826 SUDDEN DESTRUCTION OF SAURIANS. [Ch. XXI 



says Mr. Darwin, " is extremely common on all the islands throughout 

 the archipelago. It lives exclusively on the rocky sea-beaches, and I 

 never saw one even ten yards inshore. The usual length is about a 

 yard, but there are some even 4 feet long. It is of a dirty black color, 

 sluggish in its movements on the land ; but, wdien in the water, it swims 

 with perfect ease and quickness by a serpentine movement of its body 

 and flattened tail, the legs during this time being motionless, and closely 

 collapsed on its sides. Their limbs and strong claws are admirably 

 adapted for crawling over the rugged and fissured masses of lava which 

 everywhere form the coast. In such situations, a group of six or seven 

 of these hideous reptiles may oftentimes be seen on the black rocks, a 

 few feet above the surf, basking in the sun with outstretched legs. 

 Their stomachs, on being opened, were found to be largely distended 

 with minced sea-weed, of a kind which grows at the bottom of the sea 

 at some little distance from the coast. To obtain this, the lizards go out 

 to sea in shoals. One of these animals was sunk in salt-water, from 

 the ship, with a heavy weight attached to it, and on being drawn up 

 again after an hour it was quite active and unharmed. It is not yet 

 known by the inhabitants where this animal lays its eggs ; a sin- 

 gular fact, considering its abundance, and that the natives are well 

 acquainted with the eggs of the terrestrial Amhlyrhynchus^ which is also 

 herbivorous.''^ 



In those deposits now forming by the sediment washed away from the 

 wasting shores of the Galapagos Islands the remains of saurians, both of 

 the land and sea, as well as of chelonians and fish, may be mingled with 

 marine shells, without any bones of land quadrupeds or batrachian rep- 

 tiles ; yet even here we should expect the remains of marine mammalia 

 to be imbedded in the new strata, for there are seals, besides seveiai 

 kinds of cetacea, on the Galapagian shores ; and, in this respect, the 

 parallel between the modern fauna, above described, and the ancient one 

 of the lias, would not hold good. 



Sudden destruction of saurians. — It has been remarked, and truly, 

 that many of the fish and saurians, found fossil in the lias, must have 

 met with sudden death and immediate burial ; and that the destructive 

 operation, whatever may have been its nature, was often repeated. 



" Sometimes," says Dr. Buckland, " scarcely a single bone or scale has 

 been removed from the place it occupied during life ; which could not 

 have happened had the uncovered bodies of these saurians been left, 

 even for a few hours, exposed to putrefaction, and to the attacks of fishes, 

 and other smaller animals at the bottom of the sea."f Not only are the 

 skeletons of the Ichthyosaurs entire, but sometimes the contents of their 

 stomachs still remain between their ribs, as before remarked, so that we 

 can discover the particular species of fish on which they lived, and 

 the form of their excrements. Not unfrequently there are layers of 

 these coprolites, at different depths in the lias, at a distance from any 



* Darwin's Journal, chap. xix. f Bridgew. Treat, p. 125. 



