THE GEOLOGICAL MIDDLE AGE. 157 
tiaiy beds. Let us see, then, what this inland 
sea has to tell us of the organic world in the 
Jurassic epoch. 
At that time the region where Lyme-Regis is 
now situated in modern England was an estuary 
on the shore of that ancient sea. About fifty 
years ago a discovery of large and curious bones, 
belonging to some animal unknown to the scien- 
tific world, turned the attention of naturalists to 
this locality, and since then such a quantity and 
variety of such remains have been found in that 
neighborhood as to show that the Sharks, Whales, 
Porpoises, etc., of the present ocean are not more 
numerous and diversified than were the inhabi- 
tants of this old bay or inlet. Among these ani- 
mals, the Ichthyosauri (Fish-Lizards) form one 
of the best-known and most prominent groups. 
They are chiefly found in the Lias, the lowest set 
of beds of the Jurassic deposits, and seem to have 
come in with the close of the Triassic epoch. It 
is greatly to be regretted that whatever is known 
of the Triassic Reptiles antecedent to the Ichthy- 
osauri still remains in the form of original papers, 
and is not yet embodied in text-books. They are 
quite as interesting, as curious, and as diversified 
as those of the Jurassic epoch, which are, how- 
ever, much more extensively known, on account 
of the large collections of these animals belong- 
ing to the British Museum. It will be more easy 
