The bone is 29 inches in length; its diameter, at the extremity of the two trochanters, is 8 inches; at the lower extremity the condyles form a surface of 6 inches. The lesser trochanter is so well expressed in the drawing, that you cannot mistake it; and both the extremities appear to be a little rubbed by the fluctuating water, in which I apprehend it lay some time before the great jumble obtained, which brought it to this place; and from whence I imagine it to have been part of a skeleton before the flood. For if it had been corroded by any menstruum in the earth, or during the great conflux of water before the draining of the earth, it must have suffered in other parts as well as at each end: but as the extremities only are injured, we can attribute such a partial effect to the motion of the water only, which caused it to rub and strike against the sand, _&c._ The small trochanter was broken in lifting it out of the hamper, in which it was brought to me; but not unhappily; since all the _cancelli_ were by that means discovered to be filled with a sparry matter, that fixed the stone of the stratum, in which it lay. The outward coat or cortex is smooth, and of a dusky brown colour, resembling that of the stone, in which it is bedded. One half of the bone is buried in the stone; yet enough of it is exposed to shew, that it is the thigh-bone of an animal of greater bulk than the largest ox. I have compared it with the recent thigh-bone of an elephant; but could observe little or no resemblance between them. If I may be allowed to assume the liberty, in which fossilists are often indulged, and to hazard a vague conjecture of my own, I would say it may probably have belonged to the hippopotamus, to the rhinoceros, or some such large animal, of whose anatomy we have not yet a competent knowlege. The slate-pit, in which this bone was found, is about a quarter of a mile north-west from Stonesfield, upon the declivity of a rising ground, the upper stratum of which is a vegetable mould about eight or ten inches thick: under this is a bed of rubble, with a mixture of sand and clay, very coarse, about six feet deep, in which are a great number of _anomiæ_ both plain and striated, and many small oblong oysters, which the workmen call the sickle-oyster, some of them being found crooked, and bearing some resemblance to that instrument; but all differing from the _curvi-rostra_[19] of Moreton. Immediately under this stratum of rubble is a bed of soft grey stone, of no use; but containing the _echini ovarii_, with great _mamillæ_, the _clypeati_ of different sizes, all well preserved; and also many _anomiæ_ and _pectines_. This bed, which is about seven or eight feet in depth, lies immediately above the stratum of stone, in which the bone was found.