Now what we want particularly to impress upon our readers is, that the remains of this singular aquatic reptile abound throughout the whole extent of the Lias Formation in England. Far down below the surface of the earth they are found embedded in the marls, and clays, and limestones of Dorsetshire, and Gloucester, and Warwick, and Leicester, and Yorkshire. Sometimes whole skeletons are found entire, with scarcely a single bone removed from the place it occupied during life; but more frequently the scattered fragments are found lying about in a state of confused disorder; skulls, and jaw-bones, and teeth, and paddles, and the joints of the vertebral column and of the tail. The neighborhood of Lyme Regis is a perfect cabinet of these curious treasures. In some of the specimens there exhumed, a singular circumstance has been observed, which is deserving of special notice. We should naturally have expected, from the prodigious power of this animal, from the expansion of his jaws and the immense size of his stomach, that he preyed upon the other fish and reptiles that had the misfortune to inhabit the waters in which he lived. And so indeed it was. For here enclosed within his vast ribs, in the place that once was his stomach, are still preserved the remains of his half-digested food; and amidst the débris we can distinguish the bones and scales of his victims. Nay, in some of the more colossal specimens of this ancient monster, we can distinctly recognize the remains of his own smaller brethren; which, though less frequent than the bones of fishes, are still sufficiently numerous to prove that, when he wanted to appease his hunger, he did not even spare the less powerful members of his own species.[76]
[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Ichthyosaurus Platyodon. Museum of Trinity College, Dublin. Found in the Lias of Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire.]
[Illustration: Fig. 19.--Ichthyosaurus Communis. Museum of Trinity College, Dublin. Found in the Lias of Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire.]
It is with facts like these, which are revealed by the Crust of the Earth all over the world, that Geologists are called upon to deal. When they meet with skeletons and bones such as we have been describing, buried deep in the hard rock, hundreds of feet beneath the green grass, and the waving corn, they cannot help but ask the question: Where did these creatures come from? When did they live? And by what revolutions were they embedded here, and lifted up from beneath the waters of the deep?