ately apply to them for the square of the Circle, the key
to the arrow-headed characters of Bactriana, and other
such mysteries; but this worthless litter now lies in tlie
British Museum, in a costly Cabinet, daubed with grease
and sulphate of lime. I defy tbe reproach of personality.
I know notliing of attending circumstances, whether of
error in judgment, or of vanity in a donor, or of mistake
in a ll; but tliere the thing lies, for wliich, having spared
no time, no money, I would not, nor would any one else,
bestow a doit.
With this nameless exception, then, and the head of
P late V, all the known remains of the Genus Oligostinus
are due to Miss Aiming. They stand thus:
_ istiuui. PI. II Found by Miss Anning.
I Vertebral Column, alluded
Species I. ^ to by Sir P. Egerton.
Geol. tVans...........................................................
Seapulffi, &c. ofPl. IV............................................
Oligostinus. PI. Ill..................................................
Sir Everard Home's Head.
Vide Phil. Trans....................................................
Head. PI.V..................... Aperson,nameunkuo»a
It may be observed that Mr. Johnson, of Bristol, has
tlie Cranium of an Oligostinus, which was found by Miss
Anning several years ago at Lyme, because it has beeu
the appui for many a tale on account of its large eye
sockets. It possesses no specificai identification whatever.
C H A P T E R I I I .
Genus Poi.yostinus. Hox«, et«n-ioy. Multis ossibus in palmipedibus.
Species I. Capite magno, dentibus grandibus ac paucis, pectore sc
Spec s II. Compage minore et debiliore. Tab. VIII. et XI.
Tab. VII. IX. et X.
By a singular fatality the Communis of the old names
proves the rarest Genus of all. Tlie most incessant
enthusiasm of pursuit, for more than ten years, from Lyme
Northward through all the Lias Covers in England, has
obtained us but one “ hark hallo,” and the one Conquest
that followed it. We described the strenuous effort and
the happy fortune by wliich that difficult animal was
secured, in our Memoirs, and republish here the Plate VII,
as the trophy of both.
Beside the recorded generic thickness of head, comparative
paucity of lai^e dumpy teeth, sternal strength, and
above ail the paddles; Plate VII, presents a fact, which
instead of being accidental to the individual, as at first
supposed, belongs to the universal sub-Regnum itself.
We purposely avoided any comparison between the
Cervical apparatus of these lost Races and our own
contemporary Cetacea, in the last Chapter, that we might
illustrate by the most remarkable contrasts the amazing
heterodoxy which obtains in the former; drive them
from any community whatever from all Creatures of tlie
Adamic and post-diluvian epocha, and reinstate tliem the
more triumphantly in the solitary pre-eminence of Time
and of Being, to which they advanced so many substantial
claims,
Of the neck,—the anchylosis and otlier modes by which
tlie preponderating head is balanced with the attenuated
spine, finds analogies in many actual whales; so does tlie
tail of these astonishing Taninim, square with the peculiar
attribute of that belonging to the Libyan Boa; and
was, perhaps, imposed upon the former, as upon tbe last,
for a moral purpose, lest the strong should subdue the
weak, and at length extinguish the Pacific Kingdoms of
Creation.
The Cunning and cruel Snake, whetting his fangs with
poison in treacherous lair, and following with malignant
eye the unconscious creature of his lust, moves hut at his
peril. Beside the Conservative instinct, the victim in
which he anticipates Death and a banquet of blood, is
assured of one other chance for life, extorted from the
Destroyer himself. The least motion of his voluminous
Coils, even a shiver of rage, as the deer, or the dangerous
Lion retires, or of fiery hope when he crosses the fatal
Circle of the demon in wait, betrays him too soon. The
withered tail rattles, and the Hanahash, cursed with the
terrific moral so well understood by the creature to whom
Jehovah addresses it, drags it ever behind him with what
disappointment, hate, and confusion he may.
Ichthyosauri have a tail with a like condition, modified
to the element ia wliich they swam. In the Sea-serpent
before us, the lateral spines, called “ chevrons,” cease
from the upper third of the twenty sixth caudal vertebra,
and thereafter occupy the inferior facet of the receding
bones, nearly to tlieir extremity. The Spinous or neuro-
apophyses, also disappear from, about, the thirty-third
vertebra behind the one mentioned ; a complete revolution
in shape occurs also at tlie same time. The first mentioned
and three following vertebræ elongate, square
themselves, and contract in size; their articular concavities
nearly vanish, and the rim itself occupies half the
paries of the bone. Tbe anterior lateral spines wliicli
occupy the costal axis of the vertebr®, from the Pelvis
backward, scarcely distinguishable from the floating
ribs, either in size or form, graduate slowly until they
reach the limit before mentioned. At that point the tail
really commences, the chevron bones arming it with all
the cocygeal attributes from tlie first. The spinous chord,
longer issuing its wonted filament to processes nowhere
found, pursues its paralysed way over the following
bones, and then ceases altogether, leaving the last from
ten to twenty vertebr® lifeless.
