xil AUTHOR'S “PREFACE 
much labour and thought have been expended, will find pleasure 
in visiting the splendid geological collection at Cromwell Road. 
We have often watched visitors walking somewhat aimlessly 
among those relics of a former world, and wished that we could 
be of some service. But, if this little book should help them 
the better to understand what they see there, our wish will be 
accomplished. 
Another object which the writer has kept in view is to 
connect the past with the present. It cannot be too strongly 
urged that the best commentary on the dead past is the living 
present. It is unfortunate that there is still too great a tendency 
to separate, as by a great gulf, the dead from the living, the 
past from the present, forms of life. The result of this is seen 
in our museums. Fossils have too often been left to the attention 
of geologists not always well acquainted with the structures of 
living animals. The more frequent introduction of fossil speci- 
mens side by side with modern forms of life would not only be 
a gain to the progress and spread of geological science, but 
would be a great help to students of anatomy and natural history. 
The tree of life is but a mutilated thing, and half its interest 
is gone when the dead branches are lopped off." 
It is, perhaps, justifiable to give to the term “monster” a 
somewhat extended meaning. The writer has therefore included 
in his menagerie of extinct animals one or two creatures which, 
though not of any great size, are nevertheless remarkable in 
various ways—such, for instance, as the winged reptiles, and 
anomalous birds with teeth, of later times, and others. Compared 
1 Of late years, since our first Edition in 1892, efforts have been made at the 
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, to carry out this idea to some extent 
by placing skeletons of living and recent animals by the side of those of extinct 
forms; and vice versa fossils are sometimes introduced into the galleries devoted 
to recent forms, especially in the Reptile Gallery. 
