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Pterodactyle* (fig. 4).-The extinct reptiles denominated Pterodactyles, are unquestionably the most marvelous even

Fig. 4.

Pterodactylus Crassirostris (restored by Goldfuss). of the wonderful beings which the relics of the Age of Rep

tiles have enabled the paleontologist to reconstruct, and place before us in their natural forms and appearance. With a head and length of neck resembling those of a bird, the wings of a vampire or bat, and the body and tail of an ordinary mammalian, these creatures present an anomaly of structure as unlike their fossil contemporaries, as is the duckbilled Platypus, or Ornithorhynchus, of Australia, the existing animals. The skull is small, with very long beaks, which extend like those of the crocodile, and are furnished with upward of sixty sharp, pointed teeth; the eyes were enormous, enabling the creature to fly by night. The forefinger is immensely elongated, for the support of a membranous expansion, as in the bat: the impression of the wingmembrane is preserved on the stone in some examples; and the fingers terminated, as in that animal, in long curved claws. The size and form of the foot, leg, and thigh, show that the Pterodactyles were capable of perching on trees, and of standing firmly on the ground. when, with its wings Fig. 5.

folded, it might walk or hop like a bird. Dr. Buckland is of opinion that it had the power of swimming. Fig. 5 exhibits the chief reptiles of the Liassic age, the Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus; the latter in the act of catching a pterodactyle.

"With head uplift above the waves, and eyes
That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides,
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or earth-born, that warred on Jove.
Briarchus, or Typhon, whom the den

By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works

Created hugest that swam the ocean stream."

Cuvier in his great work, pronounces these flying reptiles the most extraordinary of all the beings whose ancient existence is revealed to us; and those which, if alive, would seem most at variance with living forms. Eight species have been determined, from the size of a snipe to that of a cormorant, occurring in the lias of Lyme Regis, the oolite of Stonesfield, the grit of the Wealden, and on the continent at Pappenheim and Solenhofen.

With flocks of such like creatures 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

"Till all the plume-dark air

And rude resounding shore are one wild cry”—

of the primeval lakes and rivers; air, sea, and land, must have been strangely peopled in those early periods of our infant world.

CHAPTER IV.

"Mighty Pre-Adamites who walk'd the earth,
Of which ours is the wreck."

HYLEOSAURUS (Weald Lizard).-The lizard thus denominated by the discoverer, Dr. Mantell, was about twenty-five feet in length, and is chiefly remarkable by a large spiny process along the back, which must have given to such a creature a terrific appearance. Such process is found in many of the living lizards.

Iguanodon (fig. 6).—The remains of this, the most gigantic of all reptiles living or extinct, were also made known to the world by Dr. Mantell. The bones obtained by the doctor indicate the existence of a herbivorous lizard,

allied in structure to the iguana of the West Indies; seventy feet in length, and fourteen and a half feet in circumferance round the body. A thigh bone measures three feet eight inches, and thirty-five inches in circumference, and the bones of the foot show it to have been six and a half feet in length. The nose of the animal was armed with a horn, equal in size, and resembling in form, the lesser horn upon the nose of the rhinoceros,—an apparatus which also exists on the nose of the iguana. The teeth, some of which are two and a half inches in length, are deeply serrated, and their resemblance to those of the iguana, clearly demonstrate that, like it, it was of herbivorous habits. Besides the remains found in Tilgate Forest, in strata of the Wealden formation, Dr. Mantell mentions the discovery of another at Maidstone, in an arenaceous or sandy limestone, called Kentish rag, belonging to the Shanklin sands. This rock, he observes, abounds in the marine shells, which are characteristic of that division of the chalk formation. In the quarry in which the remains of this iguanodon were found, Mr. Benson has discovered fossil wood by the boring shells, the lithodomi; impressions of leaves, stems of trees, ammonites, nautili, &c., large conical striated teeth, which are referrible to those extinct fossil fishes which M. Agassiz denominates sauroid, or lizard-like, scales and teeth of several kinds of fishes, and among these a jaw or mandible of that singular genus of fish, the Chimera.

The geological position of this specimen forms an exception to what has been previously remarked of the fossils of the Wealden; for, while the bones in the latter were associated with terrestrial and fluviatile remains, only the Maidstone specimen is imbedded in a marine deposit. This discrepancy nowise affects the arguments as to the fluviatile origin of the Wealden; it merely shows that part of the delta had subsided, and was covered by the chalk ocean, while the country of the iguanodon was still in existence.