XII.—On the Discovery of Coprolites, or Fossil Fæces, in the Lias at Lyme Regis, and in other Formations.

Coprolites in Lias. It has long been known to the collectors of fossils at Lyme Regis, that among the many curious remains in the lias of that shore, there are numerous bodies which have been called Bezoar stones, from their external resemblance to the concretions in the gall-bladder of the Bezoar goat, once so celebrated in medicine : I used to imagine them to be recent concretions of clay, such as are continually formed by the waves from clay on the present beach; but I have now before me sufficient evidence to show that they are coeval with the lias, and afford another example of the same curious and unexpected class of fossils with the album graecum, which I first discovered in 1822 in the cave of Kirkdale, being the petrified faeces of Saurian animals, whose bones are so numerous in the same strata with themselves*. The Coprolites, which I shall first describe, have yet been noticed chiefly at Lyme Regis; but I think it probable that they exist wherever the remains of Ichthyosauri are abundant; the most likely place to afford them is the extensive coast near Whitby, where, as at Lyme, the lias is exposed to continual destruction by the sea, and abounds in bones of Saurians†. A great number of these so-called Bezoars at Lyme, occur as loose pebbles upon the shore, having been washed out of the lias; but many are also found dispersed, like Septaria, in the lias shale, and sometimes in the stone