202 THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN. 



size, with a stride perhaps six feet in length. Were 

 they enormous birds ? If so, the birds of this aga 

 must have been giants which would dwarf even our 

 ostriches. But as we walk along the shore we see 

 many other impressions, some of them much smaller 

 and different in form. Some, again, very similar in 

 other respects, have four toes; and, more wonderful 

 still, in tracing up some of the tracks, we find that 

 here and there the creature has put down on the ground 

 a sort of four-fingered hand, while some of these 

 animals seem to have trailed long tails behind them. 

 What were these portentous creatures bird, beast, 

 or reptile ? The answer has been given to us by 

 their bones, as studied by Yon Meyer and Owen, and 

 more recently by Huxley and Cope. We thus have 

 brought before us the Dinosaurs the terrible Saurians 

 of the Mesozoic age, the noblest of the Tanninim 

 of old. These creatures constitute numerous genera 

 and species, some of gigantic size, others compara- 

 tively small; some harmless browsers on plants, 

 others terrible renders of living flesh; but all re- 

 markable for presenting a higher type of reptile 

 organization than any now existing, and approach- 

 ing in some respects to the birds and in others to the 

 mammalia. Let us take one example of each of the 

 principal group -. And first marches before us the 

 Iguanodon or his relation Hadrosaurus a gigantic 

 biped, twenty feet or more in height, with enormous 

 legs shaped like those of an ostrich, but of elephant- 

 ine thickness. It strides along, not by leaps like 8 



