THE CHALK PERIOD 



The Pterosaurs, or flying reptiles, made, as we have 

 said elsewhere, a great advance. Williston regards 

 them as having come to excel all other flying vertebrate 

 animals. Some attained a wing-spread of twenty feet, 

 and they could fly far and fast. They were all short- 

 tailed ; some of them probably could scarcely walk, and 

 the larger of them had no teeth. Their bills resembled 

 those of modern birds, and they have been styled the 

 kingfishers of the Cretaceous seas. Terrific to look upon, 

 they were probably not very deadly animals except to 

 small fishes. The lizards did not make much progress ; 

 but the snakes made their first appearance, though they 

 remained small ; and the mammals showed little progress 

 from the forms which were found in the previous era of 

 the Jurassic. 



At the close of the geological period whose natural 

 physiognomy we have thus traced, Europe was still far 

 from displaying the configuration which it now presents. 

 A map of the period would represent the great basin 

 of Paris (with the exception of a zone of Chalk), the 

 whole of Switzerland, the greater part of Spain and Italy, 

 the whole of Belgium, Holland, Prussia, Hungary, 

 Wallachia, and Northern Russia as one vast sheet of 

 water. A band of Jurassic rocks still connected France 

 and England at Cherbourg which disappeared at a later 

 period, and caused the separation of the British Islands 

 from what is now France. 





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