84 Bevieivs — Phillips' Geology of Oxford. 



of existing crocodiles and lizards), "we shall," says the author, 

 "allow for a full-sized fossil animal the length of fifty feet," and so 

 justify its name of the " whale -lizard." " Probably when ' standing 

 at ease,' not less than ten feet in height, and of a bulk in proportion, 

 this creature was unmatched in magnitude and physical strength by 

 any of the largest inhabitants of the Mesozoic land or sea." (p. 293.) 



Of the habits of Cetiosaurus we know but little ; it was probably 

 amphibian, "a marsh-loving or river-side animal, dwelling amidst 

 filicinas, cycadaceous and coniferous shrubs and trees full of insects 

 and small mammalia." Its diet, if we may judge by the single 

 tooth discovered, would indicate it to have been nourished by similar 

 vegetable food to that on which the Wealden Iguanodon fed — thus 

 adding another to the list of vegetarian lizards, to which the Liassic 

 Scelidosaurus and the Cretaceous AcanthopJioUs also belong, and as 

 contradistinguished from the predaceous Megalosmirus, of which, did 

 space permit, we might give an extract from Prof. Phillips's graphic 

 account, also accompanied by numerous figures. 



In Chapter xiv., under " Change of the Forms of Life," and 

 " Succession of Life-forms," we get some insight into the ideas on 

 the origin of species existing in the author's ' many-sided mind.' 



After illustrating, in a series of tables, the life-history of the 

 Oolitic Terebrahdce, Limes, Trigonice, and Pholadomycs, Prof. Phillips 

 remarks (p. 405) : " Examples not less instructive, and all tending 

 to the same conclusion, may be taken almost ad libitum from all the 

 races of marine animals. In hundreds of instances we can trace 

 backward in time the characteristic elements of generic structure to 

 the earliest known type. In a small number of cases these lines of 

 representative life, these probable genealogies, extend through all or 

 nearly all the vast period which is known to us with certainty under 

 the titles of Palfeozoic, Mesozoic, and Cainozoic life ; a period which 

 can only be expressed by the inconceivable symbols of a million, 

 ten, nay, a hundred millions of years. Yet, during all that im- 

 mensity of time, through all the physical changes which have hap- 

 pened to inorganic nature, Lingula and Rhynchonella have existed with 

 little real differences, as if to show the narrow limits within which 

 modification by descent is restricted." And again (p. 406) : " If 

 the amount of change which can certainly be recognized in natural 

 groups extend only to specific distinctions in the course of all as- 

 signable time, and yet genera have given birth to others unlike 

 themselves, how vast must have been the pre-Cambrian periods, to 

 have allowed of this change from some one supj)Osed primary into 

 the many definite genera which the Cambrian rocks contain ! Many 

 times one hundred millions of years would be required if the slow 

 process now observable in nature be taken as the measure of effect : 

 we have no trace of such periods, and perhaps astronomy and the 

 mathematical theory of heat will not allow of such vast duration to 

 the habitable condition of the earth." From these and other para- 

 graphs we may conclude that Prof. Phillips is opposed to the theory 

 of evolution, or at least that he derives no evidence in its favour 

 from the course of his widely-extended and multifarious studies. 



