THE DRAGONS OF OLD TIME— DINOSAURS. 63 



would be very easy to construct no small variety of dragons ; and 

 so we may believe this is what the ancients did. 



Having said so much of dragons in general, let us proceed to 

 consider those both possible and real monsters revealed of late 

 years by the researches of geologists. For this purpose we shall 

 devote the present and two following chapters to the consideration 

 of a great and wonderful group of fossil reptiles known as 

 Dinosaurs. The strange fish-lizards and sea-lizards previously 

 described were the geological contemporaries of a host of 

 reptiles, now mostly extinct, which inhabited both the lands and 

 waters of those periods known as the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cre- 

 taceous, which taken together represent the great Mesozoic, 

 formerly called the Secondary, era. 



The announcement by Baron Cuvier — the illustrious founder 

 of Palaeontology — that there was a period when our planet was 

 inhabited by reptiles of appalling magnitude, with many of the 

 features of modern quadrupeds, was of so novel and startling a 

 character as to require the prestige of even his name to obtain 

 for it any degree of credence. But subsequent discoveries have 

 fully confirmed the truth of his belief, and the " age of reptiles " 

 is no longer considered fabulous. This expression was first 

 used by Dr. Mantell as the title of a paper published in the 

 Edinburgh Philosophical Jour?ial in 1831, and serves to remind 

 us that reptilian forms of life were once the ruHng class among 

 animals. 



The Dinosaurs are an extinct order comprising the largest 

 terrestrial and semi-aquatic reptiles that ever lived ; and while 

 some of them in a general way resembled crocodiles, others show 

 in the bony structures they have left behind a very remarkable 

 and interesting resemblance to birds of the ostrich tribe. This 

 resemblance shows itself in the pelvis, or bony arch with which 

 the hind limbs are connected in vertebrate or back-boned animals, 

 and in the limbs themselves. This curious fact, first brought 

 into notice by Professor Huxley, has been variously interpreted 



