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earths of fint, clay, and lime; each of these, taken singly of the ordained relation of the globe's surface ta and in a state of purity, is comparatively barren : the ad. the human race cannot be pressed so far as to mixture of a small proportion of clay gives tenacity and contend that all the great geological phenomena fertility to sand, and the further addition of calcareous we have been considering were conducted eze earth produces a soil highly valuable to the agriculturist;clusively with a view to the benefit of man:and where the natural proportions are not adjusted in the

*We may rather count,' says Dr. Buckland, the advanmost beneficial manner, the facilities afforded by the frequent juxtaposition of lime, or marl

, or gypsum, for the tages he derives from them as incidental and residgary

consequences; which, although they may not have formed artificial improvement of those soils which are defective in the exclusive object of creation, were all foreseen and comthese ingredients, add materially to the earth's capability of

prehended in the plans of the Great Architect of that adaptation to the important office of producing food.

Globe, which, in his appointed time, was destined to be Hence it happens that the great corn.fields, and the greatest come the scene of human babitation. population of the world, are placed on strata of the se

• With respect to the animal kingdom, we acknowledge condary and tertiary formations; or on their detritus, com with gratitude, that, among the higher classes, there is a posing still more compound, and consequently more fertile

certain number of living species whieh are indispensable diluvial and alluvial deposits.*

to the supply of human food and raiment, and to the aid • Another advantage in the disposition of stratified rocks of civilized man in his various labours and occupaticas; consists in the fact that strata of limestone, sand, and sand. and that these are endowed with dispositions and faculties stone, which readily absorb water, alternate with beds of which adapt them in a peculiar degree for domestication; clay, or marl, which are impermeable to the most impor. but their number bears an extremely small proportion to tant fuid. All permeable strata receive rain-water at their the total amount of existing species; and with regard to surface, whence it descends until it is arrested by an im- the lower classes of animals, there are but very fer, permeable subjacent bed of clay, causing it to accumulate

among their almost countless multitudes, that minister throughout the lower region of each porous stratum, and to either to the wants or luxuries of the human race. Eren form extensive reservoirs, the overflowings of which on the could it be proved that all existing species are serviceable sides of valleys constitute the ordinary supply of springs to man, no such inference could be drawn with respect to and rivers. These resorvoirs are not only occasional cre- those numerous extinct animals which Geology shows to vices and caverns, but the entire space of all the small in- have ceased to live long before our race appeared upon the terstices of those lower parts of each permeable stratum, earth. It is surely more consistent with sound philosophy, which are beneath the level of the nearest flowing springs and with all the information that is vouchsafed to us reHence, if a well be sunk to the water-bearing level of any specting the attributes of the Deity, to consider each eni stratum, it forms a communication with a permanent sub-mal as having been created first for its own sake, to receive terranean sheet of water, affording plentiful supplies to its portion of that enjoyment which the Universal Parent the inhabitants of upland districts, which are above the

is pleased to impart to each creature that has life: and selevel of natural springs.

condly, to bear its share in the maintenance of the general • A further benefit which man derives from the disposi

system of co-ordinate relations, whereby all families of tion of the mineral ingredients of the secondary strata re- living beings are reciprocally subservient to the use and sults from the extensive diffusion of muriate of soda, or benefit of one another. Under this head only can we incommon salt, throughout certain portions of these strata, clude their relations to man ; forming, as he does, but a especially those of the new red sandstone formation. Had small, although it be the most noble and exalted part

, of not the beneficent providence of the Creator laid up these that vast system of universal life, with which it hath stores of salt within the bowels of the earth, the distance

pleased the Creator to animate the surface of the globe. of inland countries from the sea would have rendered this

More than three-fifths of the earth's surface,” says article of prime and daily necessity unattainable to a large Mr. Bakewell, “are covered by the ocean ; and if froin the proportion of mankind: but, under the existing dispensa- remaining part we deduct the space occupied by polar ice lion, the presence of mineral salt, in strata, which are dis- and eternal snow, by sandy deserts, sterile mountains, persed generally over the interior of our continents and marshes, rivers and lakes, the hal itable portion will scarcely larger islands, is a source of health and daily enjoyment, exceed one-fifth of the whole of the globe. Nor hare we to the inhabitants of almost every region of the earth.'— reason to believe that at any former period the dominion of pp. 69–71.

man over the earth was more extensive than at present But lest, rendered presumptuous by these con- The remaining four-fifths of our globe, though untenanted siderations, Man should exclaim “See all things by mankind, are for the most part abundantly stocked for my use!"' we are reminded that this theory with animated beings, that exult in the pleasure of exist

ence, independent of human control, and no way subservi.

