OF ORGANIC NATURE 39 



had a certain definite shape about them, and when I got 

 a skilful workman to make castings of the interior of these 

 holes, I found that they were the impressions of the joints 

 of a backbone and of the armour of a great reptile, twelve 

 or more feet long. This great beast had died and got buried 

 in the sand, the sand had gradually hardened over the 

 bones, but remained porous. Water had trickled through 

 it, and that water being probably charged with a superfluity 

 of carbonic acid, had dissolved all the phosphate and 

 carbonate of lime, and the bones themselves had thus 

 decayed and entirely disappeared ; but as the sandstone 

 happened to have consolidated by that time, the precise 

 shape of the bones was retained. If that sandstone had 

 remained soft a little longer, we should have known nothing 

 whatsoever of the existence of the reptile whose bones it had 

 encased. 



How certain it is that a vast number of animals which 

 have existed at one period on this earth have entirely 

 perished, and left no trace whatever of their forms, may 

 be proved to you by other considerations. There are 

 large tracts of sandstone in various parts of the world, 

 in which nobody has yet found anything but footsteps. 

 Not a bone of any description, but an enormous number 

 of traces of footsteps. There is no question about them. 

 There is a whole valley in Connecticut covered with these 

 footsteps, and not a single fragment of the animals which 

 made them has yet been found. Let me mention another 

 case while upon that matter, which is even more surprising 

 than those to which I have yet referred. There is a lime- 

 stone formation near Oxford, at a place called Stonesfield, 

 which has yielded the remains of certain very interesting 

 mammalian animals, and up to this time, if I recollect 

 rightly, there have been found seven specimens of its 

 lower jaws, and not a bit of anything else, neither limb- 

 bones nor skull, or any part whatever ; not a fragment 

 of the whole system I Of course, it would be preposterous 

 to imagine that the beasts had nothing else but a lower jaw ! 

 The probability is, as Dr. Buckland showed, as the result 

 of his observations on dead dogs in the river Thames, 

 that the lower jaw, not being secured by very firm ligaments 

 to the bones of the head, and being a weighty affair, would 

 easily be knocked off, or might drop away from the body 

 as it floated in water in a state of decomposition. The 

 jaw would thus be deposited immediately, while the rest 



