READING THE RIDDLES OF THE ROCKS 105 



be gathered from the structure of the leg-bones, for solid 

 bones mean either a sluggish animal or a creature of 

 more or less aquatic habits, while hollow bones em- 

 phatically declare a land animal, and an active one at 

 that; and this, in the case of the Dinosaurs, hints at 

 predatory habits, the ability to catch and eat their 

 defenceless and more sluggish brethren. A claw, or, 

 better yet, a tooth, may confirm or refute this hint; 

 for a blunt claw could not be used in tearing prey limb 

 from limb, nor would a double-edged tooth, made for 

 rending flesh, serve for champing grass. 



But few bones of the feet, and especially the fore feet, 

 are present, these smaller parts of the skeleton having 

 been washed away before the ponderous frame was 

 buried in the sand, and the best that can be done is to 

 follow the law of probabilities and put three toes on the 

 hind foot and five on the fore, two of these last without 

 claws. Here the law of probabilities failed : there were 

 four toes and a vestige of the fifth on the hind feet, 

 shown by complete specimens in the American Museum 

 of Natural History. The single blunt round claw a- 

 mong our bones shows, as do the teeth, that Triceratops 

 was herbivorous; it also pointed a little downward, and 

 this tells that in the living animal the sole of the foot 

 was a thick, soft pad, somewhat as it is in the elephant 

 and rhinoceros, and that the toes were not entirely free 

 from one another. There are less than a dozen vertebrae 

 and still fewer ribs, besides half a barrelful of pieces, 

 from which to reconstruct a backbone twenty feet long. 

 That the ribs are part from one side and part from an- 

 other matters no more than it did in the case of the 

 leg-bones; but the backbone presents a more difficult 

 problem, since the pieces are not like so many check- 

 ers all made after one pattern but each has an indi- 

 viduality of its own. The total number of vertebrae 



