MONITOR.
The Monitor is another amphibious genus, which is found in the fossil state. It has been formed by Cuvier to receive animals which differ from the crocodiles in some important circumstances; and he considers it as interme diate between those which have a short tongue, and whose palate is furnished with teeth, and those where the tongue is long and forked.
This remarkable animal, remarkable for its size as well as its peculiarity of structure, is found near Maestricht, in that soft limestone well known to geologists, from its analogy to the chalk stratum, inasmuch as it contains not only flints, but some of the same fossil shells that occur in the chalk of Paris. There had been considerable dif ficulty experienced respecting these remains, till they were examined by Cuvier; and they had been, at different times, referred to the whale, as well as to the common crocodile. From the different remains that have been examined, the length of the animal is supposed to have been about twenty -four feet, and the head appears to have been about four of these in length. The tail seems to have been very
broad at the extremity, and intended fat swimming. From these, and other circumstances, it has been considered as a marine animal; a fact rendered probable, indeed, by the nature of the stratum in which it is found. This is not such a peculiarity, however, as some have thought it fit to suppose ; as we have mentioned, in another part of this article, that marine lizards or crocodiles now inhabit the Palaos islands.
Salamander, or Proteus, is supposed to exist in the Oeningen and Pappenheim strata already mentioned, when speaking of fossil fish. In the same place, the remains of a toad have been found, which Cuvier refers to the Bufo calarnita, hereafter mentioned, and not to the