64 THE BRONTOSAUR AND ITS COUSINS 



running to sharp points in front. Towards the 

 close of the period we find perfectly weird de- 

 velopments of jaws, teeth, and armour. Professor 

 Huxley was quite right in saying that "Nature, 

 red in tooth and claw," had been the great agency 

 in evolution. It is only at a much later stage 

 that we shall find the gentler influence of social 

 life becoming a factor of any consequence in de- 

 velopment. 



The struggle of vegetarian and carnivore explains 

 much more than the development of arms and 

 armour. If you go into the fossil reptile gallery of 

 a great geological museum, you are amazed at the 

 variety of types which grew out of the primitive 

 simple family. In the centre of the gallery you will 

 find the monstrous thigh bones, and perhaps whole 

 skeletons, of the vast Deinosaurs, which lazed in the 

 swamps. Near them are mounted skeletons, standing 

 up twenty or thirty feet, of reptiles whose long and 

 powerful back legs make them look like kangaroos. 

 They were the leapers. On the walls are the fossil 

 remains of others which lived entirely in the sea; 

 some with fish-like bodies and well-developed paddles, 

 some with long necks that could reach to the bottom 

 in search of food, some with eyes fifteen inches in 

 diameter or jaws like crocodiles. In other cases are 

 the skeletons of flying reptiles, from small creatures 

 about the size of a wild goose to villainous-looking 

 "dragons" with a stretch of twenty feet across the 



