DRAGONS OF OLD TIME 125 



discovered in various parts of Europe arid America. Some un- 

 reasonable persons will have it that certain monstrous reptiles 

 of the Mesozoic era, about to be described, must have somehow 

 managed to survive into the human period, and so have suggested 

 to early races of men the dragons to which we have alluded. 

 But there is no need for this untenable supposition. By a free 

 blending together of ideas culled from living types of animals it 

 would be very easy to construct no small variety of dragons ; and 

 so we may believe this is what the ancients did. 



The announcement by Baron Cuvier the illustrious founder 

 of Palaeontology that there was a period when our planet was 

 inhabited by reptiles of appalling magnitude, with many of the 

 features of modern quadrupeds, was of so novel and startling a 

 character as to require the prestige of even his name to obtain 

 for it any degree of credence. But subsequent discoveries have 

 fully confirmed the truth of his belief, and the "age of reptiles" 

 is no longer considered fabulous. This expression was first 

 used by Dr. G. Man tell as the title of a paper published in the 

 Edinburgh Philosophical Journal in 1831, and serves to remind 

 us that reptilian forms of life were once the ruling class among 

 animals. 



The Dinosaurs are an extinct order comprising the largest 

 terrestrial and semi-aquatic reptiles that ever lived; and while 

 some of them in a general way resembled crocodiles, others show 

 in the bony structures they have left behind a very remarkable 

 and interesting resemblance to birds of the ostrich tribe. This 

 resemblance shows itself in the pelvis, or bony arch with which 

 the hind limbs are connected in vertebrate or back-boned animals, 

 and in the limbs themselves. This curious fact, first brought 

 into notice by Professor Huxley, has been variously interpreted 

 by anatomists; some concluding, with Professor Huxley, that 



