had been called into existence, the important office of controlling the excessive increase of the aquatic herbivore appears to have been consigned to the Crocodiles, whose habits fitted them, in a peculiar degree, for such a service. Thus, the past history of the Crocodilean tribe presents another example of the well regulated workings of a consistent plan in the economy of animated nature, under which each individual, whilst following its own instinct, and pursuing its own good, is instrumental in promoting the general welfare of the whole family of its contemporaries.
Cuvier observes, that the presence of Crocodilean reptiles, which are usually inhabitants of fresh water, in various beds, loaded with the remains of other reptiles and shells that are decidedly marine, and the further fact of their being, in many cases, accompanied by freshwater Tortoises, shows that there must have existed dry land, watered by rivers, in the early periods when these strata were deposited, and long before the formation of the lacustrine tertiary strata of the neighbourhood of Paris.[1] The living species of the Crocodile family are twelve in number, namely, one Giaval, eight true Crocodiles, and three Alligators. There are also many fossil species: no less than six of these have been made out by Cuvier, and several others, from the secondary and tertiary formations in England remain to be described.[2]
- ↑ M. Geoffroy St., Hilaire has arranged the fossil Saurians with long and narrow beaks, like that of the Gavial, under the two new genera, Teleosaurus and Steneosaurus. In the Teleosaurus, (Pl. 25', Fig. 2.) the nostrils form almost a vertical section of the anterior extremity of the beak; in the Steneosaurus, (Pl. 25', Fig. 3.) this anterior termination of the nasal canal had nearly the same arrangement as in the Gavial, opening upwards, and being almost semi-circular on each side.—Recherches sur les grands Sauriens, 1831.
- ↑ One of the finest specimens of fossil Teleosauri yet discovered, (see Pl. 25, Fig. 1,) was found in the year 1824, in the alum shale of the lias formation at Saltwick, near Whitby, and is engraved in Young and Bird's Geological Survey of the Yorkshire Coast, 2d Ed. 1828: its entire length is about eighteen feet, the breadth of the head twelve inches, the snout
