Ipebt»le»= 6 wanowin 0 animals (a sequel to 
“tlbe IRb^tic ®one^36ebs.”) 
By W. H. WicKES. 
P ARTICULAR attention was called in the previous paper to the 
Quartz pebbles so frequently found in the Bone-Beds, associated 
with the animal remains, and evidence was brought forward to show 
the probability that the pebbles had been swallowed by the various 
creatures during life. Since the publication of that paper so much 
additional evidence on the subject (both old and new) has been 
collected that it may be of interest to place before you these further 
facts, and also to state the varied and peculiar theories advanced in 
explanation of this curious phase of animal life. 
The earliest definite report the writer has seen is in 1858, ^ where a 
note appended to a paper by Godwin Austen states-; “ M. 
Deslongchamps, of Caen, pointed out many years since that modern 
Crocodiles are in the habit of swallowing pebbles, and he suggested 
that certain smoothly rounded stones, which are occasionally found in 
the fine-grained oolitic strata of Normandy may have been voided by 
the Crocodiles of the period. 
I am indebted to Mr. Bowerbank for the information that Sharks 
also swallowed small stones, hence another agency by which the shingle 
of the White Chalk may have been transferred to areas of deep sea.” 
The next notice is nearer our own district. ^ In 1866 Mr. T. 
Codrington, F.G.S., writing on the geology of the Berks and Hants 
Railway, reports, “Near the east end of Savernake tunnel the scapulae, 
with some ribs and vertebrae of a Plesiosaurus were found. It is 
remarkable that among the ribs were some six or seven grey quartzose 
pebbles, varying from half-an-inch to an inch in diameter. I never 
saw another pebble in the sand, and these occurred at some depth 
below the Chloritic Marl, in which there are sometimes small pebbles, 
although none occur in it here.” (This specimen is now in the 
Natural History Museum, South Kensington, in the same cabinet with 
another, labelled “ Gizzard-stones in Peloneustes, from Oxford Clay, 
PeterborouLdi.”) 
In 1867^ Mr. W. S. Burton, F.G.S., writing on “ Rhsetic Beds near 
Gainsborough,” notes “ the occurrence here and there in the bed of 
small smooth pebbles, principally quartz, which in all probability the 
fishes of those days, like the Cod and other lishes of our own that take 
their food off the ground, had swallowed, either by chance or purposely, 
for the sake of the zoophytes and other substances encrusting them.” 
^Q.J.G.S., Vol. xiv., p. 258. Wiltshire Arch. Mag., Vol. ix., p. 170. 
^Q.J.G.S., Vol. xxiii., p. 318. 
