304 FOSSIL REPTILES. 



Mense. It contains the same fossils as are found in the chalk 

 of the environs of Paris, such as teeth of squali, gryphites, 

 echinites, belemnites, and ammonites. These shells are found 

 with the bones in the lower parts of the mass, which are 

 also the most crumbly. The upper parts are harder, and 

 also contain more madrepores, many of which are changed 

 into silex. 



The multiplied productions of the sea with which this stone 

 is filled are generally in good preservation, although seldom 

 petrified : most of them have lost only a part of their animal 

 substance. The most voluminous of all these objects, and 

 which, by their most extraordinary form, must have chiefly 

 attracted the attention both of the workmen and the curious, 

 are assuredly the bones of the animal which we have now to 

 notice. The quarries excavated under Fort St. Pierre fur- 

 nished the greater number of these interesting objects ; but 

 they have also been found in all the other hills of the chain 

 we have mentioned. 



These remains appear to have excited no attention before 

 the year 1776, when an officer named Drouin began to make 

 a collection of them, which afterwards passed to the museum 

 at Haarlem. He was followed by Hoffman, a surgeon of the 

 garrison, and afterwards by Peter Camper, who transferred 

 some of his specimens to the British Museum. 



It was the opinion of Peter Camper, that these were the 

 bones of some cetaceous animal, which opinion was followed 

 by M. Van Marum, who described the specimens in the 

 Haarlem Museum. 



M. Faujas St. Fond, in his ** Natural History of the Moun- 

 tain of St. Pierre," will have it that the bones in question 

 belonged to a crocodile. 



M. Adrien Camper, however, son of the illustrious anato- 

 mist just mentioned, was convinced, on examination of the 

 pieces left by his father, that they neither belonged to a cetaceous 

 animal, nor a fish, nor a crocodile, but to a peculiar genus of 



