. The Cetacea of the Suffolk Ceao. By B. Ltdekkee, Esq., 

 B.A., E.G.S., &o. (Bead November 3, 1886.) 



[Plate II.] 



The fossil Cetacea of the Suffolk Crag have already formed the 

 subject of several memoirs and papers, although no complete 

 treatise has as yet appeared on the whole group. Of the more 

 important memoirs the earliest is one by the late Prof. Henslow, 

 which appeared in the Society's ' Proceedings' for 1843*, and con- 

 tains a description by Prof. Sir E. Owen of four specimens of the 

 tympanies of the Balcenidce. In Sir E. Owen's ' History of British 

 Fossil Mammals and Birds ' (1846) these specimens are again de- 

 scribed, and the genus Balcenodon is founded on the evidence of an 

 imperfect tooth. In 1864 Prof. E. Eay Lankester f published a 

 paper on Crag fossils containing a notice of some delphinoid remains ; 

 while in another memoir, which appeared during the same year 

 in the Society's ' Journal 'J, Prof. Huxley described the rostrum of 

 one of the Ziphioids under the new generic title of Belemnoziphius. 

 In 1870, Sir E. Owen contributed a monograph of the Ziphioids to 

 the Pala3ontographical Society ; and in the latter part of the same 

 year Prof. Lankester § published the description of a rostrum be- 

 longing to the same group. Einally, in 1884, Prof. Mower, in part 2 

 of the 4 Catalogue of the Vertebrata in the Museum of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons,' provisionally referred a considerable number of 

 tympanies of Balcenidce to the four species determined by Sir E. 

 Owen, without entering into the question of the correctness of the 

 generic determination. Two specimens were, however, regarded 

 as distinct from all these four species : one of these was referred to 

 Balcena and the other to Bcdcenoptera. Some incidental references to 

 Crag Cetacea occur in the works of foreign palaeontologists, which 

 need not be definitely quoted. 



In the course of preparing the ' Catalogue of the Fossil Mammalia 

 in the British Museum,' I have been led not only to examine every 

 specimen of the remains of Crag Cetacea contained in that collection, 

 but have also examined the collections of the Museum of the Eoyal 

 College of Surgeons, of the Museum of Practical Geology, and of 

 the Ipswich Museum ; and I have also paid a visit to the Brussels 

 Museum in order to compare the unrivalled collection of Pliocene 

 Cetacea contained in that institution with the English specimens ||. 



* Proc. Geol. Soc. vol. iv. pp. 283-286. 

 t Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 3, vol. xiv. p. 356. 

 % Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xx. p. 388. 

 § Ibid. vol. xxvi. p. 502. 



| I desire to express my obligations to the Director-General of the Geolo- 

 gical Survey, and Mr. E. T. Newton, of the Museum of Practical Geology, to 

 Dr. J. E. Taylor, of the Ipswich Museum, and to the Director and M. L. Dollo 

 of the Brussels Museum, for their courtesy in placing the collections under 

 their charge at my disposal, as well as for the opportunity of borrowing some 

 of the most important specimens. 



