EARTH DRAGONS. 175 



have contributed much, for their mysterious 

 origin, sudden extinction, and wonderful organisa- 

 tion, has caused their much-despised cousins of 

 to-day to shine with a kind of reflected glory ! 



CHAPTER IX. 



EARTH DRAGONS. 



WHILST the creatures described in the last 

 chapter mark but an episode in the story we 

 are endeavouring to tell, the history of those 

 which we are immediately to consider, marks 

 an epoch of the greatest magnitude in the 

 development of animal life upon the earth. In 

 this same chapter we shall also deal with creatures 

 of brobdignagian proportions, and the question 

 of their ancestry. Our survey, however, must 

 necessarily be brief, for these themes bristle 

 with difficulties, and can only be rightly under- 

 stood by those qualified by a life study of such 

 questions, to discern the value and true per- 

 spective of the evidence so far collected. 



It will be remembered that at the very com- 

 mencement of our story we showed that the 

 origin of the Reptile people is to be traced from 

 the lowly stock to which the Frogs, Toads and 

 Newts belong. But we then made no mention 

 of the fact that simultaneously there arose from 

 this same stock a second group, which, develop- 

 ing along different lines to those followed by the 

 main branch, terminated in a coterie of forms 



