572 
Sir E. Home’s Account of the 
This branch of comparative anatomy not only brings to our 
knowledge races of animals very different from those with 
which we are acquainted, but supplies intermediate links in 
the gradation of structure, by means of which the different 
classes will probably be found so imperceptibly to run into one 
another, that they will no longer be accounted distinct, but 
only portions of one series, and show that the whole of the 
animal creation forms a regular and connected chain. 
The fossil remains of animals are too frequently brought 
under our observation in a very mutilated state; or are so 
intimately connected with the substances in which they are 
deposited, that it is difficult to make out the figure of the bones. 
In the present instance, the pains that have been taken, and 
the skill which has been exerted in removing the surrounding 
stone, under the superintendance of Mr. Bullock, in whose 
Museum of Natural History the specimen is preserved, have 
brought the parts distinctly into view. 
This specimen was found upon an estate of Henry Host 
Henley, Esq. between Lyme and Charmouth, in Dorsetshire, 
in a cliff thirty or forty feet above the level of the sea-shore. 
It had been thrown down by the breaking off of a part of the 
cliff, and buried in the sand upon the shore, to the depth of 
nearly two feet. The skull was dug out in 1812, the other 
parts in the following year, at a distance of some feet. 
The cliff' is composed of that species of argillaceous lime- 
stone called blue lias, in which the fossil bones were deposited. 
Above the lias there is only a thin layer of black earth. 
The figure and appearance of the fossil bones are so accu- 
rately shewn in the annexed drawings, (Plates xvii. xviii. xix. 
XX.) as to make a very particular description of them unnecessary. 
