194 Recent Geological Discoveries. 



me by Dr. Biickland, when lie tried to solve the enigma in refer- 

 ence to Stonesfield :— " The corpses," he said, " of drowned ani- 

 mals, T/hen they float in a river, distended by gases during putre- 

 faction, have often their lower jaw hanging loose, and sometimes 

 it has dropped off. The rest of the body may then be drifted 

 elsewhere, and sometimes may be swallowed entire by a preda- 

 ceous reptile or fish, such as an icthyosaur or a shark." 



" We may also suppose that when fish or other aquatic animals 

 attack a decaying carcass, whether it be floating or has sunk to 

 the bottom, they will first devour those parts that are covered 

 with flesh. A lower jaw, consisting of little else than bones and 

 teeth, will be neglected ; and becoming detached, may be drifted 

 away by a current ot moderate velocity, and buried apart from 

 the other bones in sand or mud." 



There is much probability in the last explanation. Cats gener- 

 ally refuse to eat the heads of rats, the skulls of which may often 

 for this reason be seen lying detached in places frequented by 

 them; and in the castings of owls, we often find the lower jaws 

 of mice and squirrels, that have escaped fracture and digestion 

 better than the other bones. Small predaceous mammals or rep- 

 tiles, perhaps oven birds of similar habits, may have left these 

 jaw-bones on the shores of the Purbeck lakes or estuaries, or of 

 the rivers which flowed into them. 



To pass from animals to plants, we are informed that a speci- 

 men of one of those flower-like fossils rarely found in coal mea- 

 sures, and hitherto of uncertain nature, though supposed by Dr. 

 Lindley and others to be flowers, has been recognized by Mr. 

 Bunbury and Dr. Hooker as actually a spike of blossoms, resem- 

 bling those of the family Bromeliacea?, to which the Pine-apple 

 belongs ; but it is not this particular genus that the fossil resem- 

 bles. It is something to have a flower handed down to us from 

 the carboniferous period. "We can now add to our picture of the 

 coal swajnps a few bright flovrers, to relieve the general sombre 

 green of ferns and pines ; and are even at liberty to hope that 

 we may discover a butterfly that flitted amongst these ancient 

 blossoms. 



Silurian geology contributes its quota of \iQ,\f matter, in the 

 views of M. Barrande respecting " Colonies " of fossils, or in 

 other words, alternations of beds, containing the fossils of a former 

 and later period, at the confines of the range of the new forms, 

 where they were gradually gaining on the older, but where in the 



