56 EXTINCT MONSTERS. 
concave, showing that the backbone as a whole was less flexible 
than in the fish-lizards. 
It may be mentioned here that Mr. Smith Woodward, of the 
Natural History Museum, recently showed the writer a fossil 
Plesiosaur that is being set up in the formatore’s shop, in the same 
manner that a recent skeleton might be. In this, and many 
Fic. 8.—Plesiosaurus macrocephalus. 
other ways, the guardians of the national treasure-house are 
endeavouring to make the collection intelligible and interest- 
ing to the general public. Specimens of extinct animals thus 
set up, give one a much better idea than when the bones are all 
lying huddled together on a slab of rock. But it is not always 
possible to get the bones entirely out of their rocky bed, or matrix. 
