CIjc ||ti:itbips : % ^DtoloQUixl |lcbcrk. 



By C. LLOYD MOllGAN. 



T HAD mounted the broad back of Mendip. Hammering 

 -L all day, and many a day before, at tlie geological 

 deposits which fringe its margin, I had constanitly en- 

 deavoured to picture to myself the old-world times of whicli 

 they spoke, when this range of hills stood out as an island 

 in the midst of a warm sea, teeming with those strange and 

 unaccustomed forms of life which the geologist disentombs 

 from their stony graves in the secondary rocks. Quaint 

 reptiles, the swan-necked Plesiosaur, and the frog-necked 

 Ichthyosaur, sported at the surface or sought their prey in 

 the depths below. Queer fishes, some clad in scales like 

 shining armour (ganoids), others the distant ancestral 

 relatives of the Port .Jackson shark of Australian waters, 

 swam lazily hither and thither, or darted away before some 

 hungry cone - toothed saurian. Strange shell-fish, the 

 Ammonites and their tribes, the abundant lamp-shells, and 

 less unfamiliar bivalves, might be seen through the clear 

 water, together with sea-\irchins, and corals, and waving 

 sea-lilies. On the island itself ferns, cycads, and coniferous 

 trees may have given to tlie vegetation an Australian 

 aspect. In the streamlets were stonewort and, fresh-water 

 molluscs. Small pouch-bearing mammals, first of their 



236 



