176 Miscellanies. 
some of them gigantic, indicating a warmer climate than any now 
found in Europe. Several kinds of ferns appear to have consti- 
tuted the immediate vegetable clothing of the soil: the elegant 
_Hymenopteris psilotoides, which probably never attained a greater 
height than three or four feet, and the beautiful Pecopteris reticu- 
lata, of still lesser growth, being abundant every where. But the 
loftier vegetables were so entirely distinct from any that are now 
known to exist in European countries, that we seek in vain for any 
thing, at all analogous, without the tropics. The forests of Clathra- 
rié and Exdogenita, (the plants of which, like some of the recent 
arborescent ferns, probably attained a height of thirty or forty feet,) 
must have borne a much greater resemblance to those of tropical re- 
gions, than to any that now occur in temperate climates. 
If we attempt, says Mr. Mantell, to pourtray the animals of this 
ancient country, our description will possess more of the character of 
a romance, than of a legitimate deduction from established faets. 
Turtles of various kinds, must have been seen on the banks of its 
rivers or lakes, and groups of enormous crocodiles basking in the 
fens and shallows. 
The gigantic Megalosaurus, and yet more gigantic Jeuanodon, to 
whom the groves of palms and arborescent ferns would be mere beds 
of reeds, must have been of such prodigious magnitude, that the ex- 
isting animal creation presents us with no fit object of comparison. 
Imagine an animal of the lizard tribe, three or four times as large 25 — 
the largest crocodile ; having jaws, with teeth equal in size to the 
incisors of the rhinoceros, and crested with horns ; such a ereature 
must have been the Iguanodon! Nor were the inhabitants of the 
waters much less wonderful; witness the Plesiosaurus, which only 
required wings to be a flying dragon ; the fishes resembling ur 
Balista, &c.* : po 
Mr. Mantell’s principal work is the Geology of Sussex, in two 
quarto volumes, the first of which appeared in 1822, consisting of 
320 pages, with forty-two plates, executed by Mrs. Mantell, who has 
most nobly and skilfully aided her husband in his important researeb- 
es and publications. The second volume appeared in 1827; ™ 
consists of ninety-two pages, with twenty plates, and is particular 
remarkable for containing the drawings and-description of the bones 
* Mantell’s Geology of Sussex, and Fossils of Tilgate F orest. 
