Proceedings. 21 



plates, and over these is a skin with scales taking the same 

 form as the bony plates beneath. Now that Alligator- skin 

 has become a fashionable material for the manufactm-e of 

 bags and such-like articles, I dare say you have noticed this 

 skin tanned and made into leather. A curious thing in the 

 internal structure of the Crocodile is the gizzard containing 

 stones, which it swallows. It is a very careful mother, 

 laying its eggs m the sand and often watching them until 

 hatched. The Crocodiles are very fond of basking in the sun 

 on the mud at the sides of rivers. They lie on their stomachs, 

 with their mouths wide agape, and a curious little bird is in 

 the habit of hopping in and out of the open jaws to catch the 

 flies and other insects which settle there. 



And now we come to a very extraordinary group — the 

 Ornithoscelida. Some of the forms composing it were of the 

 largest size, but their principal interest lies in their bird-Hke 

 characters, and these are seen principally in the hind limb. 

 A peculiar feature of the thigh-bone is that its head turns 

 inwards sharply, as it does in birds. This enables the Rep- 

 tiles to walk with their feet pointing forwards, as do the birds, 

 and differently to other Eeptiles whose feet sprawl outwards, 

 as seen in the Common Lizard, where the head of the thigh- 

 bone is nearly straight. Again, in connection with this curious 

 feature of the hind legs is the fact that the fore limbs are com- 

 paratively small and weak, and from this we infer that these 

 strange Reptiles walked about on their hind legs, hke the birds. 

 The last group of Reptiles is a most striking one, that of 

 the Pterosauria. These had a very bird-like head, armed with 

 large, sharp teeth in most cases. They had Bat-hke wmgs, 

 which, when they wanted to fly, were kept spread by the 

 immensely-long fourth digits, the four joints of which extended 

 along the front border. This structure gives its name to one 

 genus of the group, the Pterodactyl, meaning wing- fingered. 

 The other three digits had claws. These Reptiles, which are 

 quite extinct, grew to a great size ; the remains of one found 

 at Maidstone measured sixteen feet from tip to tip of its 

 wings, and an American specimen was twenty f«et in the 

 Scime du-ection. It probably fed on fish. 



