DRAGONS OF OLD TIME 141 



a vertebra to work out a reptile, and a tooth in the case of a 

 mammal. Seven or eight different ' characters/ " he says, " may 

 be deduced from a reptilian vertebra." It is of course impossible 

 for any one to reconstruct an entire animal from a single bone, 

 or a few teeth. Not even Owen could do this in spite of the 

 rather frequent assertions to that effect one sees in newspapers 

 and magazines ! 



Dr. G. A. Mantell says, " Fossils have been eloquently and 

 appropriately termed Medals of Creation" and the eloquent 

 passage by which those words are followed may be transcribed 

 here. He goes on to say, " For as an accomplished numismatist, 

 even when the inscription of an ancient and unknown coin is 

 illegible, can from the half-obliterated effigy, and from the style 

 of art, determine with precision the people by whom, and the 

 period when, it was struck: in like manner the geologist can 

 decipher these natural memorials, interpret the hieroglyphics 

 with which they are inscribed, and from apparently the most 

 insignificant relics trace the history of beings of whom no other 

 records are extant, and ascertain the forms and habits of unknown 

 types of organisation whose races are swept from the face of the 

 earth, ere the creation of man, and the creatures which are his 

 contemporaries. Well might the illustrious Bergrnann exclaim, 

 ' Sunt instar nummorum memoralium quce de prceteritis globi 

 nostri fatis testantur, ubi omnia silent monumenta historica.' " 



Geology owes a deep debt of gratitude to the late Dr. Gideon 

 A. Mantell, who, during the intervals of a laborious professional 

 life, collected and described the remains of several strange 

 extinct reptiles, and wrote a number of works on geology, such 

 as served in his day to advance the science to which he was so 

 enthusiastically devoted (see p. 159). 



One of the oldest of the Dinosaurs seems to be the 



