subject on which he was at the time engaged. So, too, over an object which had attracted his attention, and in which on further examination he recognised some more than usual beauty of structure or design, one would frequently hear an exclamation. uttered with the deepest devotion, even as of thanksgiving from an over-full heart, "How wonderful are Thy works, O God!”

In writing this memoir, I have been under great obligation to Mr. Moule, the Curator of the Dorset Museum, for many particulars which are embodied in the foregoing paragraphs. He, from his official position, was in close intercourse for nearly 20 years with Mr. Mansel-Pleydell. With his permission I quote the following lines from his letter, for I think nothing could express the sense of the loss to his department so well :—

"His hearty interest and sympathy in all my work there (the Museum) were of priceless value to me. And I need not say that his knowledge of natural science, as regards both its extent and accuracy, and also his willingness - nay, rather, friendly eagerness to impart it to me in answer to many, many requests for advice, was simply invaluable; and then in money help he was generosity itself. I can hear him now with his cheery 'I'm good for a fiver' in answer to, not a request, but often to the merest passing word about some work looming in the distance as needful. As to the Field Club, I have said a word about his papers, but his personal presence at Field Meetings was ever a delight to me. To get near enough on these occasions to hear him give an impromptu object lesson was a delight to me that I shall never forget. Two among many such occasions I specially remember. Once when I literally sat at his feet' and heard him at Lulworth Cove talk about the strata facing us; the other time was in the Gardens at Abbotsbury. Then he walked from sub-tropical plant to plantAralia to Eucalyptus, bamboo to camellia - and told us about them in a way that was a perfect joy to me."

I have endeavoured to sketch some personal recollections, and yet I can but feel how very incomplete they are. To realise this fully, one must have known the man. As Mr. Bosworth Smith has so well said, "He was greater and better in himself than in anything he either said or did ;" and, in concluding this memoir of Mr. Mansel-Pleydell, I will borrow a description of him from the same writer, which seems to me to sum up his character with epigrammatic conciseness, as that of "a saint who already saw Heaven opened."

Anniversary

Address of the President.

H

APPILY, the death roll of our Club in the past year is small. I have to record the loss of four only by death-my relative, Sir Edward Medlycott, Mr. Frederick Fane, Major Sparks, and Mr. B. Willcox.

Mr. Fane was related to the Fanes of Apethorpe, his grandfather being brother to the 11th Earl of Westmoreland. His presence was always welcome at the meetings of the Club, and contributed an appreciable quota of those elements which have made the meetings so popular.

The hearty reception of the Club by Mr. and Mrs. Fane at Moyles Court in June, 1893, will be in the remembrance of most of the members. On that occasion Mr. Fane read after luncheon a very interesting paper upon the ill-fated Alice Leslie, once the possessor of Moyles Court, who was sentenced to death by Judge Jeffries at the "Bloody Assizes" and beheaded at Winchester for giving shelter and concealment to Hicks, a dissenting minister, after the Battle of Sedgmoor. His paper,

entitled "Legends of Milton," was a useful contribution to the lore of the village gossip. Mr. Fane's third paper gives an interesting account of Ellingham Church, which was built about

the year 1230, and in which Alice Leslie lies buried.

Major Sparks read an exhaustive paper to the members on Langton Herring in 1892.

I shall now continue my examination of Reptiles, which I was unable to finish last year on account of its length.

The extinct Dinosaurs were discovered relatively late. In 1824 Buckland made known the first remains of this order under the generic name of Megalosaurus. In the following year Mantell discovered the remains of Iguanodon and Hylosaurus in the Weald of Sussex. In 1841 Owen proposed to comprise the genera then known, under a distinct order, which he named DINOSAURIA. Further discoveries continued to increase the number. In a series of very important memoirs on the classification and genealogy of the order in 1868 and 1869, Huxley selected Compsognathus as a uniting link between this extinct group of reptiles and the earlier group of birds. Ten years later Marsh commenced to publish the results of his examination of Dinosaur-remains which had been discovered in large numbers, and often in a perfect state of preservation, in the Western States of N. America. Besides the discovery of several skeletons of Iguanodon at Bernissart (Belgium), Hulke, Seeley, Lydekker, and Baur have made valuable contributions to the knowledge of these extinct reptiles.

