OF TILGATE FOREST. 
331 
broken and separated, but lying in juxtaposition, as 
in the specimen of a fossil fox in the collection of 
the President ; this condition of things seems to 
indicate that they were transported from a consi- 
derable distiince. The state of the skeleton of the 
HylceosauruH is in this point of view highly interest- 
ing : many of the vertebrm and ribs are crushed 
and splintered, yet the fractured portions remain near 
each other ; the bones are more or less dislocated, 
yet they maintain a situation bearing some relation 
to the place they occupied in the recent animal ; 
the humeri, or in other words the fore-legs, have 
been torn from their sockets, and this, too, must 
have taken place before the specimen was im- 
bedded in the mud and sand, for the glenoid cavities 
were filled with stone : these circumstances seem 
to show, that the carcase of the original must have 
suffered injury, and mutilation, before its bones were 
reduced to a skeleton ; and that the dislocated 
and broken parts were kept somewhat together, 
as we now see them, by the muscles and integu- 
ments ; in this state the headless trunk was borne 
down the stream, and at length sank into the mud 
of the delta, and formed, as it were, a nucleus 
around wliich the stems and leaves of Clathrarim, 
})alms, and ferns were deposited, and river sliells 
became intermingled with the general mass. The 
])henomena here contemplated cannot, it appears 
to me, be explained upon any other supposition 
than that which im})lies a considerable period of 
trans})ort ; the carcasses of the large reptiles must 
have long been exposed to such an agency ; and 
the river which flowed through the country of 
