§ 46. THE COUNTRY OF THE IGUANODON. 443 



the prevailing atmospheric condition of the country may 

 also be drawn from the undulated surfaces of the sand- 

 stones, and from the fossil trees. In the former we have 

 proof, that when the land of reptiles existed, the water was 

 rippled by the breezes, which then, as now, varied in 

 intensity and direction in a brief space ; by the latter, 

 that in certain situations the wind blew from a particu- 

 lar quarter for a great part of the year, and that the 

 mean annual temperature was as variable as in modern 

 times. From what has been advanced, it must not, how- 

 ever, be supposed, that the country of the Iguanodon 

 occupied the site of the south-east of England ; and that 

 the animals and terrestrial plants of the Wealden, lived and 

 died near the spot where their relics are entombed. For, 

 with the exception of the shells and crustaceans, which 

 probably inhabited the delta, all the fossil remains bear 

 marks of having been transported from a great distance. 

 But though three-fourths of the bones we discover have 

 been broken and rolled, — the teeth detached from their 

 sockets, — the vertebrae and bones of the extremities, with 

 but very few exceptions, disjointed, and scattered here and 

 there, — the stems and branches of the trees torn to pieces, 

 and deprived of their foliage, — there is no intermixture of 

 sea-shells, nor of beach or shingle ; these remains have 

 been subjected to abrasion from river currents, but not to 

 attrition from the waves of the ocean. The gigantic limbs 

 of the large reptiles could not have been dissevered from 

 their sockets without great violence, except by the decom- 

 position of their tendons from long maceration in water ; 

 and if the latter had been the sole cause, we should not 

 find the bones broken and separated, but lying more or less 

 in juxtaposition, like the skeletons of the Plesiosauri in the 

 Lias. The condition in which these fossils occur, proves 

 that they were floated down the river with the rafts of 

 trees, and other spoils of the land, till, arrested in their 



