ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 283 



lies of mammals still attain to the maximum size, the rep- 

 tiles, if we except the crocodilean family, a few hannless 

 turtles, and the degraded boas and pythons, are a small and 

 comparatively unimportant race. Nay, the existing giants 

 of the class, — the crocodiles and boas, — ^hardly equal in bulk 

 the third-rate reptiles of the ages of the Oolite and the Weal- 

 den. So far as can be seen, there is no reason deducible 

 from the nature of things, why the country that sustains a 

 mammal bulky as the elephant should not also support a 

 reptile huge as the Iguanodon ; or why the Megalosaunis, 

 Hylseosaurus, and Dicynodon, might not have been contem- 

 porary with the lion, tiger, and rhinoceros. The change 

 which took place in the reptile group immediately on their 

 dethronement at the close of the Secondary period, seems 

 scarce less strange than that sung by Milton : — 



** Behold a wonder ! They but now who seemed 

 In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, 

 Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 

 Thronged numberless ; like that pygmean race 

 Beyond the Indian mount ; or fairy elves, 

 Whose midnight revels, by a forest side 

 Or fountain, some belated peasant sees. 

 Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon 

 Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth 

 Wheels her pale course." 



But though we cannot assign a cause for this general re- 

 duction of the reptile class, save simply the will of the all- 

 wise Creator, the reason why it should have taken place seems 

 easily assignable. It was a bold saying of the old philosophic 

 heathen, that " God is the soul of brutes ;" but writers on 

 instinct in even our own times have said less warrantable 

 things. God does seem to do for many of the inferior ani- 

 mals of the lower divisions, that, though devoid of brain 

 and vertebral column, are yet skilful chemists and accom- 

 plished architects and mathematicians, what he enables man, 



