596 THE UNIVERSE. 



Ill the same seas those famiUes of microscopic Fora- 

 minifera, the debris of which, as we have seen, constitute 

 large mountains, swarmed alongside of the gigantic Nautili 

 and Ammonites. 



To use the happy expression of M. L. Figuier, "the 

 state of the vegetation in the cretaceous period might he 

 looked upon as the vestibule of the vegetation of our 

 days." The dicotyledons augment in number, whilst the 

 ferns and inferior plants lose their supremacy little by 

 little, and are replaced by trees analogous to those that 

 now afford us their shade. 



But if the forests of this epoch already aj^proached ours 

 in the character of their vegetation, they differed very 

 widely as to the nature of their inhabitants. Where now 

 we only meet inoftensive lizards a few inches long playing 

 on the SAvard, there were then creatures of this class Avhicli 

 dragged through these solitudes their vast frames fifteen 

 to sixteen metres (forty-eight to fifty-tAVO feet English) 

 in lengtli. Such were the jNIcgalosauri and the Iguano- 

 dons.' 



CHAPTEE V. 



TERTIARY EPOCH. 



We have just seen unrolled before our eyes a phase of 

 creation in Avhicli all animal life Avas under the dominion 



1 Neither the Iguanocloii nor the Megalosaurus has as j-et been found in 

 England of saeh proportions as tliese. Owen computed the length of the 

 Iguanodou at tliirty-five feet, but a thigh-boue was found just west of Sandown 

 Fort which clearly belonged to a larger animal, one possibly forty-five feet in 

 lentith.— Tp.. 



