Professor Buckland on the Megalosaurus. 391 



feet high have been assigned by Cuvier to the individual to which this bone 

 belonged ; and although we cannot safely attribute exactly the same propor- 

 tions to recent and extinct species,, yet we may with certainty ascribe to it 

 a magnitude very far exceeding that of any living lacerta. Large as are 

 the proportions of this individual^ they fall very short of those which we cannot 

 but deduce from a thigh-bone of another of the same species^ which has been 

 discovered in the ferruginous sandstone of Tilgate Forest near Cuckfield, 

 in Sussex^ and is preserved in the valuable collection of Gideon Mantell^ Esq. 

 of Lewes, together with many other bones belonging to the same species, 

 and of the same size with those from Stonesfield. 



*The femur in question, which has lost its head and lower extremity, mea- 

 sures in its smallest part, at the distance of two feet from the upper ex- 

 tremity, more than twenty inches in circumference, and therefore, when entire, 

 must have equalled in magnitude the femur of the largest living elephant. 



To judge from the dimensions of this thigh-bone, its former possessor 

 must have been twice as great as that to which the similar bone in the Oxford 

 Museum belonged; and if the total length and height of animals were in 

 proportion to the linear dimensions of their extremities, the beast in question 

 would have equalled in height our largest elephants, and in length fallen but 

 little short of the largest whales; but as the longitudinal growth of animals 

 is not in so high a ratio, after making some deduction, we may calculate the 

 length of this reptile from Cuckfield at from sixty to seventy feet. In consi- 

 deration therefore of the enormous magnitude which this saurian attains, I 

 have ventured, in concurrence with my friend and fellow-labourer, the Rev. 

 W. Conybeare, to assign to it the name of Megalosaurus. 



The other animals that are found at Stonesfield are not less extraordinary 

 than the megalosaurus itself Among the most remarkable are two portions of 

 the jaw of the didelphys or opossum, being of the size of a small kangaroo 

 rat; and belonging to a family which now exists chiefly in America, Southern 

 Asia, and New Holland. 1 refer the fossil in question to this family on the 

 authority of M. Cuvier, who has examined it; and without the highest sanc- 

 tion, I should have hesitated to announce such a fact, as it forms a case 

 hitherto unique in the discoveries of geology ; viz. that of the remains of a 

 land quadruped being found in a formation subjacent to chalk. 



* Mr. Mantell in his Geology of Sussex, p. .53, speaking of this bone and others in his col- 

 lection, says, " Some fragments of a cylindrical bone, probably the femur, indicate an animal 

 of gigantic magnitude. I have specimens from ten to twenty-seven inches long, and from eleven 

 to twenty-five inches in circumference, the substance of the bone being more than two inches 

 thick. Some examples have lar^e foramina for the passage of blood vessels." 



VOL. VI. 3 E 



