Fossil Secondary Mammalia. 19 



Some geologists have suggested that these flying reptiles, 

 when very abundant, may have performed many of the func- 

 tions now discharged in the animal kingdom by winged and 

 feathered bipeds. It may be so ; but the numerous foot- 

 prints of tridactyle bipeds of various sizes in the trias of 

 North America, and the fragments of ornithic bones from 

 Stonesfield, above adverted to, should put us on our guard 

 against liastily assuming even the scarcity of this great class 

 in what has been termed the Age of Reptiles. 



If we consult Prof. Owen's work on British Fossil Mam- 

 malia and Birds, we find 229 figures devoted to the illustra- 

 tion of the mammalia, and only seven figures to the birds. 

 Three species only had been obtained in 1846 from the 

 English eocene beds, although nineteen British mammalia 

 were known when that treatise appeared. Cuvier's investi- 

 gations had long before made known to us, that in the eocene 

 gypsum of Montmartre there were ornitholites of the families 

 Accipitres, Gallinacese, Grail atores, and Palmipedes, and it 

 is therefore remarkable that the freshwater deposits of the 

 Isle of Wight and Hordwell Cliif, which had yielded fresh- 

 water shells in abundance for half a century, had afforded us 

 no insight into the state of the contemporaneous feathered 

 creation. 



The next point in the palaeontology of the vertebrata of the 

 secondary formations, relates to the fossil mammalia of the 

 slates of Stonesfield. The manner in which the lower jaws 

 of extinct quadrupeds of no less than three species are im- 

 bedded in an oolitic matrix, prevents the possibility of any 

 cavil as to the locality from whence they w^ere all derived, 

 and the rock itself is well ascertained to belong to the lowest 

 division of the oolitic system of England. In their state of 

 preservation they rival the beautiful fossils of the Paris gyp- 

 sum, or those of corresponding eocene date recently obtained 

 from Hordwell Cliff. After the animated discussions which 

 have taken place in this room, it would be a waste of time 

 to repeat to you the arguments by which the Hunterian Pro- 

 fessor proved that jaw-bones, consisting of a single piece 

 with double-fangedteeth and convex condyles exhibiting welU 



B 2 