ent to the necessities or caprices of man. Such is, and * It is no small proof of design in the arrangement of

has been for several thousand years, the actual condition of the materials that compose the surface of our earth, that

our planet ; nor is the consideration foreign to our subject, whereas the primitive and granite rocks are least calculated

for hence we may feel less reluctance in admitting the pro to afford a fertile soil, they are for the most part made to constitute the mountain districts of the world, which, from longed ages or days of creation, when numerous tribes of

the lower orders of aquatic animals lived and flourished, their elevation and irregularities, would otherwise be but

and left their remains embedded in the strata that compose ill adapted for human habitation : while the lower and

the outer crust of our planet." '

:"?-pp. 99–102. more temperate regions are usually composed of derivative, or secondary strata, in which the compound nature of their We now come to that which is unquestionably ingredients qualifies them to be of the greatest utility to the most interesting part of this 'Treatise-the mankind, by their subserviency to the purposes of luxuriant consideration of fossil organic remains. Since vegetation.'--Buckland's Inaugural Lecture, Oxford, 1820, the variety and formation of Cereatures in

the animal, vegetable, and

Toms

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were specially marked out by the noble founder tables are piled into stupendous monuments of the opera of the work, as the subjects from which he de- tions of life and death, during almost immeasurable periods sires that proofs should be sought of the power, of past time. wisdom, and goodness of the Creator, it is emi- • The most prolific source of organic remains has been nently in accordance with this object that the the accumulation of the shelly coverings of animals which Professor proceeds to demonstrate how the ex- occupied the bottom of the sea during a long series of continct species of animals and vegetables which secutive generations. A large proportion of the entire have in former periods occupied our planet af- substance of many strata is composed of myriads of these ford in their fossil remains the same evidences shells reduced to a comminuted state by the long-continued of contrivance and design that have been shown movements of water. In other strata, the presence of by Ray, Derham, and Paley to pervade the struc- countless multitudes of unbroken corallines, and of fragile ture of existing genera and species of organized shells, having their most delicate spines still attached and beings.

undisturbed, shows that the animals which formed them The ability with which Dr. Buckland has per- lived and died upon or near the spot where these remains formed this task-the powerful interest with are found. which he has endowed his subject-we must Strata thus loaded with the exuviæ of innumerable despair of conveying to our readers by any com- generations of organic beings afford strong proof of the ments we can make, or by such extracts as we lapse of long periods of time, wherein the animals from can find room for. 'Those who have listened which they have been derived lived and multiplied and spell-bound to that conversational eloquence died, at the bottom of seas which once occupied the site of which the Professor is so peculiarly gifted-an elo- our present continents and islands. Repeated changes in quence which, when dilating on such subjects, species, both of animals and vegetables, in succeeding memabsolutely calls up before his audience- bers of different formations, give further evidence, not only

of the lapse of time, but also of important changes in the • The monstrous shapes that one time walk'd the earth, physical condition and climate of the ancient earth.'—pp. Of which ours is the wreck,"

112-116. will, however, imagine the vivid and fascinating The study of these remains is, in fact, the manner in which he brings out from the abund- great master-key whereby we unlock the secret ant stores of his favourite Palæontology illustra-history of the earth, and obtain the evidence of tions of the great truths of Natural religion, revolutions and catastrophes long antecedent to showing that animals which lived and died mil- the creation of the human race—the records of lions of years ago-creatures utterly swept many successive series of animal and vegetable away as entities from the face of the earth generations, of which the creation and extincwhose very forms have been blotted from the tion would have been equally unknown to us things that be,' are pregnant with valuable evi- but for recent discoveries in the science of gedence-that every bone, nay, every particle of ology. their frames was constructed with the utmost Natural history and natural theology had been care and the most perfect design by the Omnipo- hitherto confined to but one volume of nature's tent hand that fashioned them; and that all the works—that which relates to the present order fossil species, whether extinct or not, however of existences. Geology has discovered in the enormous, however minute, from the colossal bowels of the earth, and published a series of megatherium to the microscopic cypris, bear tes- preceding volumes—more or less injured and timony to the wisdom and goodness of the imperfect, it is true, through their great age, and Great Artificer.

containing gaps not yet filled up—but all written Some idea of the immense mass of materials in the same hand, bearing the manifest impress with which the author has had to deal may be of the same mighty mind, and equally aboundderived from the following statement:- ing in new and vivid proofs of the wisdom and

