AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xi 



discoveries of Marsh, Cope, Leidy, and others in America, 

 not to mention some im.portant European discoveries, 

 should have attracted so little notice in this country. In 

 the far and wild West a host of strange reptiles and quad- 

 rupeds have been unearthed from their rocky sepulchres, 

 often of incredibly huge proportions, and, in many cases, 

 more weird and strange than the imagination could con- 

 ceive ; and yet the public have never heard of these 

 discoveries, by the side of which the now well-known 

 "lost creations" of Cuvier, Buckland, or Conybeare sink 

 into the shade. For once, we beg leave to suggest, the 

 hungry pressman, seeking " copy," has failed to see a 

 good thing. Descriptions of some of " Marsh's monsters " 

 and how they were found, might, one would think, have 

 proved attractive to a public ever on the look out for 

 something new. 



Professor Huxley, comparing our present knowledge of 

 the mammals of the Tertiary era with that of 1859, states 

 that the discoveries of Gaudry, Marsh, and Filhol, are " as 

 if zoologists were to become acquainted with a country 

 hitherto unknown, as rich in novel forms of life as Brazil 

 or South America once were to Europeans." 



The object of this book is to describe some of the larger 

 and more monstrous forms of the past — the lost creations 

 of the old world ; to clothe their dry bones with flesh, and 

 suggest for them backgrounds such as are indicated by 

 the discoveries of geology : in other words, to endeavour, 

 by means of pen and pencil, to bring them back to life. 

 The ordinary public cannot learn much by merely gazing 

 at skeletons set up in museums. One longs to cover their 

 nakedness with flesh and skin, and to see them as they 

 were when they walked this earth. 



