November 1, 1889.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



in the Fish-Lizards they remain quite separate throughout 

 hfe. Further, the body of each vertebra (Fig. 3) forms a 

 disk, which is deeply concave at the two extremities, like 

 the vertebrae of a fish, and quite different from those of 

 most living reptiles, in which the bodies of the vertebriB 

 articulate with one another by a ball-and-socket joint. 

 Another peculiarity of the back-bone of the Fish-Lizards is 

 in the mode of attachment of the ribs. Thus each rib 

 terminates in a fork, of which the two prongs articulate 

 with the two knob-like surfaces on the side of the body of 

 each vertebra;, as shown in Fig. 3. 



Some of the species of Fish-Lizards attained a length of 

 from thirty to forty feet, and were thus truly Leviathans of 

 the deep. 



The result, then, of our brief survey of the oliief 

 structural peculiarities of these extinct saurians is to show 

 that they were Whale-like marine reptiles of carnivorous 

 habits, with a naked body, provided with four paddles, and 

 probably with a tail fin, and that they had fish-like 

 vertebrsB, and a lnn;_,'-t(Hitln'd beak to the skull. Li 

 certain American rc]iic^<'titiitives of the group the jaws 

 were, however, totally unpro\ided with teeth ; and in these 

 and allied types from the Oolites of England a tlrird bone 

 articulated with the l)one of the upper arm (liu of Fig. 2), 

 thus making the structure of the paddle still more peculiar. 

 How these toothless Fish-Lizards captured and held their 

 prey is not very easy to understand ; but it is possible that 

 instead of living on hard mail-clad fishes like their toothed 

 consuls of the Lias, their food may have been of a softer 

 nature, such as cuttle-fishes. 



In stating that the Fish-Lizards of the Lias subsisted 

 largely on the mail-clad "Ganoid" fishes of the same 

 epoch, we may perhaps be thought to be drawmg upon our 

 imagination. This, however, is not the case, since we 

 frequently find the whole contents of the stomach of these 

 reptiles preserved within the cavity of their ribs, which 

 shows us that their food was composed not only of these 

 fishes, but also of young indi\iduals of their own genus. 

 In very rare cases, moreover, there are found witlun the 

 body-cavity of large individuals very small skeletons of 

 other Fish-Lizards ; and since these yoimg skeletons are 

 always entire and belong to the same species as the one 

 within whose body they are enclosed, it has been con- 

 cluded that some Fish-Lizards brought forth their young 

 in a living condition. This conclusion bemg certainly one 

 of the most startling and unexpected results which has 

 rewarded the students of this branch of palaeontology. 



Whether, when the name of Fish-Lizards was first 

 given to tlieso saurians, it was in the mind of its author 

 that they were really related to fishes, camiot now be 

 certainly known. It has, however, been subsequently 

 suggested that these reptiles are the direct descendants of 

 fishes ; but since, Uke Whales, they breathed air by means 

 of lungs, a recent writer has pointed out that if such de- 

 scent were really the case it is almost certain that the 

 Fish-Lizards would have continued to breathe air by means 

 of gills, after the manner of fishes. And it is, therefore, 

 considered pi'ol)able that these saurians are the descendants 

 of still earlier land reptiles ; in which respect they again 

 present another resemblance to Whales, which, as Pro- 

 fessor Flower has shown, appear to have been derived from 

 land animals more or less nearly allied to the hoofed 

 ([uadrupeds or mammals. If, now, we look back and 

 endeavour to fix upon the ancestral type of reptiles from 

 which the Fish-Lizards have jjroiiably been derived, we 

 find that in the period of the Coal and the succeeding first 

 stages of the Secondary e))och there existed a remarkable 

 group of ri'iitiU's, wbicb, in the adult stage, were inhabi- 

 tants of the land and l>reathed by means of lungs. From 



the very peculiar labjTinth-hke internal structiu-e of the 

 teeth of these early reptiles the group is collectively known 

 as the Labyrinthodonts. Now it is very suggestive that 

 the teeth of most species of Fish-Lizard retain traces of 

 tliis very remarkable labyrinthic structure ; and since, 

 moreover, the skull of these saurians has certain peculiar 

 features also found in that of the Labyrinthodonts, while 

 the structure of the backbone is very smrilar in the two 

 groups, it seems highly probable that the Fish-Lizards 

 have been directly derived from ancient reptiles more or 

 less closely allied to the Labyiinthodonts, if not from that 

 group itself ; and that as they gradually became more com- 

 pletely aquatic their limbs were developed into the very 

 complex paddles of the typical forms. 



In conclusion, we have already pointed out several re- 

 markable resemblances between the ancient Fish-Lizards 

 and the modern Whales, and we have regarded such 

 resemblances as due to their similar mode of hfe. The 

 Fish-Lizards may, indeed, be considered to have occupied 

 that place in the Secondary period which is now held by 

 the Whales ; and it becomes curious to reflect why these 

 saurian devastators of the deep should have died at the 

 close of the Secondary period, to be succeeded dming the 

 Tertiary by the mammalian Whales. This, however, is 

 mifortunately just one of those deeply interesting problems 

 to which science gives us no answer. 



THE ETHNOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE 

 BEECH. 



By Caxon Is.\ac Ta\xor, Litt.D., LL.D. 



THE new science of linguistic palsontology has 

 thrown a flood of light on several obscm-e prob- 

 lems of etlmology. It has, for instance, been 

 proved that the names of the ass and the camel in 

 Aryan languages are not primitive, but merely 

 loan words from the Semitic. This fact, by itself, goes 

 far to disprove the hypothesis which placed the cradle of 

 the Aryans in Central Asia, a region of which these 

 animals are natives. 



Perhaps in no case have more valuable results been 

 obtamed than in the case of the beech. This tree, which 

 flourishes only in temperate climates, and is a lover of 

 chalk sub-soils, is confined to a definite and restricted ai-ea. 

 It grows in the extreme south of Norway and Sweden, but 

 is not found east of a line which strikes across Europe from 

 the Frische Haft' on the Baltic coast near Konigsberg, 

 through Poland to the Crimea, ending finally in the 

 Caucasus. 



In former times the limit was more narrowly restricted. 

 In Ca'sar's time the beech had not reached Britain or 

 Holland, while at the close of the bronze age, or the 

 beginning of the iron age, it was only just beginning to 

 replace the oak in Denmark. Early in the neolithic age 

 its range was jirobably confined to France, Northern Italy, 

 and Xorthern (1 recce, while in Germany, as Dr. Schrader 

 believes, it did not extend north of the Thuringian forest. 

 It flourishes in Macedonia, and clothes the north-eastern 

 slopes of the Thessalian coast chain, while in the south 

 of l'4)irus the ilex or evergreen oak replaces it as the 

 characteristic forest tree. 



Within these ancient limits of the beech we must place 

 the cradle of foiu- .\ryan languages — German, Latui. Celtic, 

 and Greek. We draw this conclusion from the following 

 philological facts : — The word for beech is. in Gothic, 

 /"-/,<(; in Latin, /W;/!/*- ; in Celtic, y'.(/i//iWi(7c ; wliile the 

 corresponding word, cij/yo's, denotes the oak in Greek. 



