are now conducting; they show not less distinctly, than the colossal limbs of the most gigantic quadrupeds, a numerical coincidence, and a concurrence of proportions, which it seems impossible to refer to the effect of accident; and which point out unity of purpose, and deliberate design, in some intelligent First Cause, from which they were all derived. We have seen that whilst all the laws of existing organization in the order of Lizards, are rigidly maintained in the Pterodactyles; still, as Lizards modified to move like birds and Bats in the air, they received, in each part of their frame, a perfect adaptation to their state. We have dwelt more at length on the minutiæ of their mechanism, because they convey us back into ages so exceedingly remote, and show that even in those distant eras, the same care of a common Creator, which we witness in the mechanism of our own bodies, and those of the myriads of inferior creatures that move around us, was extended to the structure of creatures, that at first sight seem made up only of monstrosities.
SECTION IX.
MEGALOSAURUS.[1]
The Megalosaurus, as its name implies, was a Lizard, of great size, of which, although no skeleton has yet been found entire, so many perfect bones and teeth have been discovered
- ↑ This genus was established by the Author, in a Memoir, published in the Geol. Trans. of London, (Vol. I., N. S. Pt. 2, 1824,) and was founded upon specimens discovered in the oolitic slate of Stonesfield, near Oxford, the place in which these bones have as yet chiefly occurred. Mr. Mantell has discovered remains of the same animal in the Wealden fresh-water formation of Tilgate Forest; and from this circumstance we infer that it existed during the deposition of the entire series of oolitic
