PREFATORY NOTICE. 
V 
stood, that the specimen now mounted in our Museum was 
put up in the same lot with a very fine portion of the head 
of a small Ichthyosaur; and the two had been catalogued as 
portions of one animal! In the same year I collected some 
good reptilian remains and other fossils from the Lias cliffs 
near Whitby ; among which were two jaws and other charac¬ 
teristic bones of the Teleosaurus Chapmanni, now mounted 
in the Museum. 
On revisiting the Yorkshire coast, after the lapse of 
nearly twenty years, I first saw the Plesiosaurus macropterus 
—now the grand ornament of our Museum—which had, with 
much labour and skill, been dug out of the neighbouring 
cliffs by some of the well-known jet-collectors of Whitby. 
It was purchased at the cost of more than £200 by a sub¬ 
scription, generously headed by Dr Clark, at that time our 
Professor of Anatomy. But the grandest addition to our 
Beptile series was made a few years afterwards in the form of 
a munificent gift from T. Hawkins, Esq.—the naturalist and 
collector, well known by his published works; and who, by his 
scientific labours and persevering manual skill has so largely 
helped to adorn the walls of the British Museum.—This noble 
series of Beptilian fossils (specimens of Ichthyosaur and Ple¬ 
siosaur obtained by him from the Lias quarries of Street, 
Somersetshire) was, I believe, from the first, destined for the 
Cambridge Museum. It was however made over without any 
reserve to the late Master of Trinity College (Dr Whewell); 
and was then, after a short correspondence with Mr Haw¬ 
kins, transferred to the Cambridge Geological Museum. The 
mounting of Mr Hawkins’ fossil Reptiles was a rather costly 
operation. The cost was, however, in a good measure met by 
a surplus left in my hands from the previous subscription for 
Mr Image’s miscellaneous (but chiefly cretaceous) collection; 
in which was one specimen of an Ichthyosaur, now mounted 
among the Cambridge fossil Reptiles, which very well exhi¬ 
bits the sternal bones of the Genus. 
Several good remains of the Ichthyosaur and Plesiosaur 
were secured by me during two visits to the Lias quarries of 
