234 Transactions of the Boyal Microscopical Society, 
which, provisionally and for the purpose of registration, I assigned 
the name “ granicone,” suggested hy their shape and surface. 
All were conical, with a comparatively smooth base (Fig. 4, h ) ; 
the rest of the outer surface was of a denser and smoother texture, 
but beset with granules of about a millimetre in diameter, more or 
less. The largest of these “ granicones ” are the subjects of 
Figs. 1, 2, and 3 ; the smallest were rather more than half that 
size. The variations of shape were in the degrees of obliquity of 
the base, the extreme of deviation from a right angle to the cone’s 
axis being shown in Fig. 4. The margin of the base was formed, 
in some, by a single series of granules, like a circle of beads, as in 
Fig. 5, from which the apex of the cone was broken away. 
Conceiving these bodies to be dermal bones or appendages, their 
conical shape suggested first a comparison with those of certain 
rays and sharks, but the osteo-dentine and ganoine shown in 
microscopical sections, and the disposition of the canaliculi* rami- 
fying from the central cavity, at once distinguish the structure 
of such piscine dermal cones and spines from that shown in similar 
sections of the granicones. 
I may add, also, that the geological deposit containing these 
fossils is a fresh-water one, and that no evidence of Sturionidw 
or other fishes with ganoid plates, habitually or temporarily fre- 
quenting rivers or lakes, has been met with in the portions of 
matrix showing the fossil bodies in question. 
Bones and teeth of various Beptilia are, however, abundant. 
They have afibrded materials for a monograph on certain new and 
small forms of Crocodilia; but the associated osseous scutes, or 
dermal bones referable to this order of Beptilia are unmistakable. 
On the hypothesis of the “ granicones ” being similar parts of some 
member of the same cold-blooded air-breathing class, there were 
several extinct genera of Lacertilia, represented by associated 
fossil bones and teeth, to one of which, it seemed probable, the 
bodies in question might have belonged. 
I may remark that in certain Dinosaurs {Hyldeosaurus, Scelido- 
saurus, e. g.), some of the dermal scutes with fiat or with oblique 
bases of attachment, rise thence in a pyramidal form. But these 
much exceed in size the largest of the “ granicones.” There was 
no trace, moreover, of any species of either of the above extinct 
Wealden or Liassic genera in the Becklesian Collection. 
The associated Lacertian fossils which, by their number and 
* “ Tubes de dentine ” of Prof. Hannover, who, in his excellent memoir ‘ Sur la 
Structure et le Developpement des Ecailles et des Epines chez les Poissons cartila- 
gineux,’ thus describes their course in the dermal scales along the mid-line of the 
back of the sting-ray ( Trygon) ; — “ Du reseau sortent les tubes de dentine, qui 
rayonnent de tons les cote's dans la partie libre et pyramidale de I'ecaille,” p. 3. 
See also Quekett, ‘ Histological Catalogue, Mus. Coll, of Surgeons,’ 4to, vol. ii. 
1855, pp. 86, 87. 
