THE REPTILE MONARCHIES. 247 



Voltzia seems a progenitor of the cypress. No Lepidodendron 

 or Sigillaria raises its green crown in all the wooded landscape. 

 The reeking marsh has disappeared, and an undulating up- 

 land occupies the continent. We glance over the place of the 

 great flat which had stretched from New England to Ala- 

 bama, and dark-wooded ranges of mountains frown down on 

 us. We search for the old shore-line which had set the 

 bounds to the empire of the sea, and it is removed. Far 

 southward it lies, within two hundred miles of the Gulf-border 

 of the human epoch so much more of the ocean's domain has 

 been wrested from his possession. 



We range over this new bright landscape. All the old 

 Palaeozoic forms of animal life are displaced. Strange tenants 

 have moved in. Instead of the feeble, lizard-shaped Amphib- 

 ians which housed themselves in a hollow stump, we find great 

 quadruped-like Labyrin'thodonts crawling like enormous toads 

 under shelter of a fringe of forest. Their ponderous bulk im- 

 presses deep foot-prints in the sand along the beach four- toed 

 and hand-like destined to remain and become a wonder, of 

 the human age. (See also Talk XXX.) 



But the Amphibians have yielded empire to another 

 dynasty. Great was Archegosaurus, but Deinosaur was greater. 

 An extraordinary and amazing figure reveals itself stalking 

 along over the beach. Evidently this monster, tall, scale- 

 covered, erect, with diminutive head, swollen abdomen, and 

 massive, trailing tail, is a representative of the ruling family. 

 He reveals massiveness without elegance; strength, without 

 grace. He marches on two feet and leaves a foot-print three- 

 toed like that of a bird. His jaws are armed with strong, 

 sharp-edged, and pointed teeth. His long bones are hollow 

 like those of birds ; the pelvis, as well as the foot, is bird-like ; 

 the sacrum has four vetebrse like that of a mammal ; the 

 neck-vertebrae are concavo-convex a's in mammals, and his lower 

 jaw has lateral motion for triturating food, as in the ox. 

 Shape like a frog; head, tail, and scales like a lizard; feet 

 like a bird ; sacrum like a mammal what shall we call the 

 creature ? 



