In 1795, there was stated to have been discovered in the stone quarries adjoining Maestricht the remains of the gigantic _Mosœsaurus_ (Saurian of the Meuse), an aquatic reptile about twenty-five feet long, holding an intermediate place between the Monitors and Iguanas. It appears to have had webbed feet, and a tail of such construction as to have served for a powerful oar, and enabled the animal to stem the waves of the ocean, of which Cuvier supposed it to have been an inhabitant. It is thus referred to by Dr. Mantell, in his _Medals of Creation_: “A specimen, with the jaws and bones of the palate, now in the Museum at Paris, has long been celebrated; and is still the most precious relic of this extinct reptile hitherto discovered.” An admirable cast of this specimen is preserved in the British Museum, in a case near the bones of the Iguanodon. This is, however, useless, as Cuvier is proved to have been imposed upon in the matter. M. Schlegel has reported to the French Academy of Sciences, that he has ascertained beyond all doubt that the famous fossil saurian of the quarries of Maestricht, described as a wonderful curiosity by Cuvier, is nothing more than an impudent fraud. Some bold impostor, it seems, in order to make money, placed a quantity of bones in the quarries in such a way as to give them the appearance of having been recently dug up, and then passed them off as specimens of antediluvian creation. Being successful in this, he went the length of arranging a number of bones so as to represent an entire skeleton; and had thus deceived the learned Cuvier. In extenuation of Cuvier’s credulity, it is stated that the bones were so skilfully coloured as to make them look of immense antiquity, and he was not allowed to touch them lest they should crumble to pieces. But when M. Schlegel subjected them to rude handling, he found that they were comparatively modern, and that they were placed one by the other without that profound knowledge of anatomy which was to have been expected from the man bold enough to execute such an audacious fraud. “THE OLDEST PIECE OF WOOD UPON EARTH.” The most remarkable vegetable relic which the Lower Old Red Sandstone has given us is a small fragment of a coniferous tree of the Araucarian family, which formed one of the chief ornaments of the late Hugh Miller’s museum, and to which he used to point as the oldest piece of wood upon earth. He found it in one of the ichthyolite beds of Cromarty, and thus refers to it in his _Testimony of the Rocks_: On what perished land of the early paleozoic ages did this venerably antique tree cast root and flourish, when the extinct genera Pterichthys and Coccoeteus were enjoying life by millions in the surrounding seas, long ere the flora or fauna of the coal measures had begun to be?