260 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



of the size of a whale. * It was discovered by 

 Mr Buckland in England ; but we have it also 

 in France ; and in Germany there are found bones, 

 if not of the same species, at least of a species 

 which can be referred to no other genus. It is 

 to M. Soemmering that we owe the first descrip- 

 tion of this last. He discovered the bones in strata 

 lying above the oolite, in those limestone-schists of 

 Franconia, long celebrated for the numerous fos- 

 sil remains which they furnished to the cabinets 

 of the curious, and which will be still more cele- 

 brated for the services which their employment in 

 lithography render to the arts and sciences. 



The crocodiles continue to make their appear- 

 ance in these schists, and always of the long- muz- 

 zled or rostrated kind. M. de Soemmering has 

 described one (the Crocodilus prisons), the entire 

 skeleton of a small individual of which was found 

 nearly in as good a state of preservation, as it 

 could have been in our cabinets, f It is one of 

 those which most resemble the present gavial of 

 the Ganges; the anterior or united part of its lower 

 jaw, however, is less elongated ; its lower teeth 

 are alternately and regularly longer and shorter. 

 It has ten vertebrae in the tail. 



* Researches, vol. v. part ii. p. 

 t Ibid. p. 120. 



