62 EXTINCT MONSTERS. 



Amidst much diversity there is yet a strange similarity in the 

 dragons that figure in the folk-lore of Eastern and Western 

 peoples. Probably our European traditions were brought by the 

 tribes which, wave after wave, poured in from Central Asia. 



They are, for the most part, unnatural beasts, breathing out 

 fire, and often endowed with wings, while at the same time 

 possessing limbs ending in cruel claws, fitted for clutching their 

 unfortunate victims. The wings seem, to say the least, very much 

 in the way. Poisonous fangs, claws, scaly armour, and a long 

 pointed tail were all very well, — but wings are hardly wanted, 

 unless to add one more element of mystery or terror. Some, 

 however, are devoid of wings : the Imperial Japanese dragons 

 showing no sign of such appendages. The Temple Bar griffin is 

 a grim example of a winged monster. Nevertheless, 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 

 discovered in various parts of Europe and America. Some 

 unreasonable persons will have it that certain monstrous reptiles 

 of the Mesozoic era, about to be described, must have somehow 

 managed to survive into the human period, and so have suggested 

 to early races of men the dragons to which we have alluded. 

 But there is no need for this untenable supposition. By a free 

 blending together of ideas culled from living types of animals it 



