VI 
PREFATORY NOTICE. 
Barrow-on-the-Soar: and from the same quarries a nearly 
perfect specimen of an Ichthyosaur was obtained by Mr 
Packe, formerly Fellow and Vice-Provost of King’s College, 
and generously presented to the University. From the same 
locality a fine specimen of I. tenirostris was purchased by 
my late honoured friend, Mr Alsopp (a man of letters, a 
lover of science, and one of the early reclaimers of Charn- 
wood Forest), and by him given to the University Museum. 
This valuable specimen, being imbedded in soft crumbling 
shale, suffered greatly in its transport to Cambridge; and 
still more from an accident arising out of its incautious 
mounting for exhibition on the walls of our Museum. 
Among our larger illustrative specimens, upon which a 
considerable cost has been bestowed, we may mention two 
articulated skeletons of the Plesiosaur derived from the clav- 
1/ 
pits near Ely—one presented by Bev. S. Banks, Bector of 
Cottenliam—the other by the late Stead Jones, Esq. of Ely. 
Both these gentlemen have been zealous benefactors of our 
Museum. 
In this place may be noticed some valuable reptilian re¬ 
mains (including a new Plesiosaur and a new Ichthyosaur from 
the Oxford Clay near Peterborough), which I purchased of 
Dr Henry Porter and presented to the Museum. Also an 
os pubis and a coracoid of an enormous Pliosaur from the 
Oxford Clay near St Neots ; presented, along with the cer¬ 
vical vertebrae and other valuable organisms, by J. J. Evans, 
Esq. Lastly, among the Enaliosaurs exhibited in the Mu¬ 
seum I may notice a very fine portion of the jaws of the 
Ichthyosaurus campylodon, from the Chalk—purchased of Mr 
W. Farren by the University, along with his grand series of 
Ornithosaurian and other remains from the pseudo-coprolite 
diggings in the Upper Green Sand in the neighbourhood of 
Cambridge. 
Of Palaeozoic Beptiles we do not possess one single British 
specimen. All, or nearly all the fossils, alluded to in this 
Notice, were obtained from our Secondary or Mesozoic for¬ 
mations : and before I quit the Mesozoic Beptiles which adorn 
