CHAPTER VIII 



THE DRAGONS OF OLD TIME DINOSAURS 



" What we know is but little ; what we do not know is immense." LA 

 PLACE. 



WAS there ever an age of dragons? Tradition says there was; 

 but there is every reason to believe that the fierce and blood- 

 thirsty creatures, of which such a variety present themselves, are 

 but creations of the imagination, useful in their way, no doubt, 

 as pointing a moral or adorning a tale, but, nevertheless, wholly 

 without foundation in fact. The dragon figures in the earliest 

 traditions of the human race, and crops up again in full force in 

 European mediaeval or even late romance. But in spite of all 

 the manifest absurdities of the dragons of various nations and 

 times, geology reveals to us that there once lived upon this earth 

 reptiles so great and uncouth that we can think of no other but 

 the time-honoured word " dragon " to convey briefly the slightest 

 idea of their monstrous forms and characters. 



So there is some truth in dragons, after all. But then we must 

 make this important reservation viz. that the days of these 

 dragons were long before the human period ; they flourished in 

 one of those dim geological ages of which the rocks around us 

 bear ample records. 



It is a strange fact that human fancy should have, in some 

 cases at least, created monsters not very unlike some of those 

 antediluvian animals that have, during the present century, been 