THE DINOSAURIA began and ended in the Mesozoic Age, and had a world-wide distribution. From a teleological point of view, they are of some importance. Many attained to enormous proportions, surpassing every other recent or extinct animal; only a few of them did not exceed the length of three feet. The balance of life was kept up, as it is now, by carnivors and herbivors. The greater size of the posterior limbs, in proportion to the rest of the body, is one of their distinguishing features; they were principally used for progression. The fore limbs, being feeble and short, like the living kangaroo, were used, perhaps, for bringing arboreal food to the mouths. Their strong hind limbs enabled them to raise their massive bodies in an erect position, or to keep them high above the

ground when at rest. They differ from the reptilian type by the connection of the ribs with the vertebral column and by two occipital condyles, instead of one; also by the consolidation of at least four anchylosed vertebræ for the sacrum, instead of the usual reptilian two, which gave additional strength to the pelvic-arch. The flat surfaces of the vertebræ and the hollow bones of the limbs are also differentiated features. The teeth of the herbivorous Dinosaurs have a special adaptation for grinding their food, wholly dissimilar to any other living reptile, except the Iguana of tropical America. Previous to the important discoveries by Cope, Marsh, and others, in the Upper Jurassic and the Upper Cretaceous deposits of N. America, our knowledge of the order obtained from the European deposits had left many gaps unfilled. Professor Marsh has brought to light features of some importance in connection with Dinosaurs, especially the construction of the skull, the vertebral column, and the pelvic-bones, to which Hulke, Seeley, and Lydekker have added much to our knowledge of their structure.

The Dinosaurs are classified under the sub-orders ORNITHOPODA (which include Trachydontide, Iguanodontidae, Scelidosaurida, Stegosauride, and Ceratopida), THEROPODA, and SAUROPODA. THEROPODA holds an intermediate position between the ORNITHOPODA and SAUROPODA, and includes Anchisauridæ, Megalosauridae, Compsognathidae, and Celuride. SAUROFODA embraced Atlantosaurida, Diplodocida, and Cetiosaurida. Nothing is known of the European SAUROPODA except isolated bones and vertebræ of Cetiosaurus and Streptospondylus, which approach the CROCODILIA, and to which Order Owen at one time attached them. The Crocodilian Parasuchia, a carnivora, approaches the herbivorous SAUROPODA, whose fore and hind limbs are furnished with five toes each, differing little in length; like the CROCODILIA they have no clavicles. SAUROPODA Occur in the Upper and Middle Jurassic Beds of England and the North of France, and of N. America (Wyoming, Colorado), and in the Wealden and the Middle and Lower Cretaceous Beds of England.

Lydekker, in his Catalogue of Fossil Reptiles in the British. Museum, 1888, adopts Marsh's views of the SAUROPODA and the THEROPODA, but he joins the Stegosaurida with the ORNITHOPODA. The Cetiosauride of the sub-order SAUROPODA are typically represented by the English genus Cetiosaurus, which appears to be so nearly related to the American Morosaurus. Mr. Lydekker considers that both may be united, from the well ossified limbbones, the free projection of the head of the femur into the acetabulum, and the large terminal claws. He also concludes that Cetiosaurus was of terrestrial or sub-aquatic habits, and that it dwelt among ferns, cycads, and conifers on the banks of rivers or the borders of lakes. This has been remarkably confirmed by the discovery of its allied American forms, and has now become a matter of history. Cetiosaurus occurs in Great Britain in the Lower Jurassic, Great Oolite, and the Forest-Marble Beds of Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire.

ATLANTOSAURIDE.-This family is represented by Atlantosaurus, Apatosaurus, and Brontosaurus, from the Upper Jurassic Beds of N. America, and by European types to which they appear to have a more or less close alliance. The study of all European Sauropoda is beset, as Mr. Lydekker says, with almost insurmountable difficulties, in consequence of the isolation of the bones one from the other, scarcely one of them being found in close approximation.

Brontosaurus, Marsh.-Brontosaurus excelsus, Marsh, from the Upper Jurassic of North America. Its total length as estimated by Professor Marsh was upwards of 50 feet and its weight about 20 tons. The head was remarkably small, neck long like Ornithopsis, the centrum of each vertebra composed of highly cellular bony tissue, having a large cavity on each side; the tail massive and the bones solid. The head is smaller in proportion to the body than in any vertebrate hitherto known. The entire skull is less in diameter, or in actual weight than the fourth and fifth vertebræ. The small head and brain and slender neural cord indicate a stupid and slow-moving animal. It had no offensive or defensive weapons nor any dermal armature.