Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/157

 Rh the small intestine, we have additional evidence to show even the form of the minute vessels and folds of the mucous membrane, by which it was lined, This evidence consists in a series of vascular impressions and corrugations on the surface of the Coprolite, which it could only have received during its passage through the windings of this flat tube. Specimens thus marked are engraved at Pl. 15, Figs. 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14.

If we attempt to discover a final cause for these curious provisions in the bowels of the extinct reptile inhabitants of the seas of a former world, we shall find it to be the same that explains the existence of a similar structure in the modern voracious tribes of Sharks and Dog-fish.

As the peculiar voracity of all these animals required the stomach to be both large and long, there would remain but little space for the smaller viscera; these are therefore reduced, as we have seen, nearly to the state of a flattened tube, coiled like a corkscrew around itself; their bulk is thus materially diminished, whilst the amount of absorbing