2 FOSSIL REPTILIA OF THE 



more or less resemble those of the horny pachydermal mammals, and attest, with the 

 hollow long bones, the terrestrial habits of the species. 



Of these gigantic Dinosauria the most formidable was that which its discoverer, that 

 keen observer and original thinker, the Rev. Dr. Buckland, has called " Megalosaurus,*" 

 in reference to the idea of its hugeness, which was suggested to both him and Baron Cuvier 

 by certain of its limb-bones. " Si Ton pouvait donner," writes Cuvier, " le nom de Lacerta 

 gigantea a un autre animal qu'a celui de Maastricht, c'estl'espece actuelle qui le meriterait; 

 son seul femur, long de trente-deux pouces anglais ou 0'805 ; annoncerait, en lui suppo- 

 sant les proportions d'un Monitor, une longueur totale de plus de quarante-cinq pieds de 

 roi, et meme, s'il y a de ces femurs de quatre pieds et plus, comme on Pa dit, sa 

 longueur serait encore plus etonnante."f 



The locality where the first rightly recognised remains of the Megalosaurus were 

 found was Stonesfield, near Woodstock, about twelve miles from Oxford. The 

 formation is that calcareous schist, which, being quarried for roofing houses principally 

 at Stonesfield, is called, in most English geological works, " Stonesfield slate." Its 

 position is at the base of the great Middle Oolitic series, where it may be, perhaps, 

 more accurately classed as an upper member of the Inferior Oolite. 



To get at this slate, pits are sunk through forty-feet or more of superincumbent 

 strata, chiefly consisting of that hard oolitic rock called " cornbrash" by the quarry- 

 men. The schistose or slaty deposit is not more than six feet thick; and the scepticism 

 with which the first announcement of bones of large animals in stony strata at that 

 depth was received, is exemplified by the stress with which Cuvier thought it needful 

 to insist on the fact that the Stonesfield slate was as regular a formation as it was an 

 ancient one, and that there was no ground for supposing that the fossil bones which 

 it contained had penetrated it by any fissure or other accidental opening. 



The portions of skeleton originally discovered, and attributed by Dr. Buckland to 

 his newly defined genus, Megalosaurus, consisted of a fragment of the lower jaw, a 

 femur, a series of five vertebras of the trunk, a few ribs, a coracoid bone, a clavicle, 

 and some less certainly recognisable fragments.! 



Unfortunately, as Cuvier has remarked, those portions were not found together in 

 one spot, nor, with the exception of the five vertebrse, were the bones associated two 

 to two, or three to three, so as to make it probable that they belonged to the same 

 individual ; and, with regard to their zoological or anatomical relations, Cuvier further 

 observes that these are of a somewhat equivocal and mixed nature, " encore ces 

 rapports zoologiques sont-ils dune nature assez equivoque et assez melangee."§ 



* See 'Transactions of the Geological Society of London,' 4to, vol. i, 2d ser., pt. 2, 1824. 



t 'Ossemens Fossiles,' 4to, vol. v, pt. 2, p. 343. 



% ' Geological Transactions,' vol. i, 2d ser., p. 427. 



§ Tom. cit., p. 345. 



