176 Miscellanies. 



some of them giganiic, 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 

 Hymenoptei-is psilotoides, which probably never attained a greater 

 Insight than three or four feet, and the beautiful Pecopieris 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, whhout the tropics. The forests of Clathra- 

 ricc and Endogenitce, (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 estabhshed facts. 

 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 Iguanodon, 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 as 

 the largest crocodile ; having jaws, with teeth equal in size to the 

 incisors of the rhinoceros, and crested with horns ; such a creature 

 must have been the Iguanodon ! Nor were the inhabitants of tlie 

 waters much less wonderful ; witness the Plesiosaurus, which only 

 required wings to be a flying dragon ; the fishes resembling Siluri 

 Balistce, h,c* 



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 research- 

 es and publications. The second volume appeared in 1827; it 

 consists of ninety-two pages, with twenty plates, and is particularly 

 remarkable for containing the drawings and description of the bones 



* Mantell's Geology of Sussex, and fossils of Tilgate Forest. 



