VI 



FLYING REPTILES 



The Flying Reptiles, Pterodactyls, or as Professor 

 Seeley has aptly termed them, Dragons of the Air, were 

 passed over in previous editions of this book, but they 

 well deserve a chapter, the more that when the Mosa- 

 saurs were the rulers of the seas the pterodactyls held 

 and had held for ages the empire of the air. For in the 

 Jurassic, when birds in the shape of Archa3opteryx were 

 just beginning to flutter, pterodactyls had long since 

 solved the problem of flight and were present, big and 

 little, in swarms. They must have been particularly 

 abundant about the Solenhofen Sea of Central Europe 

 whose soft, muddy bottom, long ago hardened to rock, 

 furnishes the best lithographic stone, for in this stone 

 beautifully preserved by Nature's lithography occur the 

 remains of many species ranging in size from that of a 

 sparrow to that of a hawk. 



And just as Pterodactyls played the part of birds as 

 regards flight, so they seem like the birds to have been 

 creatures of varying size and diverse habits. 



There were pterodactyls as big as an albatross and 

 that, like the albatross, sailed majestically over the sea; 

 others, no bigger than a sparrow, fluttered 1 merrily over 

 the land in pursuit of insects: there were pterodactyls 

 with long tails, pterodactyls with short tails and ptero- 

 dactyls with no tails at all ; and while some flew by day, 

 others, to judge from the size of their eyes, anticipated 

 the owls and flew by night. 



As to the covering of pterodactyls, the evidence and 

 balance of opinion is that unlike most reptiles, they were 



1 This has been questioned, owing to the peculiar structure of the 

 wing and it is possible that even the small pterodactyls sailed like our 

 swallows. 



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