438 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 
oolitic or cretaceous seas may be judged of by the frequency 
of their remains, and the 120 species that have been hitherto 
discovered. Belemnites two feet long have been found, so 
that, to judge by analogies, the animals to which they belonged 
as cuttle-bones must have measured eighteen or twenty feet 
from end to end, a size which reduces the rapacious Onyecho- 
teuthis of the present seas to dwarfish dimensions. 
But of all the denizens of the mesozoic seas none were more 
formidable than the gigantic Saurians, whose approach put 
even the voracious sharks to flight. The first of these monsters 
that raises its frightful head above the waters is the dreadful 
Ichthyosaurus, a creature thirty or even fifty feet long, half 
fish, half lizard, and combining in 
strange assemblage the snout of the 
porpoise, the teeth of the crocodile, 
and the paddles of the whale. Sin- 
gular above all is the enormous eye, 
in size surpassing a man’s head. Woe 
to the fish that meets its appalling 
glance! No rapidity of flight, no weapon, be it sword or saw, 
avails, for the long-tailed gigantic saurian darts like lightning 
through the water, and its dense harness bids defiance to every 
attack. Not only have fifteen distinct species of Ichthyosauri 
been distinguished, but the remains of crushed and _ partially 
digested fish-bones and scales, which are found within their 
_ skeleton, indicate the precise nature of their food. Their fossil 
remains abound along the whole extent of the lias formation, 
from the coasts of Dorset, through Somerset and Leicestershire 
to the coast of Yorkshire, but the largest specimens have been 
found in Franconia. 
Along with this monster, another and still more singular 
EE 
Ichthyosaurus communis. | 
LO 
a 
Plesiosaurus. 
deformity makes its appearance, the Plesiosaurus, in which the 
fabulous chimeras and hydras of antiquity seem to start into 