The secrets of nature, that are revealed to us by the his. goodness of their Author. tory of fossil organic remains, form perhaps the most design, the Doctor, in his thirteenth chapter,

Before he enters into particular instances of striking results at which we arrive from the study of gen takes a general view of what he designates as ology. It must appear almost incredible to those who

the police of ancient nature' (a term already aphave not minutely attended to natural phenomena, that the microscopic examination of a mass of rude and lifeless plied by Wilcke and others to modern natural limeste ne should often disclose the curious fact, that large history). In the world of our day, no observer proportions of its substance have once formed parts of living ing principles of life and death in constant ac

can look around him without seeing the conflictbodies. It is surprising to consider that the walls of our tion. The greatest amount of general happihonses are sometimes composed of little else than commi. nuted shells, that were once the domicile of other animals, aimed at; the extinction of individuals is essen

ness in a given space appears to be the object at the bottom of ancient scas and lakes.

tial to this end-one generation must disappear • It is marvellous that mankind should have gone on for

to afford room for another. Thus we see so many centuries in ignorance of the fact, which is now so fully demonstrated, that no small part of the present sur.

swarms of gnats dancing in the sunbeamsface of the earth is derived from the remains of animals,

swallows dash through and annihilate myriads

-but still that constituted the population of ancient scas. Many ex. tensive plains and massive mountains form, as it were, the

• Through the peopled air : 19 of preeeding generations, in which

The busy murmur glows'— it.ct races of animals and vege- in spite of all the devastation committed on them,

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the insect-tribes are kept up to the full comple- Jant-eater, the armadillo, and the chlamyphorus ; it probably ment which is compatible with the welfare of also still further resembled the armadillo and chlamyphoother orders of the animal creation. Still, as rus, in being cased with a bony coat of armour. Its some of the most important provisions in the haunches were more than five feet wide, and its body anatomy of the ancient as well as the modern twelve feet long and eight feet high; its feet were a yard animals are made manifest in the organs with in length, and terminated by most gigantic claws; its tail which they were furnished for capturing their was probably clad in armour, and much larger than the prey-and as contrivances for such a purpose tail of any other beast, among extinct or living terrestrial may, at first sight, seem inconsistent with the mainmalia. Thus heavily constructed, and ponderously dispensations of a creation founded in benevo- accoutred, it could neither run, nor leap, nor elimb, «? lence, and tending to produce the greatest amount burrow under the ground, and in all its movements must of animal gratification, Dr. Buckland is naturally have been necessarily slow; but what need of rapid locoled to show how the aggregate of animal enjoy- motion to an animal whose occupation of digging roots ment is increased, and that of pain, diminished, for food was alınost stationary ? and what need of speed by the existence of the carnivorous races :- for flight from foes to a creature whose giant carcase was

• To the mind which Icoks not to general results in encased in an impenetrable cuirass, and who by a single the economy of nature, the earth may seem to present a pat of his paw, or lash of his tail, could in an instant have

Secure within scene of perpetual warfare and incessant carnage; but the demolished the couguar or the crocodile ? morc enlarged view, while it regards individuals in their the panoply of his bony arniour, where was the enemy conjoint relations to the general benefit of their own spe. that would dare encounter this leviathan of the Pampas ? cies, and that of other species with which they are asso- or in what more powerful creature can we find the cause ciated in the great family of nature, resolves each apparent that has effected the extirpation of his race? case of individual evil into an example of subserviency to

• His entire frame was an apparatus of colossal mechan. universal good.

isin, adapted exactly to the work it had to do; strong and • Under the existing system, not only is the aggregate ponderous in proportion as this work was heavy, and amount of animal enjoyment much increased, by adding calculated to be the vehicle of life and enjoyment to a gito the stock of life all the races which are carnivorous, gantic race of quadrupeds; which, though they have but these aro also highly beneficial even to the herbivor- ccased to be counted among the living inhabitants of our ous races that are subject to their dominion.

planet, have, in their fossil bones, lett behind them im• The appointment of death by the agency of carnivora, perishable monuments of the consummate skill with which as the ordinary terinination of animal existence, deducts they were constructed ;-each limb, and fragment of a much from the aggregate amount of the pain of universal limb, forming co-ordinate parts of a well-adjusted and death; it abridges, and almost annihilates, throughout the perfect whole; and through all their deviations from the brute creation, the misery of disease, and accidental in- form and proportion of the limbs of other quadrupeds, juries, and lingering decay; and imposes such salulary re- affording fresh proofs of the infinitely varied, and inesstraint upun excessive increase of numbers, that the supply haustible contrivances of creative wisdoin. '-pp. 163, of food maintains perpetually a due ratio to the demand. 164.“ The result is, that the surface of the land and depths of

