MARCH 89 



discovered in recent years in the coal measures of 

 Bernissart, have suggested some curious thoughts in 

 relation to the importance attached by Dr. Munro to 

 the erect attitude as the primary cause of intellectual 

 growth, and the consequent ascendency of man. We 

 owe the preservation of these mighty lizards to what 

 might be called irreverently a stratigraphic fluke. In 

 Britain, only scattered bones of the iguanodon have 

 been found. The beasts have been there, as their 

 numerous footmarks in the Sussex weald attest, but 

 when they perished the conditions were not favourable 

 to their repose ; floods, ice, and tides have dispersed the 

 remains far and wide. But it was otherwise at Ber- 

 nissart. Here a torrent of the Wealden age, having cut 

 a valley nearly nine hundred feet deep through the car- 

 boniferous rocks, afterwards, owing to some alterations 

 in levels or physical obstruction, took to meandering 

 sluggishly between oozy shores. Every animal that 

 perished in the stream or on its banks remained where 

 it died, and was wrapped in alluvium. In long process 

 of time this Wealden alluvium filled up the whole 

 valley, and became overlaid with a series of cretaceous 

 beds. Its contents remained undisturbed through ages, 

 until in the present restless century it was penetrated 

 by Belgian colliers, who laid bare a well-furnished 

 museum of the peculiar Wealden marsh fauna. 



By far the most remarkable of the remains discovered 

 were those of the iguanodon, of which species twenty- 

 five individuals were found at a depth of about one 

 thousand feet below the present earth surface. Thanks 



