XL CETEOSAURUS. 249 



no important additions beyond a few caudal vertebrae. Quite lately, 

 however, notice reached me ('nostras pervenit ad aures') of several 

 bones of large size, lying on or near to the surface of oolite where 

 the great femur rested; and I have made several examinations 

 of the locality and circumstances of the deposit. On the last 

 occasion, my friend, Mr. James Parker, was with me, and gave 

 excellent aid in the ' survey.' The space of ground in which the 

 bones are found is apparently quite limited. They lie pretty near 

 together, but not in their natural relative situations. All have 

 been drifted, yet not so much as to have suffered by attrition, or 

 mutual fracture. One may think the whole body of the vast old 

 lizard, in the extremity of age, was here laid to uneasy rest ; the 

 parts separated by decay; the massive limbs disjointed, and the 

 bones displaced. They lie in, or rather appear to constitute, a 

 bone-bed, whose basis is clay, with abundance of carbonaceous 

 matter and small masses of wood which has undergone ' eremacausis.' 

 Selenite, the natural result of the mutual action of iron-sulphide 

 and decaying wood, in presence of calcareous matter, is rather too 

 abundant, and injures the firmness of the bones occasionally. 



Imagine a surface of the ossiferous clay which covers the oolite 

 laid bare by the workmen. Look southward ; before you are four 

 bones laid rudely parallel, in a row, at intervals of I, 2, or 3 feet. 

 They are 64, 54, 45, and 37 inches long ; 10 inches the least breadth 

 in the narrowest part ; 26 inches the greatest breadth in the widest 

 part. These are bones of ceteosaurus. Over them and in front 

 of them, three days since, lay as many others, as large and as 

 quietly reposing in their ' longseval' graves ; behind them, possibly, 

 are still more bones, to be discovered at some future time. Bones 

 of a much mightier area probably hugest of all huge ilia ex- 

 tended far and wide ; vertebrae 8, 9, and 1 1 inches in diameter ; 

 monstrous ribs, of which the parts traceable and inferred are 59 

 inches long ; and to this must be added two unknown quantities ; 

 so their length must have been # + 59+^ inches : all this within 

 the compass of a few square yards. It seems like the burial-place 

 of the great father of lizards, each of whose bones demanded but 

 only some could obtain a separate grave. To reconstruct the 

 framework of bones by replacing the many hundreds of fragments 

 (for they are all traversed by innumerable fractures, and can only 

 be taken up in heaps of chips mixed with some large frusta) will 



