AND BEHEMOTH. 103 



The 17th verse of the 40th chapter of Job seems to me descriptive 

 of the place of the behemoth's, or iguanodon's, feeding, and also of 

 the confidence with which the harmless nature of his food inspired 

 other animals, as contrasted with the terror they felt at the sight of 

 the crocodile and megalosaurus. " Surely the mountains bring him 

 forth food, where all the beasts of the field do play." Thus in every 

 particular do the iguanodon and behemoth tally in description. May 

 we not, therefore, fairly presume that they were the same animal ? 



Geologists tell us that the crust of the earth is composed of a regulai- 

 succession of strata, lying one over another, like the coats of an onion ; 

 and that each of these (except a few of the lowest of all) is character- 

 ised by tlie remnants of animals or vegetables peculiar to itself: those 

 which are fonned in any particular stratum will not be all found, perhaps 

 none of them, in the stratum next above it, and so on. Geologists 

 are enabled, from these animal and vegetable remains, to fonn a 

 tolerable estimate of the condition of the earth at the successive periods 

 at which each stratum (however lowly buried now) was the upper 

 stratum of our eaith. 



Nearly the last fonned (perhaps in many parts of this coimtry, 

 the last formed) of the rocky strata, prior to the diluvium and 

 alluvium which form the soil we cultivate, was the cretaceous or chalk 

 formation ; and existent about the same period with this would appear 

 to be the W ealden deposits of Tilgate Forest. 



Many of my hearers will remember that, when that able and 

 entertaining lecturer. Professor Phillips, last lectured at Hull, on 

 geology, he told us that there was no appearance before the creta- 

 ceous formations that in any way indicated that the world had been 

 previously fitted for the habitation of man. 



The chalk itself was a formation in the seas of those days : the 

 Wealden deposits, according to Mantell, were formed in an estuary, 

 or the outlets of some immense river ; most probably such river 

 emptied itself into the said sea. There are, however, indications, 

 from the vegetable and animal remains of those formations, that the 

 dry land at that period (wherever it might be) had then become fit 

 for the habitation of man , though, as no human remains have yet 

 been found in those strata, it is impossible to say to a certainty that 

 man had then become an inhabitant of our planet 



