56 THE GEISSOSAURT. 



impossible to give more than a very slight account of these reptiles, or even to mention more 

 than a small number selected as types of the large or small groups which they represent. 



Indeed, the lower we descend in the scale of creation, the more numerous the species seem 

 to become, and the more perplexing is the task of selecting those species which are worthy of 

 mention on account of their scientific characteristics, and yet possess sufficient individuality to 

 interest the general reader. 



To watch the greater number of reptiles in their wild state, is a task simply impossible for 

 any human being to achieve. Many reptiles live in dry and thirsty lands, where no creatures 

 but the white ant and the Lizard seem to acquire moisture, and through which the traveller 

 can only pass with hasty steps, dreading the delay of each minute, lest his precious store of 

 water should fail, and leave him to perish by the most terrible of deaths. 



Others reside on the sides of precipitous rocks, over which the enterprising traveller can 

 only pass at hazard of life and limb, and in any case would not be able to watch the proceed- 

 ings of the shy and timid Lizards that find their home among these craggy recesses, and retreat 

 into them on the slightest alarm. But the chief residence of the reptile race is to be found in 

 hot climates, and in low, swampy ground, where the morasses are ever filled with decaying 

 vegetable matter, and exhale a soft, thick, miasma, as deadly to the white man as the fumes 

 of arsenic, and injurious even to the dark-skinned native, who can breathe unharmed a fetid 

 atmosphere that would smite down Ms white master as quickly and surely as if he were struck 

 with a bullet, and who only attains his fullest development under these conditions. 



In these dread regions, their seething putridity concealed by all the luxuriant vegetation 

 of tropical climes, like a royal mantle flung over a festering corpse, the reptile race abound, 

 the poisoned air being to these creatures the very breath of life, and the surrounding decay the 

 sustaining power of their existence. Indeed, the object of their lives seems to be, by individual 

 transmutation of poisons into living flesh, to destroy by slow but certain degrees the mass of 

 decaying vegetation, and so to prepare an abiding place for beings of a higher order than 

 themselves. 



On placing ourselves even in imagination amid such scenes, we seem to be transported 

 back into the former ages of our earth, when man could find no resting-place for his foot, and 

 no atmosphere in which he could breathe and live ; when the greater part of the soil was little 

 more than soft mud, the air thick, dank, heavy, and overcharged with decomposition, and the 

 multitude of strange reptiles that bored their slimy way through the deep ooze, crawled lazily 

 upon the slowly hardening banks, or urged their devious course through the turbid waters, 

 were the physically ruling though morally subservient powers of the world. 



Little is wanting to complete the illusion, except to give to every object an increase of 

 dimensions ; for the vegetation of those days was rank and luxuriant to a degree that is now 

 well indicated, though on a smaller scale, by the foliage of the tropics, and the huge forms of 

 the ancient and now extinct reptile race are closely reproduced by the more familiar inhabitants 

 of the swamp before us. 



As the expanse of putrefaction was greater in those epochs, so the miasma destroyers were 

 larger. Frogs and toads as big as calves, reptilian quadrupeds as large as elephants, and 

 reptilian bats expanding leathery wings as wide as those of the pelican, were fit inhabitants of 

 the atmosphere which they breathed, and in which their mission was consummated. Now that 

 the marshy districts are smaller and less poisonous, the reptile race that inhabits them is of 

 smaller dimensions. 



The earth has now been so far purified by successive generations and regenerations of life 

 and death, added to human ingenuity and industry, that its harmful districts occupy but a 

 comparatively small portion of its surface, the greater part of the world being suitable for 

 human habitations, the black man settling as a pioneer, a hewer of wood and drawer of water, 

 where the white man cannot yet abide. But in all those localities where the miasmatic 

 exhalations impall the land with their pestilential mantle, and scatter the seeds of death 

 on every breeze, the reptiles may be found luxuriating amid the deadly elements, and thriv- 

 ing in spots where the foot of man dares not tread, and his inquiring eye ventures not to 

 penetrate. 



