LECTURES ON PALAEONTOLOGY. 
347 
oil-crushers, and the cake sold as manure. It is an exceed¬ 
ingly poisonous seed. Possibly, the sweepings contain this 
or a similar oily seed. I find in the warehouse stuff all sorts 
of oily seeds, and innumerable weed seeds, many of which 
may be poisonous. Accidents with oil-cakes, in the prepa¬ 
ration of which foul linseed has been used, have been brought 
repeatedly under my notice. Amongst other oily seeds, I 
find in the ^veepings linseed, rapeseed, black and yellow 
mustard, in considerable quantity (mustard is decidedly in¬ 
jurious to animals), hempseed, Niger seed (the seed of 
Guizotia ), earth-nut (the seed of Arachis liypogaa), and 
cotton seed. Besides these seeds I can distinctly recognise 
the following matters :—Indian corn, Irish moss, locust beans 
(i Silique dulcis ), common beans, peas, vetches, dari-grains, rice, 
wheat, barley, oats, starch, clover seed, Italian rye grass, and 
a great variety of grass seeds, and the excrement of rats. 
There are, of course, other seeds (of weeds) present; but I 
am not sufficient of a botanist to distinguish the species. 
I am surprised that any dealer should venture to sell such a 
material for feeding purposes; for it is a well-known fact that 
poisonous oily seeds are pressed by oil-crushers for the sake 
of the oil which they contain. The great variety of oily 
seeds in the warehouse sweepings shows that the party who 
sold the sweepings dealt not only in feeding stuffs, but like¬ 
wise in oily and other seeds. To sum up this report, I may 
recapitulate—1. That I have not found any mineral 
poison. 2. That the animals have died, in all likelihood, 
from the effects of a poisonous (probably oily) seed. 
ac Believe me, Sir, yours faithfully, 
“‘Augustus Voeleker. 5 ” 
LECTURES ON PALAEONTOLOGY. 
Professor Owen has lately concluded a course of lec¬ 
tures on Palaeontology at the Government School of Mines, 
Jermyn Street. The chief subject of this discourse was the 
extinct quadrupeds whose remains have been recently dis¬ 
covered in the caverns of Australia, and in the auriferous 
and other tertiary deposits of that country. All the species 
which he had re-constructed from these fossils belonged to 
the same low group of mammalia, with small brains, wanting 
the connecting apparatus called the “ great commissure” in 
