CHAPTER VIII 
THE DRAGONS OF OLD TIME—DINOSAURS 
“ What we know is but little; what we do not know is immense.”—LaA 
PLACE. 
Was there ever an age of dragons? Tradition says there was; 
but there is every reason to believe that the fierce and blood- 
thirsty creatures, of which such a variety present themselves, are 
but creations of the imagination,—useful in their way, no doubt, 
as pointing a moral or adorning a tale, but, nevertheless, wholly 
without foundation in fact. The dragon figures in the earliest 
traditions of the human race, and crops up again in full force in 
European medizval or even late romance. But in spite of all 
the manifest absurdities of the dragons of various nations and 
times, geology reveals to us that there once lived upon this earth 
reptiles so great and uncouth that we can think of no other but 
the time-honoured word “dragon” to convey briefly the slightest 
idea of their monstrous forms and characters. . 
So there is some truth in dragons, after all, But then we must 
make this important reservation—viz. that the days of these 
dragons were long before the human period; they flourished in 
one of those dim geological ages of which the rocks around us 
bear ample records. 
It is a strange fact that human fancy should have, in some 
cases at least, created monsters not very unlike some of those 
antediluvian animals that have, during the present century, been 
