EEPTILES ABUNDANT. 79 



is also inferred that the estuary which once covered the south- 

 east part of England was the mouth of a river of that far- 

 descending class of which the Mississippi and Amazon are 

 examples. What part of the earth's surface presented the dry 

 land through which that and other similar rivers flowed, no 

 one can tell. It has been surmised that the particular one 

 here spoken of may have flowed from a point not nearer than 

 the site of the present Newfoundland. Professor Phillips has 

 suggested, from the analogy of the mineral composition, that 

 anciently elevated coal strata may have composed the dry 

 land from which the sandy matters of these strata were washed. 

 Such a deposit as the Wealden almost necessarily implies 

 a local, not a general condition ; yet it has been thought that 

 similar strata and remains exist in the Pays de Bray, near 

 Beauvais. This leads to the supposition that there may have 

 been, in that age, a series of river-receiving estuaries along the 

 border of some such great ocean as the Atlantic, of which 

 that of modern Sussex is only an example. 



The zoology of the Wealden is chiefly remarkable for the 

 additions which it makes to the list of reptiles presented in 

 previous formations. Besides some new crocodilia (Sucho- 

 saurus and Goniopholis\ and several chelonia (Tetrosternon, 

 etc.), we have here the principal constituents of a group, 

 which Professor Owen has described as a distinct order, under 

 the name of Dinosauria, another form being the Megalosaurus 

 of the oolite. These were terrestrial crocodile-like animals, 

 with some features of organization recalling the lacertilia, and 

 also such a massive and stately form of the extremities, as to 

 remind us of the large land pachyderms. The animal last 



FIG. 59. 



Portion ofjaio of Meyalosaurus. 



