xii AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



much labour and thought have been expended, will find pleasure 

 in visiting the splendid geological collection at Cromwell Eoad. 

 We have often watched visitors walking somewhat aimlessly 

 among those relics of a former world, and wished that we could 

 be of some service. But, if this little book should help them 

 the better to understand what they see there, our wish will be 

 accomplished. 



Another object which the writer has kept in view is to 

 connect the past with the present. It cannot be too strongly 

 urged that the best commentary on the dead past is the living 

 present. It is unfortunate that there is still too great a tendency 

 to separate, as by a great gulf, the dead from the living, the 

 past from the present, forms of life. The result of this is seen 

 in our museums. Fossils have too often been left to the attention 

 of geologists not always well acquainted with the structures of 

 living animals. The more frequent introduction of fossil speci- 

 mens side by side with modern forms of life would not only be 

 a gain to the progress and spread of geological science, but 

 would be a great help to students of anatomy and natural history. 

 The tree of life is but a mutilated thing, and half its interest 

 is gone when the dead branches are lopped off. 1 



It is, perhaps, justifiable to give to the term "monster" a 

 somewhat extended meaning. The writer has therefore included 

 in his menagerie of extinct animals one or two creatures which, 

 though not of any great size, are nevertheless remarkable in 

 various ways such, for instance, as the winged reptiles, and 

 anomalous birds with teeth, of later times, and others. Compared 



1 Of late years, since our first Edition in 1892, efforts have been made at the 

 Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, to carry out this idea to some extent 

 by placing skeletons of living and recent animals by the side of those of extinct 

 forms ; and vice versa fossils are sometimes introduced into the galleries devoted 

 to recent forms, especially in the Reptile Gallery. 



