Curiosities of Science. 131 



thick, at the base of the Middle Purbeck beds ; and after remov- 

 ing many thousand tons of rock, and laying bare an area of 

 nearly 7000 square feet (the largest cutting ever made for purely 

 scientific purposes), he found reptiles (tortoises arid lizards) in 

 hundreds ; but the most important discovery was that of the 

 jaws of at least fourteen different species of mammalia. Some 

 of these were herbivorous, some carnivorous, connected with 

 our modern shrews, moles, hedgehogs, &c. ; but all of them per- 

 fectly developed and highly-organised quadrupeds. Ten years 

 ago, no remains of quadrupeds were believed to exist in the 

 Secondary strata. " Even in 1854," says Sir Charles Lyell (in 

 a supplement to the fifth edition of his Manual of Elementary 

 Geology}, " only six species of mammals from rocks older than 

 the Tertiary were known in the whole world." We now possess 

 evidence of the existence of fourteen species, belonging to eight 

 or nine genera, from the fresh-water strata of the Middle Pur- 

 beck Oolite. It would be rash now to fix a limit in past time 

 to the existence of quadrupeds. The Rev. C. Kingsley. 



FOSSIL HUMAN BONES. 



In the paleontological collection in the British Museum is 

 preserved a considerable portion of a human skeleton imbedded 

 in a slab of rock, brought from Guadaloupe, and often referred 

 to in opposition to the statement that hitherto no fossil human 

 bones have been found. The presence of these bones, however, 

 has been explained by the circumstance of a battle and the 

 massacre of a tribe of Galtibis by the Caribs, which took place 

 near the spot in which the bones were found about 130 years 

 ago ; for as the bodies of the slain were interred on the sea- 

 shore, their skeletons may have been subsequently covered by 

 sand-drift, which has since consolidated into limestone. 



It will be seen by reference to the Philosophical Transac- 

 tions, that on the reading of the paper upon this discovery to 

 the Royal Society, in 1814, Sir Joseph Banks, the president, 

 considered the "fossil" to be of very modern formation, and 

 that probably, from the contiguity of a volcano, the tempera- 

 ture of the water may have been raised at some time, and dis- 

 solving carbonate of lime readily, may have deposited about 

 the skeleton in a comparatively short period hard and 'solid 

 stone. Every person may be convinced of the rapidity of the 

 formation and of the hardness of such stone by inspecting the 

 inside of tea-kettles in which hard water is boiled. 



Descriptions of petrifactions of human bodies appear to refer to the 

 conversion of bodies into adipocere, and not into stone. All the sup- 

 posed cases of petrifaction are probably of this nature. The change 

 occurs only when the coffin becomes filled with water. The body, con- 

 verted into adipocere, floats on the water. The supposed cases of 



