FOSSIL REPTILES. 347 



of lizards than it had appeared in the remains previously ana- 

 lyzed. 



The ichthyosaurus is, as we have said, peculiarly abundant 

 in its remains in England. Its debris are deposited from the 

 new red sandstone up to the green sand, which is immediately 

 under the chalk. Thus it belongs to almost every epocha of 

 the secondary strata, which continental geologists call the for- 

 mation of Jura. Fragments of it, in fact, are found in a marl, 

 associated with green sand, at Bensington, and in the calcareous 

 sandstone under the oolite at Shotover Hill — all places in Bed- 

 fordshire. There are some also under the oolite at Kimmeridge, 

 in Dorsetshire. 



But it is especially in the lias, a bluish, grey, marly, and 

 pyritous marble, that its sepulchre is most usually found. This 

 has furnished innumerable remains of it in the counties of 

 Dorset, Somerset, Gloucester, and Leicester, and principally 

 in the valley of Avon, in Somersetshire between Bath and 

 Bristol, and on the coast of Dorsetshire, where the cliffs be- 

 tween Lyme and Charmouth have been inexhaustible deposits 

 of it. The ichthyosauri appear to be as abundant there as the 

 remains of ancient mammifera are in the gypsum of Paris, and 

 their bones are generally surrounded by quantities of small 

 ammonites. 



In the same formation, further to the North, many remains 

 of ichthyosaurus are to be found, and M. Cuvier has received 

 many specimens from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 



The bones of the ichthyosaurus are much more rare on the 

 continent of Europe. Some vertebrae, however, were evidently 

 to be distinguished among the groups of crocodiles' bones from 

 Honfleur. From the coast of Calvados M. Cuvier received 

 some fragments ; and even from the interior of France not a 

 few very strongly characterized ; from Condat, in Agenois, and 

 from Reugny, near Corbigny, in the department of the Nievre. 

 These last were manifestly in the oolite, but the gangue of most 

 of the rest was very similar to the lias. 



