88 THE CKUISE OF THE BETSEY OK, 



CHAPTER VI. 



I RECKON among my readers a class of non-geologists, who 

 think my geological chapters would be less dull if I left out 

 the geology; and another class of semi-geologists, who say 

 there was decidedly too much geology in my last. With the 

 present chapter, as there threatens to be an utter lack of 

 science in the earlier half of it, and very little, if any, in the 

 latter half, I trust both classes may be in some degree satis- 

 fied. It will bear reference to but the existing system of 

 things, assuredly not the last of the consecutive creations, 

 and to a species of animal that, save in the celebrated 

 Guadaloupe specimens, has not yet been found locked up in 

 stone. There have been much of violence and suffering in 

 the old immature stages of being, much, from the era of the 

 Holoptychius, with its sharp murderous teeth and strong 

 armour of bone, down to that of the cannibal Ichthyosaurus, 

 that bears the broken remains of its own kind in its bowels, 

 much, again, from the times of the crocodile of the Oolite, 

 down to the times of the fossil hyena and gigantic shark of 

 the Tertiary. Nor, I fear, have matters greatly improved in 

 that latest-born creation in the series, that recognises as its 

 delegated lord the first tenant of earth accountable to his 

 Maker. But there is a better and a last creation coming, in 

 which man shall re-appear, not to oppress and devour his 



