n8 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



tion of " the dragon " is really a survival of the actual 

 knowledge and experience of these extinct monsters on 

 the part of " long-ago races of men." It is a curious 

 fact, mentioned by a well-known writer, Mrs. Jameson, 

 that the bones of a great fossil reptile were preserved 

 and exhibited at Aix in France as the bones of the 

 dragon slain by St. Michael, just as the bones of a 

 whale are shown as those of the mythical Dun-cow of 

 Warwick in that city. 



There are three very good reasons for not enter- 

 taining the suggestion that the tradition of the dragon 

 and similar beasts is due to human co-existence with the 

 great reptiles of the past. The first is that the age of 

 the rocks known as cretaceous and Jurassic (or oolitic), 

 in which are found the more or less complete skeletons 

 of the great saurians many bigger in the body than 

 elephants, and with huge tails in addition, iguanodon, 

 megalosaurus, diplodocus, as well as the winged ptero- 

 dactyles (see Plate II., where a representation is given of 

 what we know as to the form and bearing of two species 

 of pterodactyle) and a vast series of such creatures is 

 so enormously remote that not only man but all the 

 hairy warm-blooded animals like him, did not come into 

 existence until many millions of years after these rocks 

 had been deposited by water and the great reptiles 

 buried in them had become extinct. The cave-men of 

 the Pleistocene period are modern, even close to us, as 

 compared with the age when the great saurians flourished. 

 That was just before the time when our chalk-cliffs were 

 being formed as a slowly growing sediment on the 

 floor of a deep sea. No accurate measure of the time 

 which has elapsed since then is possible, but we find that 

 about 200 ft. thickness of deposit has been accumulated 

 since the date of the earliest human remains known to 

 us whilst over 5000 ft. have accumulated since the 



