Cuvier thus describes the Plesiosaur (we borrow the quotation from Buckland):— “The Plesiosaur is the most heteroclite, and in character the most monstrous, of all the animals that have yet been found amid the ruins of a former world. To the head of a lizard it united the teeth of a crocodile, a neck of enormous length resembling the body of a serpent, a trunk and tail like that of an ordinary quadruped, the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of a whale. Such are the strange combinations of form and structure of the Plesiosaurus, a genus the remains of which, after interment for thousands of years amidst the wreck of millions of extinct inhabitants of the ancient earth, are at length recalled to light by the researches of the geologist, and submitted to our examination in nearly as perfect a state as the bones of species that are now existing on the earth.” We add a word upon the uses of this portion of the crust of the earth, and we do so in the striking words of Hugh Miller. “We have seen how this central district of England has its storehouses of coal, iron, salt, lime,—liberal donations to the wants of the human animal, from the carboniferous, saliferous, and silurian systems; and to this we must now add its inexhaustible deposits of medicine, contributions to the general stock by the oolitic system. Along the course of the lias medicinal springs abound: there is no other part of England where they rise so thickly, or of a quality that exerts a more powerful influence on the human frame. The mineral waters of Cheltenham, for instance, so celebrated for their virtues, are of the number; and the way in which they are elaborated in such vast quantities seems to be as follows:—They all rise in the lias, a formation abounding in sulphate of iron, lime, magnesia, lignite, and various bituminous matters; but they all have their origin in the saliferous marls of the upper new red sandstone which the lias overlies. In the inferior formation they are simply brine springs, but brine is a powerful solvent. Passing through the lias, it acts upon the sulphur and the iron—becomes, by means of the acid thus set free and incorporated with it, a more powerful solvent still—operates upon the lime, upon the magnesia, upon the various lignites and bitumens—and at length rises to the surface, a brine-digested extract of liassic minerals. The several springs yield various analyses, according to the various rocks of the upper formation through which they pass; some containing more, some less lime, sulphur, iron, magnesia, but in all the dissolving menstruum is the same. And such, it would appear, is the mode in which Nature prepares her simples in this rich district, and keeps her medicine-chest ever full.” Thus wondrous is the machinery of God’s universe; every day utters some fresh speech, and every night shows forth some new knowledge.