Nor was this condition of the tail without advantage
to the party himself ; the auditory nerve of the prey he
chased, may have been strung to the warning vibrations
of this drooping and finally dead member of the Hellhound
in pursuit, as are the ears of living creatures to
I them upon the serpent’s track while tbe declination
in which the tail is always found more surely prove that
it was naturally so prehensile, and possessed of a lateral
motion peculiarly its own. Of what rudder-like use a
settled force and a motive power like this were to the
animal they were given, our navies tell. The more the
momentum of a vessel agrees with its passivity, the
better its sum-total weight of ballast and all harmonizes
with her sailing powers, the more perfect she is esteemed,
while a perfect command of the helm is indispensable to
the safety of the ship.
Tliat Nature which errs only through Etliics, over
which the Almighty has placed alone His Holy Name,
doubtless fixed all her antagonistical Forces with the most
exquisite acumen composing them to the New Law even
of Evil itself. The far Otaheitan, to whom an abstract
idea were Greek, has carved an oar, to be seen in the British
Museum, after the fashion of that of a Sea Saurus, and
were our Naval Architects to discover the secret of that
proportion which is observable throughout the Creatures
of the Deep, soon should we skim the waves as swiftly,
as lightly as the prlmæval Taninim; vast paddles rotatory
by steam for fins, merchandize for body, the ship
itself for the steering and ballasting tail, and the wit of
man, as of God, ruling the whole.
It has been observed before that the Polyostinus is
distinguished generally by a bulk swelling at the expense
of slenderness. The Oligostinus in all his size, might, à
priori, have been expected to stretch out his limbs to an
egregious lengtli, wherewith to gather up the waters and
rule them at his will ; But the Polyostinus retires within
himself; his head, his back, bis members are all sturdy,
fitted to pounce upon bis quarry, rather than to speed it
from any great distance, and fairly to hunt it down.
Amongst the Sauri he stands the strong ; none had such
stubborn teeth, none such lusty limbs; he was thebull-dog
of his fury-kind, black, sullen, and ugly, fierce, gluttonous,
and decisive, and a Gorgon terror to every hapless
Creature that caught his glassy eye.
Sir Everard Home, and Doctor Buckland spent themselves
over an imperfect Polyostinus, in 1819, whicli was
the first Ichthyosaurus to disclose its four paddles; and
described it in the Philosophical Transactions, with a
splendid plate.
I have to express my unfeigned thanks to Professor
Owen and Mr. Clift, of the Royal College of Surgeons,
in whose magnificent Gallery this Saurian is deposited,
for the hospitable manner in which they met my request
to examine it, as also John Hunter’s other fossil organic
Remains.
The invaluable anatomical and physiological Collection
of that eminent Man, which has absorbed almost the whole
life of Mr. Clift, to whom the preservation of more than
half of it is due, is so vast, tliat it remained for Professor
Owen to ascertain more particularly the geological specimens
witli which it was accompanied to the College.
It cannot but be interesting to our Reader to learn that
these Remains amount to quite a Collection, of no ordinary
kind, enhanced as it is by the Polyostinus above
mentioned.
Thus have a triad of the most accomplished Naturalists
of tliis or any other Age, stamped a value upon the Collection
there of a novel kind. It seems that John Hunter
was the first of a dynasty of Great men, born to enrich
this College beyond every other in Europe. Sir Everard
Home succeeded, to whom Professor Buckland, who now
reigns, seems while living to have been a second-self.
Professor Owen will follow up tlieir high example, inspired
no less by the nobility of those Sciences, in the
Halls of which he ever breathes, than the impulses of a
Genius which both Hemispheres have already hailed.
["Polyostinus. PI. VII...............Found by the Author.
Species I. ^ Fragment. PI. IX................................................
Ljaw. Pl.X...........................................................
("SirEverardHome’s-Phil.Trans. . By MissAnning.
I I.H e a d . PI. Vlll By the Author.
baw. PI. XI........................................................
C H A P T E R IV.
SGYLOSTINUS. vTfmuxot, ct ooTin. Rotuadis ossibus in palmi
Species I. Rostro crassiore. 2W. XII.
Species II. Rostro proeloiigo, et tenuissimo. Tab. XIII.
PLATE XII, furnishes as yet the most perfect illustration
of the Genus heading our present Article. Tlie
Strongylostinus which it represents was found in a thick
Stratum of marl, about eleven feet from the ground, and
carelessly torn up by the idle fellow into whose hand it
fell. Although terribly shattered, fortunately not one
piece of the matrix actually lost its articulation, so that
we find it here exactly as Death and Time left it.
The Specimen is the more interesting inasmuch as a
part of the dorsum, and nearly the whole of the anterior
paddles have been swept away by a force which had not
strength to cany with them the rest of the skeleton. The
slightest agitation of the incumbent waters might suffice
for this, as the putrefaction of the lungs and the stomach,
necessarily preceding that of the less vascular and fluid
muscles, decomposed the adjacent cartilages, loosened the
hones, and abandoned them to the mercy of the Sea. The
more stubborn texture of the head, and caudal extremities,
and their comparatively contracted size, their distance too
from the gaseous volcano, which blew up and helped to
scatter the anterior abdominal framework, successfully
resisted that catastrophe.