BONES CLOTHED IN STONE. 



329 



lurch through the cauldron's ebbing tide, the lizard 

 threw himself upon its edge, and died. 



Of the countless millions of saurians then existing, 

 capricious IS'ature had seized upon this one, to trans- 

 mute it into an imperishable monument of that extinct 

 race. In those ages of roaring waters and hissing 

 fires,, she had clothed the bones in stone, that they 

 might withstand the gnawing tooth of time, and thus 

 handed them down to the wondering eyes of the 

 Nineteenth Century. Many of the pieces, it should 

 be said, were cracked and scarred, evidently by the 

 action of fierce heat. 



Constantly the earth is giving up these marvelous 

 creations of the past, in comparison with which the 

 animals of the present are tame enough. While we 

 doubt a modern sea-serpent as impossible, we dig up 

 fossilized marine monsters, which could easily have 

 swallowed the biggest snake that credible sea-captai^i 

 ever ran foul of. 



i'L Vj-UU 1 . 



