428 Dr. BucKLAND on the discovery of Bones 



which is also in the Oxford Museum. During the last few months Mr. James 

 Vine has made a further discovery of bones, chiefly large vertebrae of the 

 lo-uanodon, in the parish of Brook, near the south-west extremity of this 

 same iron-sand formation in the Isle of Wight. They occur along a quarter 

 of a mile of this shore, but most abundantly at a spot called Bull-face Ledge 

 near Brook Point, wdiere the iron-stone is abundantly loaded with prostrate 

 trunks of fossil trees. Many of these vertebree are as large as those of an 

 elephant, and exceed in magnitude the vertebral dimensions of any other living- 

 animal excepting a whale; they possess also that subquadrangular form which 

 Mr. Mantell has marked as characteristic of the vertebrae of the Iguanodon.* 



Igiianodon in the Isle of Purbeck. 



In the month of September last, 1829, being in the Isle of Purbeck, I found 

 in the Museum of the Rev. F. O. Bartlett of Swanwich, a collection of bones 

 of various reptiles, such as have been found by Mr. Mantell, associated together 

 in the iron-sand of Tilgate Forest ; the most remarkable are those of the 

 Iguanodon, together with vertebrae and other bones of more than one large 

 species of Plesiosaurus, and of large and small crocodiles, and fragments of 

 large cylindrical bones resembling those of Megalosaurus, but too imperfect to 

 be identified with certainty. 



The most decidedly characterized bones of Iguanodon in this collection, are 

 vertebra resembling those engraved by Mr. Mantell in his illustrations of the 

 fossils of Tilgate Forest. These vertebrse are nearly as large as those of an 

 elephant, but compressed laterally, and subquadrangular ; there are also meta- 

 carpal, and toe bones, similar to those which Mr. Mantell refers to the Igua- 

 nodon. Nearly all these bones are more or less injured by rolling on the sea- 

 shore, where they were collected by Mr. Bartlett, and Colonel White, in Swan- 

 wich Bay, about half a mile north of the village of Swanwich. They fall 

 occasionally from the cliffs of iron-sand and sandy clay, which are undergoing 

 slow but continual destruction by the waves. As this destruction proceeds, 

 the sand and clay are soon dispersed, but the bones remain, being heavy and 

 impregnated with iron. This iron-sand is described by Mr. Webster, in his 

 letters to Sir H. Englefield on the Isle of Wight,'(pp. 169, 237, and PI. XLVII. 

 Hg. 2.) as dividing the upper beds of the Purbeck limestone from the green- 

 sand and chalk of Ballard Down. His section of this cliff is copied in fig. 5. 



*,Mr. Vine's attention was attracted to these bones about a year ago by the fact of tlieir being 

 collected to be broken up for grotto work, in consequence of the very brilliant small crystals of iron 

 pyrites and calcareous spar which fill their cancelli. He has presented this interesting collection to 

 the Museum of the Geological .Society. 



