this ancient family. A large proportion of the other bones are evidently Plesiosaurian. I found the head of the flat humerus so characteristic of the extinct order to which the Plesiosaurus has been assigned, and two digital bones of the paddle, that, from their comparatively slender and slightly curved form, so unlike the digitals of its cogener the Ichthyosaurus, could have belonged evidently to no other reptile. I observed, too, in the slightly curved articulations of not a few of the vertebrae, the gentle convexity in the concave centre, which, if not peculiar to the Plesiosaurus, is at least held to distinguish it from most of its contemporaries. Among the various nondescript organisms of the shale, I laid open a smooth angular bone, hollowed something like a grocer's scoop; a three-pronged caltrop-looking bone, that seems to have formed part of a pelvic arch; another angular bone, much massier than the first, regarding the probable position of which I could not form a conjecture, but which some of my geological friends deem cerebral; an extremely dense bone, imperfect at each end, which presents the appearance of a cylinder slightly flattened; and various curious fragments, which, with what our Scotch museums have not yet acquired,--entire reptilian fossils for the purposes of comparison,--might, I doubt not, be easily assigned to their proper places. It was in vain that, leaving John to collect the scattered pieces of shale in which the bones occurred, I set myself again and again to discover the bed from which they had been detached. The tide had fallen, and a range of skerries lay temptingly off, scarce a hundred yards from the water's edge: the shale beds might be among them, with Plesiosauri and crocodiles stretching entire; and fain would I have swum off to them, as I had done oftener than once elsewhere, with my hammer in my teeth, and with shirt and drawers in my hat; but a tall brown forest of kelp and tangle in which even a seal might drown, rose thick and perilous round both shore and skerries; a slight swell was felting the long fronds together; and I deemed it better, on the whole, that the discoveries I had already made should be recorded, than that they should be lost to geology, mayhap for a whole age, in the attempt to extend them.