at Pounceford, in Sussex. 599 



may be occasionally procured, at low water, on the beach near 

 Eaglesbourne) ; 7. Sandstone, without concretions; dividing 

 into rhomboidal masses ; numerous veins of argillaceous iron 

 ore, and of clay, approaching to pipe-clay at the lower part; 

 8. Dark-coloured shale, with roundish masses of sandstone, 

 and several layers of lignite, and a vast quantity of fragments 

 of carbonised vegetables.* The same author observes that 

 the equivalent beds, in the Isle of Wight, are composed of 

 sands and sandstones, "frequently ferruginous, with numerous 

 alternations of reddish and variegated sandy clays, and con- 

 cretions of calcareous grit," (Fitton, Ann. of Phil. 1824.) 



The remains found in these beds are such as we may 

 imagine to have been deposited in the estuary or delta of 

 some mighty river, which brought down, with its sands and 

 clays, from the neighbouring land, the plants and animals that 

 inhabited it. Turtles and trionyxes crawled along its banks ; 

 plesiosauri and crocodiles sported in its waves, or lay basking 

 in the sun in its fens and shallows : while the gigantic mega- 

 losaurus, an amphibious animal clothed in mail, far exceeding 

 the largest crocodiles in size, being, according to Cuvier, 

 40 ft. in length, though, from some bones in Mantell's mu- 

 seum, Dr. Buckland conjectures it to have been nearly double 

 that extent, and in height equal to a full-grown elephant 

 (Geol. Transac. ii. 2d series); that yet more gigantic herbi- 

 vorous reptile the iguanodon, whose well-worn teeth, re- 

 sembling the molares (grinder teeth) of living herbivorous 

 Mammalia (differing therein from the whole family of li- 

 zards, from one member of which, from its apparent re- 

 semblance in other respects, the iguana of the West Indies, 

 it derives its name), bear witness to the great voracity of its 

 appetite, one of whose thigh-bones measured no less than 

 23 in.f, and a condyle, or joint, of another bone, 34 in. in cir- 

 cumference (Bakewell, Introd. Geol., p. 280.), and which Man- 

 tell calculates could not, at the lowest calculation, have been 

 less than 70 ft., or equal to a large-sized whale in length % 



* Fitton, Geol. Sketch Hastings, p. 36, 37. Fitton considers the Tilgate 

 beds, so celebrated from the remarkable fossil animals discovered by Man- 

 tell, to belong to the upper part of the Hastings sands. 



f Mantel 1, Fossils of Tilgate Forest, who justly observes, " Were this 

 thigh-bone clothed with muscles and integuments of suitable proportions, 

 where is the living animal that could rival this extremity of a lizard of the 

 primitive ages of the world ? 



J It is now very well known that the largest species of whales in the 

 Northern seas seldom exceed 70 ft. in length. The old accounts of their 

 having been discovered, occasionally, upwards of 100 ft. in. length, appear 

 to have been very much exaggerated. The largest, probably, ever known, 

 was the one caught near Ostend, the skeleton of which was exhibited in 

 London in 1830, and measured 96 ft. in length. 



