OF A FORMER WORLD. 37 



The body of the iguanodon was then driven out to sea, and 

 became imbedded in the sand of the ocean ; in the like 

 manner, as at the present day, bones of land quadrupeds 

 may not only be engulphed in deltas, but also in the de- 

 posits of the adjacent sea. 



The oolite is succeeded by the Wealden, green sand and 

 chalk formations measuring 660 yards in thickness ; and con- 

 taining immense quantities of fresh water and marine re- 

 mains, the species being almost all different from those in 

 the older rocks, and none of them occurring in the newer. 

 The Wealden is one of estuary origin, containing many 

 fresh water shells, and the bones of enormous reptiles : one 

 of which, the iguanodon, must have measured seventy feet 

 from snout to tail, and been fourteen feet in girth round 

 the body* The chalk and green sand abound with marine 

 remains. It appears certain that the beds of this wonderful 

 formation add to the antiquity of the earth. Come when 

 the solution may, there is little likelihood of it shortening, 

 but every probability of it extending the period that has 

 elapsed since God called into existence the " heavens and the 

 earth." 



The chalk is succeeded by the tertiary deposits,- in which 

 the existing species make their first appearance. In the 

 lower or first of the tertiary formations, there are only about 

 five* per cent, of existing marine shells; in the second, or 

 middle formation, the number of recent and extinct species 

 is nearly equal ; in the last, or newest of these deposits, the 



* Let the reader visit the British Museum, and after examining the lar- 

 gest thigh-bone of the Iguanodon, repair to the Zoological Gallery, and 

 inspect the recent Crocodilian reptiles, some twenty-five or thirty feet in 

 length ; and observe that the fossil -bone equals, if not surpasses, in size 

 the entire thigh of the largest of existing reptiles ; then let him imagine this 

 bone clothed with proportionate mtiscles and integuments, and reflect 

 upon the enormous trunk which such limbs must have been destined to 

 move and to sustain, and he will obtain a just notion of the appaling mag- 

 nitude of tho lizards which inhabited the eountry of the Iguanodon. 



