3OO THEROMORPHA CHAP. 



months old. In the meantime they seem to undergo a 

 kind of aestivation. The nasal chambers become blocked 

 witli proliferating epithelium, which is resorbed shortly before 

 hatching. 



I have kept half-a-dozen specimens in a green-house for 

 several years, and have come to the conclusion that they are 

 dull, not companionable creatures, in spite of their imposing, 

 rather noble appearance when, with their heads erect, they 

 calmly look about with their large, quiet eyes. Each dug its 

 own hole in the hard ground underneath and between large 

 stones. At dusk they sat in front of the holes or walked 

 leisurely to the pan with the earthworms which formed their 

 principal food. Meat they did not touch, but they killed and 

 chewed up lizards and blind-worms. Sometimes they soaked 

 themselves for many hours in the shallow, warm water. The 

 skin is shed in flakes. I never found them basking in the sun, 

 and the pineal eye, still so well developed in these strange 

 creatures, caused them no distress when bright light was thrown 

 upon it. They grew tame enough not to run away when found 

 roaming about at night, but they did not like being handled, 

 and they inflicted the most painful bites when taken up care- 

 lessly. The biggest, a male, was rather quarrelsome, grunted 

 much, and worried the others. 



SUB-CLA ss III. THEROMORPHA. 



The Theromorpha comprise a great number of extraordinary, 

 extinct reptiles, which as a group had a wide range in space 

 and time. The earliest known occur in the Lower Eed Sand- 

 stone of Thuringia and Bohemia, and in the middle Permian 

 strata of Russia. The majority have been found in strata 

 transitional between the Permian and the Triassic age, notably 

 in the Karroo sandstone of South Africa and in corresponding 

 levels of North America. Closely allied to them are those of 

 the Triassic sandstone of Elgin in Scotland, and of India. 

 They seem to have died out with the Muschelkalk or Middle 

 Trias. 



The various genera exhibit such a diversity of structure, 

 shape, and size, and many are still so imperfectly known, that 



