PART II. CHAPTER XVIII. 



231 



Sudden Destruction of Marine Animals. 



.hat 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."* Not only are the skeletons of the Ichthyo- 

 sauri entire, but sometimes the contents of their stomachs still 

 remain between their ribs, so that we can discover the particular 

 species of fish on which they lived, and the form of their excre- 

 ments. Not unfrequently there are layers of these coprolites at 

 different depths in the lias, at a distance from any entire skele- 

 tons of the marine lizards, from which they were derived, " as 

 if," says M. De la Beche, " the muddy bottom of the sea received 

 small sudden accessions of matter from time to time, covering 

 up the coprolites and other exuvise which had accumulated during 

 the intervals. "t It is further stated that, at Lyme Regis, those 

 surfaces only of the coprolites which lay uppermost at the bottom 

 of the sea have suffered partial decay, from the action of water 

 before they were covered and protected by the muddy sediment 

 that has afterwards permanently enveloped them.ij: 



Numerous specimens of the pen-and-ink fish (Sepia loligo, 

 Lin., Loligo vulgaris, Lam.) have also been met with in the 

 lias at Lyme, with the ink-bags still distended, containing the 

 ink in a dried state, chiefly composed of carbon, and but slightly 

 impregnated with carbonate of lime. These cephalopoda, there- 

 fore, must, like the saurians, have died suddenly, and have been 

 instantly buried in sediment ; for, if exposed after death, the 

 membrane containing the ink would have decayed. § 



As we know that river fish are sometimes stifled, even in their 

 own element, by muddy water during floods, it cannot be doubt- 

 ed that the periodical discharge of large bodies of turbid fresh 

 water into the sea may be still more fatal to marine tribes. In 

 the Principles of Geology, I have shown how large quantities of 

 mud and drowned animals are swept down into the sea by rivers 

 during earthquakes, as in Java, in 1699; and how undescriba- 

 ble multitudes of dead fish have been seen floating on the sea 

 after a discharge of noxious vapours from similar convulsions. || 

 But, in the intervals between such catastrophes, strata may have 



*Bridgew. Treat, p. 125. t Geological Researches, p. 334. 



X Buckland, Bridgew. Treat., p. 307. $ Ibid. 



II See Principles of Geology, Index, " Lancerote," " Graham Island," " Cala- 

 bria." 



