EXTINCT MONSTERS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



" The earth hath gathered to her breast again 

 And yet again, the milHons that were born 

 Of her unnumbered, unremembered tribes." 



Let us see if we can get some glimpses of the primseval inhabi- 

 tants of the world, that lived and died while as yet there were no 

 men and women having authority over the fishes of the sea and 

 the fowls of the air. 



We shall, perhaps, find this antique world quite as strange as 

 the fairy-land of Grimm or Lewis Carroll.- True, it was not 

 inhabited by "slithy toves" or "jabber-wocks," but by real 

 beasts, of whose shapes, sizes, and habits much is already known 

 — a good deal more than might at first be supposed. And yet, 

 real as it all is, this antique world — this panorama of scenes that 

 have for ever passed away — is a veritable fairy-land. In those 

 days of which geologists tell us, the principal parts were played, 

 not by kings and queens, but by creatures many of which 

 were very unlike those we see around us now. And yet it is no 

 fairy-land after all, where impossible things happen, and where 

 impossible dragons figure largely ; but only the same old 

 world in which you and I were born. Everything you will see 

 here is quite true. All these monsters once lived. Truth is 



B 



