were of a beautiful white. Many of them had,
unfortunately, become so fractured as to make identification difficult.
On following the line of the dorsal vertebrae--somewhat scattered about--I
came upon some vertebrae which appeared to me to be cervical vertebrae; and
then, behold my joy! in searching around the summit of the mound I
perceived the skull. The skull was so big and heavy that I could not
carry it away, but I took several photographs and careful drawings of it
from all sides.

It was curiously shaped--quite unlike any other fossil skull I have seen.
The cranial region proper was extremely short, with smallish round orbits
rather low down on the side of the head. The skull had an elongated
shape: 35 cm. was its total length; 10 cm. its maximum transverse
breadth, and 5 cm. at the central and widest part of palate. The skull
itself, with an elongated nasal bone, had a flattened point almost like a
beak, or more probably like the base of a proboscis. The front part of
the nose had unfortunately become fractured and ended with a flattened
segment. A marked arch or hump stood prominent upon the nasal bone. The
temporal arcades were quite developed, with prominent supra-orbital
bosses. The orbital hollows were 51/2 cm. in diameter, whereas the external
nares were 91/2 cm., the protrusion in front of the nostrils being 10 cm.
long. The palate, of great length, had a peculiar complex shape, like a
much-elongated U with another smaller U attached to it in the centre of
its curve, [Symbol].

The skull had been worn down by age and weathering. Moreover, one side of
the upper part of the cranium had been entirely destroyed--seemingly by
having rested on red-hot lava. Many of the vertebrae were equally injured.
By even a superficial examination it was easy to reconstruct the tragedy
which had taken place on that hillock thousands upon thousands of years
ago.

Searching about, I came upon another skull of a huge reptile, and a
number of smaller vertebrae than those belonging to the animal above
described. The second skull was much flattened, of an elongated shape,
very broad, the orbital cavity being high up on the skull--in fact, not
unlike the skull of a great serpent. It possessed a long occipital spur,
extraordinarily prominent, and fairly well-defined zygomatic arches--but
not quite so prominent as in the skull previously discovered. Seen from
underneath, there seemed to be a circular cavity on the left front, as