CHAPTEE IX. 

 FLYING DRAGONS, OR PTERODACTYLES. 



LEGENDS of Flying Dragons were rife both among the 

 ancients and also during the middle ages, but it was 

 reserved for the great founder of the science of com- 

 parative anatomy Cuvier to show that such crea- 

 tures really once existed, and were not merely the 

 dreams of the poet and the herald. In the year 1784 

 Collini described the skeleton of a strange creature 

 found in the fine-grained limestones of Bavaria, so ex- 

 tensively quarried for the use of the lithographer, which 

 he regarded as indicating an unknown marine animal. 

 When, however, this curious specimen came into the 

 hands of Cuvier, about the year 1809, he recognised it 

 as the remains of a reptile endowed with the power of 

 flight, for which he proposed the name of Pterodactyle 

 a term compounded from the Greek words for a wing 

 and a finger. In thus proving, once for all, the former 

 existence of Flying Dragons, it must not, however, 

 be supposed that Cuvier thereby authenticated the old 

 legends which represented these creatures as capturing 

 human beings, and being themselves in turn destroyed 



by valiant champions. These real Flying Dragons, on 



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