332 GEOLOGY OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 



effected on the surface of the land, by the agency 

 of streams and rivers. 



Let us test the facts before us by the principles 

 enunciated in those remarks. We have here strata 

 of great thickness, made up of laminated detritus, 

 identical in appearance and composition with the 

 consolidated mud-banks of rivers and deltas — we 

 have rafts of drifted pine-trees, and the remains 

 of cycadeous plants, and arborescent ferns — 

 innumerable layers of freshwater shells and crus- 

 taceans, with large mussels resembling the unio- 

 nidas of the rivers of America — heaps of waterworn 

 bones of colossal oviparous quadrupeds, which com- 

 parative anatomy instructs us belong to types of 

 organization long since extinct — in fine, an accu- 

 mulation of transported materials teeming with 

 the spoils of some unknown region, associated with 

 fluviatile mollusks and crustaceans, without any 

 intermixture of marine exuvia?. What is the 

 obvious inference — what the unavoidable conclu- 

 sion at which we must arrive ? Unquestionably, 

 that these deposits were the delta of a river, which 

 flowed through a country possessing a fauna and 

 flora of a tropical character, and essentially dis- 

 tinct from any now known to exist. 



The country of the Iguanodon. — We have 

 here then data from which, by the method of 



