*

bones of crocodiles, tortoises, fishes, and reptiles; such as the Mogosaurus, a gigantic species of lizard, with a body twenty-six feet in length, head four feet, and tail ten feet ; the Megalosaurus, a species of monitor or amphibious animal, whose height equalled the largest elephant, and whose length was little short of the largest whale! the Pterodactylus or wing-toed reptile, an animal covered with scales like a lizard, and provided with the means of flying like the bat, and of suspending itself from trees like the sloth. Dr. Buckland has thus described it, "In size and general form and character of its wings, this fossil genus, according to Cuvier, somewhat resembled our modern bats and vampires, but had its beak elongated like the bill of a woodcock, and armed with teeth like the snout of a crocodile; its vertebra, ribs, pelvis, legs and feet, resembled those of a lizard; its three anterior fingers terminated in long hooked claws like that on the forefinger of the bat, and over its body was a covering, neither composed of feathers as in the bird, nor of hair as in the bat, but of scaly armour like that of the Iguana, in short, a monster resembling nothing that has ever been seen or heard of upon earth, except the dragons of romance and heraldry. By means of its powerful paw and long claws, it was enabled to creep or climb, or suspend itself from trees: thus, like Milton's fiend,

* The Pterodactyli have been found in the Stonesfield slate, at Solenhofen in Germany, and at Lyme Regis, at which latter place it is associated with the ichthyosauri and plesiosauri. The limestone of Barrow in Leicestershire is one of the richest repositories of the remains of the ichthyosaurus.

qualified for all services and all elements, the creature was a fit companion for the kindred reptiles which swarmed in the seas, or crawled on the shores of a turbulent planet."*

"The fiend

O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies."

Paradise Lost, book 2.

Insects, it is imagined, were the food of the pterodactylus, as, where the remains of these strange creatures are found in greatest abundance, there fossil insects also abound. Like the bat, this winged reptile is supposed also to have shunned the light, and to have made its predatory excursions during the night.

Contemporary with the pterodactylus, lived in the marshes and shallow lakes of that period the ichthyosaurus, or fish-lizard, many species of which have been exhumed from the lias-limestone at Barrow and Lyme Regis.

This voracious animal was of a species between the fish and the crocodile, or lizard, furnished with paddles to navigate the water, but unable to live long beneath it

* This description is applied to the pterodactylus macronyx, discovered in the lias at Lyme Regis, by Miss Mary Anning. It was about the size of a raven.

like the fish. One species, the Ichthyosaurus platyodon, had jaws eight feet long: it was armed with sharp-pointed teeth, and had enormous eyes to aid its vision in the dark. Cuvier describes the ichthyosaurus as having the snout of a dolphin, the teeth of a crocodile, the head and sternum of a lizard, the extremities of cetacea, * (being, however, four in number,) and the vertebræ of fish. Many entire skeletons have been found, and in such profusion are their remains preserved, that the organization of this strange reptile is as well known to naturalists as that of any animal now existing.

The plesiosaurus, akin to the ichthyosaurus, but approximating more nearly to the lizard, as the term expresses, (plesion, near to, saurus, a lizard), existed also at this period. The ichthyosaurus, it is imagined might brave the waves of the sea, dashing through them as the porpoise now does, but this animal, at least the longnecked species, (plesiosaurus dolichodeirus,) which

the wood-cut represents, would be better suited to have fished in shallow creeks and bays, defended from heavy breakers. Its enormously long neck, resembling the

* Cetacea, the species of mammiferous animals, to which the whale and others belong, from cete, whale.

+ See De la Bèche's Geol. Manual, p, 343, where an idea of these reptiles sporting in their native element is attempted to be conveyed.

body of a serpent, it is supposed to have carried like the swan, as it floated upon the surface of the water, and used in darting at its prey, the fish. In addition to the reptiles enumerated, there are the remains of animals analogous to the frog and the toad, and fish in a great variety. * "With flocks of pterodactyli, observes Dr. Buckland, flying in the air, and shoals of no less monstrous ichthyosauri and plesiosauri, swarming in the ocean, and gigantic crocodiles and tortoises crawling on the shores of the primeval lakes and rivers, air, sea, and land must have been strangely tenanted, in these early periods of an infant world!"

Many of the animals buried in the lias, appear to have lain but a short time exposed to the effects of decomposition, as skeletons of ichthyosauri have been found with vestiges of the skin and flesh upon their bones, and the contents of their stomachs between their ribs, fossilized of course, but proving that their envelopement in the sedimentary matter must have speedily followed death. The ink-bags in the fossil sepia, which retain their forms precisely as they exist in animals possessing organs of a similar description at the present day, are also a remarkable instance of the preservation of delicate animal substances by their conversion into hard unyielding stone. The recent discovery of the fæces of the ichthyosaurus, to which the term coprolites has been given, is one of the most singular results of geo

* It is singular that the scales of fishes should be beautifully preserved where no trace of bones remain, although the bones are formed of far less destructible materials than the scales, which, in fact, consist almost entirely of animal matter.

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