COUNTRY OF THE IGUANODON. 335 



these remains have been subjected to abrasion from 

 river currents, but not to attrition from the waves 

 of the ocean. The gigantic limbs of the large 

 reptiles could not have been dissevered from their 

 sockets without great violence, except by the decom- 

 position of their tendons from long maceration in 

 water ; and if the latter had been the sole cause, 

 we should not find the bones broken and sepa- 

 rated, but lying more or less in juxtaposition, 

 like the skeletons of the Plesiosauri in the Lias. 

 The condition in which these fossils occur, proves 

 that they were floated down the river with the 

 rafts of trees, and other spoils of the land, till, 

 arrested in their progress, they sank down, and 

 became imbedded. The phenomena here con- 

 templated cannot, I conceive, be satisfactorily 

 explained upon any other grounds ; and the source 

 of the mighty stream which flowed through the 

 country of the Iguanodon, must therefore, like 

 that of the Mississippi, have been hundreds, 

 perhaps thousands, of miles distant, from the delta 

 accumulated in the course of ages at its mouth. 



Voyage round the Isle of Wight. — As 

 during the summer months, excursions round the 

 Island are almost daily made by the steamers, an 

 opportunity is afforded of obtaining a general view 

 of the geology of the coast in the course of a few 



