222 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY; OR, 



of these beds I found a dense fragment of bone, apparently 

 reptilian, and a curious dermal plate punctulated with thick- 

 set depressions, bounded on one side by a smooth band, and 

 altogether closely resembling some saddler s thimble that had 

 been cut open and straightened. 



Following the beds downwards along the beach, I found 

 that one of the lowest which the tide permitted me to ex- 

 amine, a bed coloured with a tinge of red, was formed of 

 a denser limestone than any of the others, and composed 

 chiefly of vast numbers of small univalves resembling Ne- 

 ritse. It was in exactly such a rock I had found, in the pre- 

 vious year, the reptile remains ; and I now set myself with 

 no little eagerness to examine it. One of the first pieces I 

 tore up contained a well-preserved Plesiosaurian vertebra ; a 

 second contained a vertebra and a rib ; and, shortly after, I 

 disinterred a large portion of a pelvis. I had at length found, 

 beyond doubt, the reptile remains in situ. The bed in which 

 they occur is laid bare here for several hundred feet along 

 the beach, jutting out at a low angle among boulders and 

 gravel, and the reptile remains we find embedded chiefly in 

 its under side. It lies low in the Oolite. All the stratified 

 rocks of the island, with the exception of a small Liasic patch, 

 belong to the Lower Oolite, and the reptile-bed occurs deep 

 in the base of the system, low in its relation to the nether 

 division, in which it is included. I found it nowhere rising 

 to the level of high-water mark. It forms one of the founda- 

 tion tiers of the island, which, as the latter rises over the sea 

 in some places to the height of about fourteen hundred feet, 

 its upper peaks and ridges must overlie the bones, making al- 

 lowance for the dip, to the depth of at least sixteen hundred 

 Even at the close of the Oolitic period this sepulchral stra- 

 tum must have been a profoundly ancient one. In working 

 it out, I found two fine specimens of fish jaws, still retaining 

 their ranges of teeth, ichthyodorulites, occipital plates of 



