72 SEASIDE DIVINITY. 



formed its groves and forests, and the land was 

 clothed with a large abundance of ferns. Among 

 its herbivorous quadrupeds was the gigantic igu- 

 anodon already mentioned ; among its carnivora 

 was the megalosaurus and other huge reptiles, and 

 crocodiles and turtles inhabited its rivers, while 

 its waters teemed with mollusca, crustaceans and 

 fishes. The greater part of all the bones which 

 have been discovered appear beyond doubt to have 

 been rolled and broken ; the teeth have been de- 

 tached from their sockets, and all the bones of the 

 extremities and of the vertebrae have been sepa- 

 rated, and scattered in confusion. The trees, too, 

 have been torn to pieces, and their branches 

 broken into fragments. This was evidently 

 effected, not by the waves of the ocean, but by the 

 violent currents of rivers. The condition of 

 these fossils is sufficient to prove that they were 

 floated down the rivers with the rafts of trees and 

 other spoils of the land, till, arrested in their 

 course, they sunk to the bottom or became em- 

 bedded in the soil. The immense extent and vast 

 quantity of the deposits thus accumulated, prove 

 that the river which flowed through the country 

 inhabited by the iguanodon must have been as 

 large in its volume as the Mississippi, and that it 

 had a course not of hundreds, but of thousands of 

 miles. How marvellous are the changes which 

 the science of geology thus indicates as having 

 occurred on the surface of our globe ! 



IV. The Cretaceous or Chalk formation presents 

 itself to us as the least ancient of the formations 



