VOL. L.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. '2C)I 



mensions of the whole, or particular parts of the skeleton, may be measured from 

 the scale annexed, aa, &c. are the ammonitae or snake-stones. 



This skeleton lay about 6 yards from the foot of the clifF, which is about 6o 

 yards in perpendicular height, and must have been covered by it probably not 

 much more than a century ago. The cliff there is composed of various strata, 

 beginning from the top, of earth, clay, marie, stones both hard and soft, of va- 

 rious thicknesses, and intermixed with each other, till it comes down to the 

 black slate or alum rock, and about 10 or 12 feet deep in this rock, this skeleton 

 laid horizontally, and exactly as designed. The probability that this clifF has 

 formerly covered this animal, and extended much more into the sea, is not in 

 the least doubted of by those that know it. The various strata, of which it is 

 composed, are daily mouldering and falling down ; and the bottom, being the 

 slaty alum rock, is also daily beaten, washed, and worn away, and the upper 

 parts undermined, whence many thousand tuns often tumble down together. 

 Many ancient persons now living, whose testimony can be no way doubted of, 

 remember this very cliff extending in some places 20 yards farther out than it 

 does at present. In short there is sufficient evidence, that at the beginning it 

 must have extended near a mile farther down to the sea than it does at present ; 

 and so much the sea has there gained of the land. 



These are the principal facts and circumstances attending the situation and 

 discovery of this skeleton ; which from the condition it is in, and from the par- 

 ticular disposition of the strata above the place where it is found, seem clearly to 

 establish the opinion, and almost to a demonstration, that the animal itself must 

 have been antediluvian, and that it could not have been buried or brought there 

 any otherwise than by the force of the waters of the universal deluge. The dif- 

 ferent strata above this skeleton never could have been broken through at any 

 time, in order to bury it, to so great a depth as upwards of 1 80 feet ; and con 

 sequently it must have been lodged there, if not before, at least at the time 

 when those strata were formed, which will not admit of a later date than that 

 above mentioned. 



P. S. In the 49th vol. p. 639, of the original Philosophical Transactions, or 

 vol. 10, p. 712 of these Abridgments, an animal is described by Mr. Edwards, 

 which was brought from the Ganges, and resembles this in every respect He 

 calls it lacerta (crocodilus) ventre marsupio donate, faucibus merganseris rostrum 

 aemulantibus. 



CIX. On the Phoenician Numeral Characters anciently used at Sidon. By the 

 Rev. J. Swintun, M. ji. of Christ Church, Oxon., F.ILS. p. 79 1. 



Reverend Sir, 

 Having, by the assistance of the Palmyrene numeral characters, lately made a 



p p 2 



