68 FOSSIL REPTILIA OF THE LONDON CLAY. 



of the zygantra; the neural spine is relatively lower and of a different shape, having 

 its anterior angle rounded off, and its posterior one more produced backwards. 



As I have failed to discover modifications of the kind and degree above described 

 in the dorsal or free rib-bearing vertebra? of the same species in any of the existing 

 genera of Serpents, I am left to interpret such characters as indicative of a distinct 

 species, probably of the extinct genus of Eocene Serpent above defined. The 

 specimens of the vertebrae of the present species, which indicate a serpent of between 

 two and three feet in length, were obtained from the Eocene sand at Hordwell Cliff, 

 by Searles Wood, Esq., F.G.S., in whose museum they are preserved. 



A few bones of serpents have been found in the superficial stalagmite, and in clefts 

 of caves, in peat bogs, and the like localities, which bring their occurrence and 

 deposition within the period of human history. None of these Ophidian remains, 

 however, have offered any differences in size or other character from the corresponding 

 parts of the skeleton of our common harmless snake {Coluber natrix). As yet no 

 Ophidian fossils have been found in British fresh-water formations of the pre-adamitic 

 or pleistocene period, from which formations the remains of the Mammoth, tichorrhine 

 Rhinoceros, great Hippopotamus, and other extinct species of existing genera of 

 Mammalia have been so abundantly obtained. Between the newest and the oldest 

 deposits of the tertiary period in Geology, there is a great gap in England, the middle 

 or miocene formations being very incompletely represented by some confused and 

 dubious parts of the crag of fluviomarine origin in which teeth of a Mastodon have 

 been found. 



The deposits in which the remains of the large serpents of the genus JPalesop/tis 

 occur so abundantly, carry back the date of their existence to a period much more 

 remote from that at which human history commences. Yet, as the strange and 

 gigantic Reptiles that have been restored, and, as it were, called again to life, from 

 times vastly more ancient, realise in some measure the fabulous dragons of mediaeval 

 romance ; so the locality on our shore of the English channel in which the Eocene 

 serpents have been found in most abundance and of largest size, recalls to mind, by a 

 similar coincidence, the passage cited by an accomplished and popular historian, in 

 his masterly sketch of the rise and progress of the English nation. " There was one 

 province of our Island in which, as Procopius had been told, the ground was covered 

 with serpents, and the air was such that no man could inhale it and live. To this 

 desolate region the spirits of the departed were ferried over from the land of the 

 Franks at midnight." (Macaulay's History of England, vol. i, p. 5.) 



C AND J. ADLARD, PRINTERS, BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE. 



