Address to the Lincolnshive Naturalists’ Union. 26g 
strange weird life indeed was that which once filled the plain 
between Gainsborough and Lincoln, and, with other deposits of 
the same period elsewhere, it has well been called ‘‘ the great 
dragon land.” 
This wonderful development of Saurian life began in the 
Triassic age, attained its greatest energy in the Lias, and finally 
died out, as a dominating power, in the Chalk. The greater 
portion of it then passed, by the process of evolution, into birds ; 
nearly every successive chain in the link having been now 
discovered, as Professor Huxley remarked at the late meeting of 
the British Association at Oxford. 
And here, after ascending the Lincoln Cliff, and passing over 
the higher beds of the Lias on our way,—so well described by 
Mr. W. D. Carr, whose removal from Lincoln we all deplore asa 
‘real loss to our Society,—we reach the Oolite capping at the top, 
and stand on ground made famous by many a stirring event in 
history. Here Czsar’s Roman legions came and colonized. 
Here Norman William reared his fortress against the vain force of 
Hereward who lies, with his true forsaken wife, somewhere in 
Crowland’s precints amid the fens he kept so well. We, from the 
same site, look down, immeasureably further back, over ‘“ the 
great dragon land,” and picture again, in thought, the teeming 
life of the old Liassic sea. 
AND now, having completed the building of the land 
between Gainsborough and [incoln, I will, as briefly as possible, 
try to show how it attained its present shape. 
Yo understand this, we must first glance a little further to 
_ the east; where, after passing over the limestones and clays of the 
higher Jurassic seas, we reach the chalk wolds. 
‘ In these cretaceous strata, we have the remains of beds which 
must have been laid down in great ocean depths ; for there only 
are similar deposits being formed in our own day. 
The Atlantic ooze, the modern equivalent of the chalk, is not 
deposited at a less depth than about 1,000 feet, and usually, much 
‘deeper; and, as this ooze is laid down, according to the 
