176 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT 



The monster thus equipped as a prince of death be- 

 longed to the order of Squalidae. Paleontology calls him 

 Carcharodon Megalodon. The shark of to-day, the terror 

 of the seas, gives an approximate idea of him, in so far 

 as the dwarf can give an idea of the giant. 



Other Squali abound in the same stone, all fierce 

 gullets. It contains Oxyrhinae (Oxyrhina Xiphodon, 

 Agass.), with teeth shaped like pointed cleavers ; Hemi- 

 pristes (Hemipristis Serra, Agass.), whose jaws are fur- 

 nished with curved and toothed Malay creeses ; Lamiae 

 (Lamia Denticulata, Agass.), whose mouths bristle with 

 flexuous, steeled daggers, flattened on one side, convex 

 on the other ; Notidani (Notidanus Primigenius, Agass.), 

 whose sunk teeth are crowned with radiate indentations. 



This dental arsenal, the eloquent witness of the old 

 butcheries, can hold its own with the Crocodile of Nimes, 

 the Diana of Marseilles, the Horse of Vaison. With its 

 panoply of carnage, it tells me how extermination came 

 at all times to lop off the surplus of life ; it says : 



" On the very spot where you stand meditating upon 

 a shiver of stone, an arm of the sea once stretched, filled 

 with truculent devourers and peaceable victims. A long 

 gulf occupied the future site of the Rhone Valley. Its 

 billows broke at no great distance from your dwelling." 



Here, in fact, are the cliffs of the bank, in such a state 

 of preservation that, on concentrating my thoughts, I 

 seem to hear the thunder of the waves. Sea-urchins, 

 Lithodomi, Petricolse, Pholaidids have left their sig- 

 natures upon the rock : hemispherical recesses large 

 enough to contain one's fist, round cells, cabins with a 

 narrow conduit-pipe through which the recluse received 

 the incoming water, constantly renewed and laden with 

 nourishment. Sometimes, the erstwhile occupant is there, 



