248 THE BATH OOLITE PERIOD. CHAP. 



lying- on a freshly-bared surface of the Great oolite, nearly in the 

 line of a natural fissure, and covered by the laminated clay and 

 thin oolitic bands which there occupy the place assigned to the 

 Bradford clay of Wiltshire. 



Crushed beneath the heavy load once far heavier, when some 

 hundreds of feet of the strata had not been removed by denudation 

 forced down upon its rocky bed, the large bone was completely 

 shattered in all the middle part, though scarcely altered in figure 

 at the ends. The middle part was not originally hollow, as 

 birds' bones are, but filled with a loosely-cancellated structure, which 

 yielded without much difficulty, so that the cylinder of bone came 

 to be greatly compressed, and split in various directions. 



It lay quite alone, no other bone supposed to be near it. Ex- 

 amined with care, it was soon found to be, like the first discovered 

 bone, a femur, and of the same side, but very much larger, being 

 by measure sixty-four inches in length. When it arrived at the 

 Museum, in fragments too numerous to count, one might well 

 doubt if ever it could be refitted, but there were favourable cir- 

 cumstances. First was before us the example of successful per- 

 severance in the fine restoration of Mr. Strickland's fossil ; next 

 we had the ends of the bone complete, or easily made so ; a patient 

 and skilful hand, that of my assistant, Henry Caudel, to adjust the 

 chips; and plenty of recent skeletons of crocodilian and other 

 reptiles in the Museum, under the charge of Dr. Rolleston, to 

 keep right ideas in the mind. The restoration was the work of 

 many tedious weeks, but it is as nearly as possible perfect. 



While we were slowly readjusting the broken bone, the quarry- 

 men continued their labours. A year passed, the bone was restored 

 in all its grand proportions, and then another discovery was 

 reported, which was the forerunner of more. The following notice, 

 written after one of many visits to witness the extraction of the 

 fossils, may be allowed to express the thoughts of those who beheld 

 the amazing spectacle of huge bones lying on a floor of rock, as 

 if placed by Art in a secret museum of Nature l : 



UNIVERSITY MUSEUM, OXFORD, March 22, 1870. 



Since the discovery of the huge thigh-bone of this great lizard, 

 about a year has passed in the slow working of the quarries, with 



1 Athenaeum, April 2, 1870. 



