156 TIIK PKOGltESS OF DEOUADATION. 



division, but were ushered upon the scene in the tinaes of the 

 Tertiary deposits, when the mammalian dynasty had sup- 

 planted that of the Iguanodon and Megalosaurus. Their ill- 

 omened birth took place when the influence of their house 

 was on the wane, as if to set such a stamp of utter hopeless- 

 ness on its fallen condition, as that set by the birth of a worth- 

 less or idiot heir on the fortunes of a sinking family. The 

 degradation of the Ophidians consists in the absence of limbs, 

 — an absence total in by much the greater number of their 

 families, and represented in others, as in the boas and pythons, 

 by mere abortive hinder lim.bs concealed in the skin ; but 

 they are thus not only monsters through defect of parts, if I 

 may so express myself, but also monsters through redundancy, 

 as a vegetative repetition of vertebrae and ribs, to the num- 

 ber of three or four hundred, forms the special contrivance 

 by which the want of these is compensated. I am also dis- 

 posed to regard the poison-bag of the venomous snakes as a 

 mark of degradation ; — it seems, judging from analogy, to be 

 a protective provision of a low character, exemplified chiefly 

 in the invertebrate families, — ants, centipides, and mosquitos, 

 — spiders, w^asps, and scorpions. The higher carnivora are, 

 we find, furnished with unpoisoned weapons, which, like those 

 of civilized man, are sufiicientlyefiective, — simply from the ex- 

 cellence of their construction, and the power with which they 

 are wielded, — for every purpose of assault or defence. It is 

 only the squalid savages and degraded boschmen of creation 

 that have their feeble teeth and tiny stings steeped in venom, 

 and so made formidable. Monstrosity through displacement 

 of parts constitutes yet another form of degradation ; and this 

 form, united, in some instances, to the other two, we find cu- 

 riously exemplified in the geological history of the fish, — a 

 history which, with all its blanks and missing portions, is yet 

 better known than that of any other division of the verte- 

 brata. And it is, I am convinced, from a survey of the pro- 



