On Animals depicted on Antique Monuments. 287 



finally, others still, whose races have become extinct within the 

 records of history. 



It is necessary to admit the last of these conclusions, inasmuch 

 as the antique monuments exhibit the figures of animals which 

 are quite different from any of our living varieties. These ani- 

 mals, then, must have been lost, like those which, buried in the 

 bowels of the earth, have no longer representatives existing on it. 



In truth, that we may come to an accurate conclusion, it is 

 necessary to admit (what we conceive we have proved) that the 

 ancients observed nature with the utmost exactitude ; and be- 

 sides, that amongst the animals depicted by them, and which 

 have no longer representatives on the earth, there are those the 

 organization of which rendered their existence possible. We 

 shall prove this second proposition ere long, at the same time 

 showing, that the animals represented on the antique monu- 

 ments differ less from our pres«3nt existing species than certain 

 fossil species, or than several of those which recently have been 

 discovered in that continent which had so long eluded the dis- 

 covery of our navigators. 



Nothing, then, ought to prevent us from considering them as 

 real species, which have existed at a former time. We might, 

 perhaps, have continued in doubt, had they exhibited an organi- 

 zation as singular and absurd as that of the gigantic Megalo- 

 saurus, and the extraordinary Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus ; 

 because it might have happened, that, on the unsupported evi- 

 dence of the monuments of ancient Egypt and Rome, we should 

 not have admitted the existence of a lizard as large as a whale, 

 and still less that of an animal half reptile and half fish. A 

 reptile, with four feet, with a neck longer than its body, would 

 have appeared to us no less problematical ; and very likely we 

 should have rejected it also as a creature of fancy, the produc- 

 tion of the vivid imagination of the artists of antiquity. But 

 who now doubts of their former residence on the earth, and of 

 their reality? so that, before we can deny that an animal has ex- 

 isted, we must consider, not only if its organization be extraordi- 

 nary, but also if it satisfies the conditions of existence to which 

 it is subjected. 



With respect to the Megalosaurus, the Ichthyosaurus, and the 

 Plesiosaurus — the subjects we have chosen for examples — it may 



u2 



