Microscopic examination of the remains of skin preserved disclosed an abundance of dark pigment, indicating, Professor Fraas believes, that the skin was dark colored above. Doubtless, also, the under side, as in nearly all swimming animals of the present time, was of a lighter color, because such coloration rendered the animals much less conspicuous in the water when seen either from above or below. That the skin was bare is proved by many impressions or molds of it that have been discovered in the rocks, in which many fine creases are seen, but nothing suggesting scales or bony plates, save on the front edge of the paddles, where impressions of overlapping scales have been observed. This is an interesting fact, bearing witness that their land ancestors had been covered everywhere with scales, much like those of existing lizards and other reptiles. Scales or bony plates were not only useless to the ichthyosaurs in the water, since they could afford no protection, but would have been detrimental in increasing the resistance in swimming. That the ichthyosaurs were predaceous animals is of course evident from their teeth, adapted for the seizure and retention of slippery prey, but not for tearing or comminuting. The fossilized remains of food found between the ribs of some specimens, in the place where the stomach was, together with fossil excrement, called coprolites, usually attributed to these animals, prove that they fed largely upon fishes, squids, belemnites, and probably other invertebrates. One ichthyosaur specimen preserved in the Stuttgart Museum has preserved in its stomach contents a mass composed of the remains of more than two hundred belemnites. Most interesting of all is the fact that, not very rarely, embryonic skeletons of ichthyosaurs have been found associated with the remains of adult animals, in such positions that they must have been inclosed within the body cavity at the death of the animals. As many as seven such embryonic skeletons have been observed with a single specimen. At first it was supposed that these skeletons were of small ichthyosaurs which had been swallowed whole as food, since it is not at all likely that these predaceous reptiles were discriminative in their choice of food when hungry. It is not improbable that in some cases this is the true explanation of the smaller skeletons within the larger ones, but it cannot be true of all, since wherever the small skeletons are identifiable they have been found to belong to the same species as the adult, and it would be absurd to suppose an ichthyosaur bent upon its prey would be at all likely to select as many as seven young animals, all of the same size and all of its own species. Furthermore, some of these young skeletons have been found in such positions as would indicate that they were inclosed within their egg-covering at the time of their death. Some of these embryos measure as much as twenty inches in length.