OF CREATION. 155 



examples of these animals had already been intro- 

 duced amongst the inhabitants of our globe, and that 

 the lacertian type that exhibited in the lizards of 

 the present day had been selected, with certain modi- 

 fications, as the model of structure. We also found 

 that not only was this lizard type continued with 

 a very remarkable bird-like modification during the 

 triassic or new red sandstone period, but that it was 

 then also represented by a curious and gigantic group 

 of animals, whose analogies point rather to the frog 

 and salamander than to any other existing reptiles, 

 although some species attained the dimensions of the 

 crocodile, and exhibited also points of affinity to that 

 higher group. 



But the new red sandstone, or rather the shelly 

 limestone occurring in the middle of the sandy beds 

 of that formation on the Continent, also contains 

 some fragments, not only of teeth but of bones, which 

 indicate very distinctly the presence of a crocodilian 

 animal, whose extremities, being reduced almost to 

 the condition of paddles, could not have allowed the 

 creature to walk about readily on land. It was, 

 doubtless, an aquatic form ; but, as the crocodile of 

 the Ganges and some of the alligators of the pre- 

 sent day are also aquatic, there is in this no abso- 

 lute departure from a known and recognized rep- 

 tilian habit. 



It still remains to be seen how far this Notho- 

 saurus, * as it is called, a spurious kind of saurian, 

 was related to the crocodiles, and whether it formed 

 a passage into a group differently characterised, and 

 so constructed as to live almost exclusively in the 



* Na$3j (nothos)) illegitimate, or spurious ; truu^; (scmros), a lizard. 



