THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



sucn animals, what sort of stench they may have 

 sent forth into the air from their breath, how 

 in anger their heads may have gUttered, blue, 

 scarlet, sulphur, red, and how their crocodile 

 tails may have dealt out blows that would have 

 spHt the stems of palm trees and hurled the 

 muddy slime into heaps ! But even this thirty- 

 foot giant, the iguanodon, suddenly began to 

 hop away like a kangaroo in a hasty trot when 

 the atlantosaur appeared, a boa contrictor one 

 hundred and fifteen feet long that could swal- 

 low an elephant, as we are told in the legendary 

 zoology of the old Pliny. The little snake-like 

 head hangs in front and the long thin tail drags 

 out behind, but in the middle in the neighbor- 

 hood of the stomach the body swells to the size 

 of a Heidelburg casque. Under this casque-like 

 portion of the boa there are four stools, much 

 more like the supports that we set under a 

 mounted snake in the museum than true legs. 

 Each upper thigh of these legs is six feet long. 

 While this hideous machine slowly strides along 

 we can scarcely conceive how it is possible for it 

 to move such a great whale-like mass on these 

 thighs six feet long. Certainly that tiny bird- 

 like head that hangs upon the neck, not like a 

 head but rather like the tip to a tail, appears ab- 

 solutely incapable of ruling this bulky body at 

 such a distance^ So we learn that in this dragon 

 the fundamental law of all vertebral develop- 

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