CREATION OF ANIMALS. 37 



of the present essay if I devote a few pages to 

 the consideration of it. 



The hypothesis in question is based by its 

 learned promulgator chiefly upon the supposed 

 age of the beds and strata in which the remains 

 of these fossil Saurians generally have been 

 found, which he states as more ancient than 

 those which contain the remains of viviparous 

 animals; and upon the myriads which appear, 

 when they were the lords of our globe, to have 

 existed. But it is clear from his own statement 

 that with the fossil remains of the Megalosaurus, 

 a giant lizard, calculated to have been forty feet 

 in length and eight in height, those of some 

 viviparous quadruped related to the Opossum 

 have been found, which he acknowledges cannot 

 be satisfactorily explained. A fact that militates 

 strongly against an insulated Saurian reign. Nor 

 is it altogether true that the remains of these 

 mighty lizards are found solely in what are deno- 

 minated ancient deposites ; vertebral joints are 

 not unfrequently found in other situations. I 

 have one between three and four inches in 

 diameter, which, from its being cupped, or 

 deeply concave at each extremity, evidently 

 belongs to one of these animals, which was 

 found in a gravel-pit, at no great depth, in my 

 own neighbourhood ; and I have seen similar 

 ones found in other parts of the county of Suf- 

 folk. These dispersed bones seem to indicate 