We are next carried back to those distant ages the waters are ever crowded with myriads of animated be- during the formation of the strata of the secondaings, the pleasures of whose life are co-extensive with its

ry series, when so large a field was occupied by duration ; and which, throughout the little day of exist

. extinct animals, referable to the order of Sauence that is allotted to them, fulfil with joy the functions rians or lizards, ' An age of reptiles, when neither for which they were created. Life to each individual is a the carnivorous nor lacustrine mammalia of scene of continued feasting, in a region of plenty; and of the tertiary periods had begun to appear; but when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with the most formidable occupants, both of land and small interest the large debt which it has contracted to the water, were crocodiles and lizards; of various common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the male forms, and often of gigantic stature, fitted to rials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama endure the turbulence and continual convulsions of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the of the unquiet surface of our infant world.' At individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts this period what are now the temperate regions are ever filled by another and another generation ; renew. of southern England (the Weald of Sussex and ing the face of the earth, and the boson of the deep, with Dorsetshire, for example) were peopled by monendless successions of life and happiness.'—pp. 131-134. sters of this character, which stalked amid

Having prepared the way by these general marshy forests of a luxuriant tropical vegetation, considerations, the author presents us with the or floated huge on the genial waters, particular instances of design exhibited in the or

• Their earth is gone forever.' ganization of the ancient mammalians-animals that suckle their young-whose bones have been Persons to whom this subject may now be disinterred by the geologist from their primeval presented for the first time will receive, with sepulchres. He selects the uncouth dinotherium much surprise, perhaps almost with increand the megatherium with its columnar hind dulity, such statements as are here advanced. legs and colossal tail;' and, after passing in re- it must be admitted that they at first seem view the organization of their admirably con- much more like the dreams of fiction and rostructed bodies, thus sums up the evidence af-mance than the sober results of calm and deorded by the latter :

liberate investigation; but to those who will exWith the head and shoulders of a sloth, it combined in amine the evidence of facts upon which the conits leys and feet an admixture of the charactrs of the clusions rest, there can remain no more reasona

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ble doubt of the former existence of these strange from the type of their respective orders, to accommodate and curious creatures, in the times and places deviations from the usual habits of these orders, exhibits an assigned to them, than is felt by the antiquary, union of compensative contrivances, so similar in their rewho, finding the catacombs of Egypt stored with lations, so identical in their objects, and so perfect in the the mummies of men and apes and crocodiles, adaptation of each subordinate part, to the harmony and concludes them to be the remains of mammalia perfection of the whole, that we cannot but recognize and reptiles that have formed part of an ancient throughout them all the workings of one and the same population on the banks of the Nile.

eternal principle of wisdom and intelligence, presiding Beginning with the Enaliosaurians or marine from first to last over the total fabric of creation.—pp. lizards, which are most abundant throughout 184-186. the lias and oolite formations of the secondary series, our author first presents us with the Ich

Nor is it the skeleton merely of these sea

Dr. Buckland's thyosaurus or fish-lizard. Let the reader who lizards that is preserved to us. has not made palæontology his pursuit imagine him to determine the nature of their food, to as

discovery of their petrified feces has enabled a marine creature with a snout of a porpoise, the teeth of a crocodile, the head of a lizard, the ver

certain the structure of their intestines, and to tebræ of a fish, and the breast-bone of the para- the folds of the mucous membrane with which

show even the shape of the minute vessels, and doxical animal of New Holland, the ornithorhynchus.* Let him suppose this frame-work to be

they were lined. so filled up as to give the general outline of a mo- of the ichthyosauri afford, indeed, a new and

