THE GREAT FISH-LIZARDS 
63 
In the year 1814 a few bones were found on the Dorsetshire 
coast between Charmouth and Lyme Eegis, and added to the 
collection of Bullock. They came from the Lias cliffs, undermined 
by the encroaching sea. Sir Everard’s attention being attracted 
to them, he published the notices already referred to. The analogy 
of some of the bones to those of a crocodile, induced Mr. Konig, of 
the British Museum, to believe the animal to have been a saurian, 
I 
or lizard ; but the vertebrae, and also the position of certain open- 
ings in the skull, indicated some remote affinity with fishes, but 
this must not be pressed too far. The choice of a name, there- 
fore, involved much difficulty; and at length he decided to call 
it the Ichthyosaurus, or fish-lizard. Mr. Johnson, of Bristol, who 
had collected for many years in that neighbourhood, found out 
some valuable particulars about these remains. The conclusions 
of Dean Buckland, then Professor of Geology at Oxford, led Sir 
Everard to abandon many of his former opinions. The labours 
of the learned men of the day were greatly assisted by the exertions 
of Miss Alining, an enthusiastic collector of fossils. This lady, 
devoting herself to science, explored the frowning and precipitous 
cliffs in the neighbourhood of Lyme Eegis, when the furious 
spring-tide combined with the tempest to overthrow them, and 
rescued from destruction by the sea, sometimes at the peril of her 
life, the few specimens which originated all the facts and specula- 
tions of those persons whose names will ever be remembered with 
gratitude by geologists. 
Probably our readers are already more or less familiar with the 
drawings of the fossilised remains of Ichthyosauri to be seen in 
almost every text-book of geology. (Fig. 8 is from Owen’s British 
Fossil Beptiles,) But we recommend all who take an interest in 
the world’s lost creations to pay a visit to the great Natural 
History Museum, at South Kensington. The fossil reptile gallery 
