THE DINOSAURS OR TERRIBLE LIZARDS. 645 



l»ut bi}4" enough. h»' could give oven Steo'osaui'us "])oints"' in mon^ 

 ways than one. 



Standing' before the skull of Tiiceratops. looking him st|uarely in 

 the face, one notices in front of each eye a thick guard of |)i-()jecting 

 bone, and while this nuist have interfered with vision directly ahead 

 it nuist have also furnished protection for the eye. So long as Ti'i- 

 ceratops faced an adversaiy he must have been practically im ulner- 

 able. but as he was the largest animal of his time, upward of 25 feet 

 in length, it is proliable that his coml)ats were mainly with those of his 

 own kind and the subject of disjiute some fair female upon whom two 

 rival suitors had cast covetous eyes. What a sight it would have been 

 to have seen two of these big ])rutes in mortal combat as they charged 

 upon each other with all the impetus to be derived from ten tons of 

 infu'-iate flesh! We may picture to ourselves horn clashing upon horn, 

 or glancing from each bony shield until some skillful stroke or unlucky 

 slip placed one combatant at the mere}' of the other, and he went down 

 before the ])lows of his adversary "as falls on ]Mount Alvernus a 

 thunder-smitten oak." 



A pair of Trice ra tops horns in the National Museum bears witness 

 to such encounters, for one is broken midway between tip and base; 

 and that it was ))roken during life is evident from thi' fact that the 

 stinup is healed and rounded over, while the size of th(> horns shows 

 that their owner reached a ripe old age. 



For, unlike man and the higher vertebrates, reptiles and fishes do 

 not have a maximum standard of size which is soon reached and rarely 

 exceeded, but continue to grow throughout life, so that the size of a 

 turtle, a crocodile, or a Dinosaur tells something of the duration of its 

 life. 



Before quitting Triceratops let us glance for a moment at its skeleton. 

 Now among other things a skeleton is the solution of a problem in 

 mechanics, and in Triceratops the head so dominates the rest of the 

 structure that one might almost imagine the skull was made first and 

 the bod}' adjusted to it. The great head seems made not only for 

 oflense and defense; the spreading frill serves for the attachment of 

 muscles to sustain the weight of the skull, while the work of the 

 muscles is made easier b}- the fact that the frill reaches so far back of 

 the junction of head with neck as to largely counterbalance the weight 

 of the face and jaws. When we restored the skull of this animal it 

 was found that the center of gravity lay back of the eye. Several of 

 the bones of the neck are united in one mass to furnish a firm attach- 

 ment for the muscles that support and move the skull, but as the move- 

 ments of the neck are already restricted by the overhanging frill, this 

 loss of motion is no additional disadvantage. 



To support all this weight of skull and body requires very massive 

 legs, and as the fore legs are ver}- short, this enables Triceratops to 