The facts elicited from the coprolitic remains dern porpoise or grampus, with an enormous

curious contribution to the evidences of Natural eye, and add thereto four broad fin-feet or paddles, with a long and powerful tail; let him ima. Theology. They prove the existence of benefi

cial arrangements and compensations even in gine all this upon a scale of thirty or forty feet in length, (for some of the largest of the species

those perishable yet important parts which formmust have been, at least, so long,) and he will

ed the organs of digestion of the extinct inhabihave no very incorrect idea of an ichthyosaurus. est substances, strangely preserved through

tants of our planet. And thus from the meanThroughout the whole organization of this ty countless ages in the mud into which they were rant of the seas of a former world, a perfect har

originally voided, the geologist extracts a new, mony of parts is obvious, while the parts them

beautiful and striking testimony to the unity, selves—the eyes, the jaws, the vertebræ, the sternal apparatus, for example-exhibit the most wisdom, and goodness of the creative intelliconsummate adaptation. But we must permit gence! There is something in minutiæ of this Dr. Buckland to give his own conclusion :

homely character, which creates a yet more vi

vid impression of the reality of these strange •If the laws of co-existence are less rigidly maintained monsters of the ancient world even than their in the ichthyosaurus than in other extinct creatures which petrified skeletons. we discover amid the wreck of former creations, still these

· When we see the body of an ichthyosaurus, still condeviations are so far from being fortuitous or evidencing taining the food it had eaten just before its death, and its imperfection, that they sresent examples of perfect ap- ribs still surrounding the remains of fishes, that were swal. pointment and judicious choice, pervading and regulating lowed ten thousand, or more than ten times ten thousand even the inost apparently anomalous aterrations.

“Having the vertebræ of a fish, as instruments of rapid years ago, all these vast intervals seem annihilated, time alprogression, and the paddels of a wbale, and sternum of together disappears, and we are alınost brought into as im

mediate contact with events of immeasurably distant pe. an ornithorhyncus, as instruments of elevation and depres. sion, the reptile ichthyosaurus united in itself a combina- riods, as with the atlairs of yesterday.'—pp. 201, 202. tion of mechanical contrivances, which are now distributed the plesiosauri next claim our attention; and if among three distinct classes of the animal kingdoin. If, theichthyosaurus beconsideredextraordinary, we for the purpose of producing vertical movements in the know not what term to apply to the plesiosaurus; water, the sternum of the living ornithorhyncus assumes an animal, whose structure, as Cuvier observes, forms and combinations that occur but in one other genus is the most heteroclite, and its character altoof mammalia, they are the same that co-existed in the ster- gether the most monstrous, of any that have yet num of the ichthyosaurus of the ancient world ; and thus, been found amid the ruins of a former world. at points of time separated from each other by the interven- A lizard's head with crocodile teeth set on a sertion of incalculable ages, we find an identity of objects er. pent-like or rather swan-like neck of great fected by instruments so similar, as lo leave no doubt of the length (the vertebræ being about thirty-three), unity of the design in which they all originated. a trunk and tail with the proportions of those of

• It was a necessary and peculiar function in the economy an ordinary quaclruped, the ribs of a cameleon, of the fish-like lizard of the ancient seas lo ascend con- and the paddles of a whale:tinually to the surface of the water in order to breathe air, and to descend again in search of food: it is a no less pe- "Such are the strange combinations of form and strucculiar function in the duck-billed ornithorhynchus of our ture in the plesiosaurus; a genus, the remains of which, own days to perform a series of similar movements in the after interment for thousands of years amidst the wreck of lakes and rivers of New Holland.

millions of extinct inhabitants of the ancient carth, are at • The introduction in these animals of such aberrations length recalled to light, and submitted to our examination,

in nearly as perfect a state as the bones of species that aro • A quadruped with webbed feet and a bill like a duck's, now existing upon the earth. clothed with fur, suckling its young, and oviparous. * The plesiosauri appear to have lived in shallow seas and

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estuaries, and to have breathed air like the ichthyosauri, mirabili quadam varietatum simplicitate, conciliat.”—PPand our modern cetacea. We are already acquainted with 213, 214. five or six species, some of which attained a prodigious size and length; but our present observations will be chiefly mososaurus, or great marine animal of Maes

After a concise but well-digested history of the limited to that which is the best known, and perhaps the

tricht, most nearly allied to the monitors (moniinost remarkable of them all, viz: the P. Dolichodeirus.'

tory lizards) of modern times, though infinitely

gigantic in comparison ;-an animal which apWe cannot have a better account of its habits pears to have been introduced during the deposi

. than that which Cony beare, who first discovered tion of the chalk to take the places of the then the genus, has put on record in the Transactions extinct ichthyosauri and plesiosauri that, from of the Geological society of London:

the lias upwards, held their sway over the ocean

and to have been destined in its turn to make room "" That it was aquatic is evident from the form of its for the cetacea (whales) of the tertiary period; paddles ; that it was marine is almost equally so, from -we are thus introduced to the pterodactyle :the remains with which it is universally associated; that it may have occasionally visited the shore, the resemblance • Among the most remarkable disclosures made by the of its extremities to those of the turtle may lead us to con researches of geology, we may rank the flying reptiles

