The World Before the Deluge

P 2

column of much of its flexibility. Each pair of ribs surrounded the body with a complete girdle, formed of five pieces, as in the Chameleon and Iguana; whence, no doubt, as with the Chameleon, great facilities existed for the contraction and dilatation of the lungs.

The breast, the pelvis, and the bones of the anterior and posterior extremities furnished an apparatus which permitted the Plesiosaurus, like the Ichthyosaurus and existing Cetaceans, to sink in the water and return to the surface at pleasure (Fig. 103). Prof Owen, in his " Report on Bntisli Reptiles," characterises them as air-breathing and cold-blooded animals; the proof that they respired atmospheric air immediately, being found in the position and structure of the nasal passages, and the bony mechanism of the thoracic duct and abdominal cavity. In the first, the size and position of the external nostrils (Fig. 102), combined with the structure of the paddles, indicate a striking analogy between the extinct Saurians and the Cetaceans, offering, as the Professor observes, " a beautiful example of the adaptation of structure

Fig. 103.— Sternum and pelvis of Plesiosaurus. Pub., pubis; Isch., ischium; to the peculiar exigencies of species."

II., ilium. While the evidence that they were cold-blooded animals is found in the flexible or unanchylosed condition of the osseous pieces of the occiput and other cranial bones of the lower jaw, and of the vertebral column; from which the Professor draws the conclusion that the heart was adapted for transmitting a part only of the blood through the respiratory organs \ the absence of the ball-and-socket articulations of the bones of the vertebrae, the position of the nostrils near the summit of the head, the numerous short and flat digital bones, which must have been enveloped in a simple lindivided integumentary sheath, forming in both fore and hind extremities a paddle closely resembling that of the living Cetacea* The paddles are larger and more powerful than those of the Ichthyosaurus, to compensate for the slight assistance the animal derived from the tail. The latter — shorter, as compared with the length of the rest of the body, than in the Ichthyosaurus — was more calculated to act the part of a rudder.

THE LIAS,

in directing the course of the animal through the water, than as a powerful organ of propulsion.

Such were the strange combinations of form and structure in the Plesiosaurus and Ichthyosaurus — genera of animals whose remains

0^

\

a 9 if

Fig. 104.— Remains of Plesiosaurus macrocephalus. One-twelfth natural si^c. M%^

"have, after an interment extending to unknown thousands of years, "been revealed to light and submitted to examination; nay, rebuilt, "bone by bone, until we have the complete skeletons before us, and the habits of the animals described, as if they had been observed in life. Conybeare thus speaks of the supposed habits of these extinct forms, which he had built up from scanty materials: " That the Plesiosaurus was aquatic is evident from the form of its paddles; that it

Tvas marine is equally so, from the remains with which it is universally associated; that it may have occasionally visited the shore, the resemblance of its extremities to the turtle may lead us to conjecture; its motion, however, must have been very awkward on land; its long neck must have impeded its progress through the water, presenting a striking contrast to the organisation which so admirably fits the Ichthyosaurus for cutting through the waves. May it not, therefore, be concluded that it swam on or near the surface, arching back its long neck like the swan, and occasionally darting it down at the fish which happened to float within its reach? It may, perhaps, have lurked in shallow water along the coasts, concealed among the sea-weeds, and, raising its nostrils to the surface from a considerable depth, may have found a secure retreat from the assaults of dangerous enemies, while the length and flexibility of its neck may have com-pensated for the want of strength in its jaws, and incapacity for swift motion through the water, by the suddenness and agility of the attack they enabled it to make on every animal fitted to become its

prey."The Plesiosaurus was first described by the Rev. W. D. Conybeare and Sir Henry De la Beche, in the " Geological Society's Transactions" for 1821, and a restoration oi P. dolichodeirus, the most common of these fossils, appeared in the same work for 1824. The first specimen was discovered, as the Ichthyosaurus had been previously, in the Lias of Lyme Regis; since then other individuals and species have been found in the same geological formation in various parts of England, Ireland, France, and Germany, and with such variations of structure that Professor Owen has felt himself justified in recording sixteen distinct species, of which we have represented P. dolichodeirus (Fig. 102), as restored by Conybeare, and P. macrocephalus (Fig 104), with its skeleton, as moulded from the limestone of Lyme Regis, whi^h has been placed in the Palceon-tological Gallery of the British Museum.

