Notices respecting Ne'w Books. 51 



jaws being strong, and occasionally eight feet in length) may from 

 its form have braved the waves of the sea, dashing tlirough them as 

 the porpess now does ; but the Plesiosaurus, at least the species with 

 the long neck (f . dolkhodeirus) ,'wo\x\di be better suited to have fished 

 in shallow creeks and bays, defended from heavy breakers. The cro- 

 codiles were probably, as their congeners of the present day are, lovers 

 of rivers and estuaries, and like them destructive and voracious. Of 

 the various reptiles of this period, the Ichthyosaurus, particularly the 

 /. platyoclon, seems to have been best suited to rule in the waters, its 

 powerful and capacious jaws being an overmatch for those of the cro- 

 codiles and Plesiosauri. Thanks to Professor Buckland we are now 

 acquainted with some of the food upon which these creatures lived ; 

 their fossil feeces, named coprolites, having afforded evidence, not only 

 that they devoured fish, but each other, the smaller becoming the prey 

 of the larger, as is abundantly testified by the undigested remains of 

 vertebrae and other bones contained in the coprolites. Amid such 

 voracity, it seems wonderful that so many escaped to be imbedded in 

 rocks, and after the lapse of ages on ages to tell the tale of their 

 existence as former inhabitants of our planet. And strange inha- 

 bitants they undoubtedly were ; for, as Cuvier says, the Ichthyosaurus 

 has the snout of a dolphin, the teeth of a crocodile, the head and 

 sternum of a lizard, the extremities of cetacea, (being however four 

 in number,) and the rertebrse of fishj while the Plesiosaurus has, 

 with the same cetaceous extremities, the head of a lizard, and a neck 

 resembling the body of a serpent. 



****** 

 "That the Pterodactyles should be scarce fossils is what we should 

 expect, for the circumstances favourable to their preservation must 

 have been exceedingly rare. Even supposing that they dashed out 

 to sea in pursuit of their insect prey, there must have been a com- 

 bination of fortunate accidents to have prevented the Pterodactyles 

 and their intended prey from being devoured by the fish and other 

 inhabitants of the sea, among the exuviae of which their remains are 

 now detected. 



" It is curious, and seems to establish a connection between the 

 insects and the Pterodactyles, that in the spot (Solenhofen) where the 

 remains of the latter are most abundant, the greatest quantity of fossil 

 insects yet noticed in the oolitic group have been detected. At Stones- 

 field also, where the remains of insects are stated to have been dis- 

 covered, the exuviae of Pterodactyles, according to Professor Buck- 

 land, are also observed. Not so however with the Pterodactyles of 

 Lyme Regis, whose remains are mixed with those of Ichthyosauri and 

 other marine animals, where insects have not yet been discovered. 

 But when we consider the abundant exuviae of Plesiosauri, perhaps we 

 may not err greatly in considering dry land [to have been] not very far 

 distant from the spot where we now find their bones entombed. Be 

 the case as it may, a Pterodactyle in a sea amid Ichthyosauri and other 

 voracious creatures must have had but a sliglit chance of escape, and 

 geologists should be grateful that any combination of circumstances 

 should have so far prevailed as to permit the preservation of even a 

 H 2 single 



