CREATION OF ANIMALS. 35 



in existence, that is perfectly subterranean, which 

 never makes its appearance on the earth's surface, 

 but is always concealed at a considerable depth 

 below it ; and, what is worthy of particular no- 

 tice, by its structure, is connected with one of the 

 larger Saurians, now found only in a fossil state. 

 It will immediately be perceived that I allude to 

 that most extraordinary animal, the Proteus cui- 

 guinus, 1 which is found in subterranean lakes and 

 caves two or three hundred feet below the surface 

 of the ground in Illyria, breathing both by lungs 

 and gills, and presenting characters which connect 

 it with the Saurian monsters before alluded to, 

 whose remains have occasioned so much astonish- 

 ment, appear to have puzzled in some measure the 

 most acute geologists, and have given birth to an 

 hypothesis I shall hereafter notice. Sir H. Davy, 

 in his last singular work, thus expresses himself 

 concerning the Proteus: " My reveries became 

 discursive, I was carried, in imagination, back to 

 the primitive state of the globe, when the great 

 animals of the Sauri kind were created under the 

 pressure of a heavy atmosphere ; and my notion 

 on this subject was not destroyed, when I heard 

 from a celebrated anatomist, to whom I sent the 

 specimens I had collected, that the organization of 

 the spine of the Proteus was analogous to that of 

 one of the Sauri, the remains of which are found 

 in the older secondary strata." Sir Humphry 



1 PLATE xiv. FIG. 1. 