The Plesiosaurus was scarcely so large as the Ichthyosaurus. The specimen of I.platydon in the British Museum probably belonged to an animal four-and-twenty feet long, and some are said to indicate thirty feet, while there are species of Plesiosauri measuring eighteen and twenty, the largest known specimen of Plesiosaurus Cramptoni found in the lias of Yorkshire, and now in the Museum of the Royal Society of Dublin, being twenty-two feet four inches in length. On the opposite page (Plate XV.) an attempt is made to represent these grand reptiles of the Lias in their native element, and as they lived.

XV.—Ideal scene of the Lias with Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus.

Cuvier says of the Plesiosauriis, " that it presents the most moiv strous assemblage of characteristics that has been met with among the races of the ancient world." This expression should not be understood ina Hteral sense; there are no monsters in Nature; in no living creature are the laws of organisation ever positively infringed; and it is more in accordance with the general perfection of creation to see in an organisation so special, in a structure which differs so notably from that of the animals of our own days, the simple development of a type, and sometimes also the introduction of beings, and successive changes in their structure. We shall see, in examining the curious series of animals of the ancient world, that the organisation and physiological functions go on improving unceasingly, and that each of the extinct genera which preceded the appearance of man, present, for each organ, modifications which always tend towards greater perfection. The fins of the fishes of Devonian seas become the paddles of the Ichthyosauri and of the Plesiosauri; these, in their turn, become the membranous foot of the Pterodactyle, and, finally, the wing of the bird. Afterwards comes the articulated fore-foot of the terrestrial mammalia, which, after attaining remarkable perfection in the hand of the ape, becomes, finally, the arm and hand of man, an instrument of wonderful delicacy and power, belonging to an enlightened being gifted with the divine attribute of reason! Let us, then, dismiss any idea of monstrosity with regard to these antediluvian animals; let us learn, on the contrary, to recognise, with admiration, the divine proofs of design which they display, and in their organisation to see only the handiwork of the Creator.

Another strange inhabitant of the ancient world, the Pterodactylus (from i:T(:p6v, a wing, and UktvXqs, a finger), discovered in 1828, made "Cuvier pronounce it to be incontestably the most extraordinary of all the extinct animals which had come under his consideration; and such as, if we saw them restored to life, would appear most strange and dissimilar to anything that now exists. In size and general form, and in the disposition and character of its wings, this fossil genus, according to Cuvier, somewhat resembled our modern bats and vampjTes, but had its beak elongated like the bill of a woodcock, and armed with teeth like the snout of a crocodile; its vertebrae, ribs, pelvis, legs, and feet resembled those of a lizard; its three anterior fingers terminated in long hooked claws like that on the fore-finger 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 probably a naked skin; in short, it was a monster resembling nothing that has ever been heard of upon earth, except the dragons of romance and heraldry. IMore-

over, it was probably noctivagous and insectivorous, and in both these points resembled the bat; but differed from it in having the

Fig. 105.— Pterodactylus crassirostris.

most important bones in its body constructed after the manner of those of reptiles.

THE LIAS,

"Thus, like Milton's fiend, all-qualified for all services and all elements, the creature was a fit companion for the kindred reptiles that 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 sinks, or swims, or wades, or creeps, or flies. Paradise Lost, Book II., line 947.

" With flocks of such-like creatures flying in the air, and shoals of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri swarming in the ocean, and gigantic Crocodiles and Tortoises crawling on the shores of primæval lakes and rivers—air, sea, and land must have been strangely tenanted in these early periods of our infant world."''" The strange structure of this animal gave rise to most contradictory opinions from the earlier naturalists. One supposed it to be a bird, another a bat, and others a flying reptile. Cuvier was Fig. 106. — Ptcrodactylus brevlrostrls. the first to detect the truth, and to prove, from its organisation, that the animal was a Saurian. "Behold," he says, "an animal which in its osteology, from its teeth to the end of its claws, presents all the characters of the Saurians; nor can we doubt that their characteristics existed in its integuments and softer parts, in its scales, its circulation, its generative organs: it was at the same time provided with the means of flight; but when stationary it could not have made much use of its anterior extremities, even if it did not keep them always folded

• Professor Buckland on the Ptcrodactylus. Trans. Geol. Soc," 2nd series. •vol. iii., p. 217.

as birds fold their wings. It might, it is true, use its small anterior fingers to suspend itself from the branches of trees; but when at rest it must have been generally on its hind feet, like the birds again, and like them it must have carried its neck half-erect and curved backwards, so that its enormous head should not disturb

its equilibrium." This diversity of opinion need not very much surprise us after all, for, with the body and tail of an ordinary mammal, it had the form of a bird in its head and the length of its neck, of the bat in the structure and proportion of its wings, and of a reptile in the smallness of its head and in its beak, armed with at least sixty equal sharp-pointed teeth, differing little in form and size.