THE PRE-ADAMITE EARTH. 



terrestrial flora of this period, which consisted in a great degree of 

 doubtful monocotyledons. 



377. The sudden character of the catastrophes, by which from 

 period to period the successive faunas and floras were destroyed, 

 is strikingly illustrated by the perfect state in which the remains 

 of many of the saurians have been found. Of those which were 

 deposited in these strati, many must, as Sir C. Lyell observes, 

 have met with sudden death and immediate burial, and the same 

 indications are observable in the case of all the other stages. 

 " Sometimes," says Dr. Buckland, " scarcely a single bone has 

 been removed from the place it occupied during life, which could 

 not have happened had the uncovered bodies of these saurians 

 been left, even for a few hours, exposed to putrefaction, and to 

 the attacks of fishes and other small animals at the bottom of the 

 sea." ^ Not only are the skeletons of the Ichthyosauri entire, 

 but sometimes the contents of their stomachs still remain 

 between their ribs, so that we can discover the species of fish on 

 which they lived, and the form of their excrements. Not un- 

 frequently there are layers of these coprolites (fossilised excre- 

 ments) at different depths in the lias at a distance from any 

 entire skeletons of those marine lizards, from which they were 

 derived, as if the muddy bottom of the sea received small sudden 

 accessions of matter from time to time, covering up the coprolites 

 and other exuviae, which had accumulated during the intervals. 

 It is further stated, that at Lyme Regis, those surfaces only 

 of the coprolites, which lay uppermost at the bottom of the sea, 

 have suffered partial decay from the action of the water, before 

 they were covered and protected by the muddy sediment that had 

 afterwards permanently enveloped them.f 



378. The remains of cephalopods give like indications of 

 sudden death. Numerous specimens of the Calamary, or pen- 

 and-ink fish (Geotenthis Bollensis), have also been met with in 

 these strata at Lyme, with the ink-bags still distended, con- 

 taining the ink in a dried state, chiefly composed of carbon and 

 but slightly impregnated with carbonate of lime. These, like the 

 Saurians, must therefore have been promptly buried, for if long 

 exposed after death, the membrane containing the ink would have 

 been decayed. J 



379. The identity of the specific forms of the fauna of this 

 period, in all latitudes, from 40 to the Frozen Ocean, shows that 



* Bridg. Treat, p. 125. 



t Lyell's Manual, p. 327 ; De la Beche, Geol. Res., p. 334 ; Buckland, 

 Bridg. Treat., p. 307. 

 J Buckland, Bridg. Treat., p. 307. 

 90 



