406 



MAMMALIA OF GREAT OOLITE. 



[Ch. XX 



Fig. 410. 



shells, with fragments of wood, are common, and impressions of ferns, 

 cycadeae, and other plants. Several insects, also, and, among the rest, 

 the wing-covers of beetles, are perfectly preserved (see fig. 

 410), some of them approaching nearly to the genns Bupres- 

 tis* The remains, also, of many genera of reptiles, such as 

 Pleiosaur, Crocodile, and Pterodactyl, have been discover- 

 ed in the same limestone. 



But the remarkable fossils for which the Stonesfield 

 slate is most celebrated are those referred to the mam- 

 miferous class. The student should be reminded that in 

 all the rocks described in the preceding chapters as older 

 than the Eocene, no bones of any land-quadruped, or of 

 any cetacean, had been discovered until the Spalacothe- 

 rium of the Purbeck beds came to light in 1854 (see 

 above, p. 381). Yet we have seen that terrestrial plants were not 

 rare in the lower cretaceous formation, and that in the Wealden there 

 was evidence of freshwater sediment on a large scale, containing various 

 plants, and even ancient vegetable soils. We had also in the same 

 Wealden many land-reptiles and winged insects, which render the ab- 

 sence of terrestrial quadrupeds the more striking. The want, however, 

 of any bones of whales, seals, dolphins, and other aquatic mammalia, 

 whether in the chalk, or in the upper or middle oolite, is certainly 

 still more remarkable. Formerly, indeed, a bone from the Great Oolite 

 of Enstone, near Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, was cited, on the author- 

 ity of Cuvier, as referable to this class. Dr. Buckland, who stated 

 this in his Bridgewater Treatise,f had the kindness to send me the 

 supposed ulna of a whale, that Prof. Owen might examine into its 

 claims to be considered as cetacean. It is the opinion of that eminent 

 comparative anatomist that it cannot have belonged to the cetacea, 

 because the fore-arm in these marine mammalia is invariably much 



Fig. 411. 



Bone of a Eeptile, formerly supposed to be the ulna of a Cetacean ; from the Great Oolite 

 of Enstone, near Woodstock. 



* See Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise ; and Brodie's Fossil Insects, where it is 

 suggested that these elytra may belong to Prionus. 

 •j- Vol. i. p. 115. 