, jecture; its motion, however, must have been very awk. which have been ranged by Cuvier under the genus pteroward on land ; its long neek must have impeded its pro-dactyle; a genus presenting more singular combinations of gress through the water; presenting a striking contrast to form than we find in any other creatures yet discovered the organization which so admirably fits the ichthyosau- amid the ruins of the ancient earth. The structure of rus to cut through the waves. May it not, therefore, be these animals is so exceedingly anomalous that the first concluded, (since, in addition to these circumstances, its discovered pterodactyle was considered by one naturalist to respiration must have required frequent access of air,) that be a bird, by another as a species of bat, and by a third as it swam upon, or near the surface; arching back its long a flying reptile. This extraordinary discordance of opinneck like the swan, and occasionally darting it down at ion respecting a creature whose skeleton was almost entire, the fish which happened to float within its reach? It may, arose from the presence of characters apparently belong. perhaps, bave lurked in shoal water along the coast, con- ing to each of the three classes to which it was referred; cealed among the sea-weed, and raising its nostrils to a le- the form of its head, and length of neck, resembling that vel with the surface from a considerable depth, may have of birds, its wings approaching to the proportion and form found a secure retreat from the assaults of dangerous ene of bats, and the body and tail approximating to those of mies ; while the length and Alexibility of its neck may have ordinary mammalia. These characters connected with a compensated for the want of strength in its jaws, and its small skull

, as is usual among reptiles, and a beak furnished incapacity for swift motion through the water, by the sud- with not less than sixty pointed teeth, presented a combidenness and agility of the attack which they enabled it to nation of apparent arcmalies which it was reserved for the make on every animal fitted for its prey, which came with.genius of Cuvier to reconcile. In his hand, this apparently in its reach.'— pp. 211, 212.

monstrous production of the ancient world has been con

verted into one of the most beautiful examples yet afforded Dr. Buckland thus concludes his notice of these by comparative anatomy, of the harmony that pervades all most interesting animals:

nature, in the adaptation of the same parts of the frame to Pursuing the analogies of construction that connect the infinitely varied conditions of existence.

• We are already acquainted with eight species of this existing inhabitants of the earth with those extinct genera and species which preceded the creation of our race, we genus, varying from the size of a snipe to that of a

In external form these animals somewhat resem. find an unbroken chain of affinities pervading the entire

ble our modern bats and vampires : most of them had the series of organized beings, and connecting all past and present forms of animal existence by close and harmonious with conical teeth. Their eyes were of enormous size, ap

nose elongated, like the snout of a crocodile, and armed lics. Even our own bodies, and some of their most iinportant organs, are bronght into close and direct compari

. parently enabling them to fly by night. From their wings son with those of reptiles , which, at first sight, appear the projected fingers, terminated by long hooks, like the curred

claw on the thumb of the bat. These must have formed most monstrous productions of creation; and in the very

a powerful paw, wherewith the animal was enabled to creep hand and fingers with which we write their history we re

It is probable, also, cognise the type of the paddies of the ichthyosaurus and or climb, or suspend itself from trees.

that the pterodactyles had the power of swimming, which plesiosaurus.

is so common in reptiles, and which is now posseszed by • Extending a similar comparison through the four great the vampire bat of the island of Bonin. Thus, like Mil. classes of vertebral animals, we find in each species a va-ton's fiend, qualified for all services and all elements, the ried adaptation of analogous parts to the different circum. creature was a fit companion for the kindred reptiles that stances and conditions in which it was intended to be placed. swarmed in the seas, or crawled on the shores of a turbu. Ascending from the lower orders, we trace a gradual ad. lent planet. vancement in structure and office, till we arrive at those

“The fiend, whose functions are the most exalted; thus, the fin of the

O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, fish becomes the paddle of the reptile plesiosaurus and ich.

With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his thyosaurus; the samne organ is converted into the wing of

way,

And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.” the pterodactyle, the bird and bat; it becomes the fore foot, or paw, in quadrupeds that move upon the land, and at. With flocks of such-like creatures flying in the air, and tains its highest consummation in the arın and hand of ra- shoals of no less monstrous ichthyosauri and plesiosauri tional man. ...

.. " Usque adeo natura, una eadem semper swarming in the ocean, and gigantic crocodiles and turatque multiplex, disparibus etiam formis effectus parcs, ad- to: ses crawling on the shores of the primeval lakes and ri.

Cor

morant,

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