On a New Trilobite from the Cape of Good Hope

Abstract

Since the contributions to the ‘Transactions’ of this Society, by the late Mr. J. W. Salter, in 1852, I do not remember that any Trilobites have been described from the Cape of Good Hope. It is therefore with great pleasure that I lay before this Meeting an entirely new form, which I have referred to the genus Encrinurus , from the Cock's-comb Mountains at the Cape, collected and forwarded, together with some new and singularly interesting reptilian remains and other fossils, to the British Museum by Dr. W. Guybon Atherstone, F.G.S, of Graham's Town, Cape of Good Hope. The specimen is preserved in a nodule of about the size of a 7 lb. cannon-ball, and exhibits on one piece the dorsal aspect of the segments of nearly the entire body, save that the head is folded under, on the other a profile of the fossil in intaglio, which gives a most instructive view of the Trilobite, and shows that originally each of the eleven thoracic segments was probably furnished with a median dorsal spine five lines in length, giving to it a crested appearance suggestive of the specific name of crista-galli —a name doubly appropriate, as the specimen was obtained from the Cock's-comb Mountains. The caudal series, or pygidium, although not furnished like the thoracic series with a row of dorsal spines, is terminated by a caudal spine rather more than half an inch in length. These spinesare rendered still more novel from the fact that they are annulated from their bases