180 GIGANTIC TERRESTRIAL SAURIANS. 



are now conducting ; they show not less distinctly, than the 

 colossal limbs of the most gigantic quadrupeds, a numerical 

 coincidence, and a concurrence of proportions, which it 

 seems impossible to refer to the effect of accident; and 

 which point out unity of purpose, and deliberate design, in 

 some intelligent First Cause, from which they were all de- 

 rived. We have seen that whilst all the laws of existing or- 

 ganization in the order of Lizards, are rigidly maintained 

 in the Pterodactyles ; still, as Lizards modified to move like 

 birds and Bats in the air, they received, in each part of their 

 frame, a perfect adaptation to their state. We have dwelt 

 more at length on the minutiae of their mechanism, because 

 they convey us back into ages so exceedingly remote, and 

 show that even in those distant eras, the same care of a 

 common Creator, which we witness in the mechanism of 

 our own bodies, and those of the myriads of inferior crea- 

 tures that move around us, was extended to the structure of 

 creatures, that at first sight seem made up only of monstro- 

 sities. 



SECTION IX. 



MEGALOSAURUS.* 



The Megalosaurus, as its name implies, was a Lizard, of 

 great size, of which, although no skeleton has yet been found 

 entire, so many perfect bones and teeth have been discovered 



* This genus was established by the Author, in a Memoir, published 

 in the Geol. Trans, of London, (Vol. I., N. S. Pt. 2, 1824,) and was founded 

 upon specimens discovered in the oolitic slate of Stonesfield, near Oxford, 

 the place in which these bones have as yet chiefly occurred. Mr. Mantell 

 has discovered remains of the same animal in the Wealden fresh-water for- 

 mation of Tilgate Forest; and from this circumstance we infer that it existed 

 during* the deposition of the entire series of oolitic strata. The author, in 



