130 Things not generally Known. 



Edentata of former ages and the large herbivorous mammalia 

 of our own times. 



THE PTEEODACTYL THE FLYING DEAGON. 



The Tilgate beds of the Wealden series, just mentioned, have 

 yielded numerous fragments of the most remarkable reptilian 

 fossils yet discovered, and whose wonderful forms denote them 

 to have thronged the shallow seas and bays and lagoons of the 

 period. In the grounds of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham 

 the reader will find restorations of these animals sufficiently 

 perfect to illustrate this reptilian epoch. They include the iqua- 

 nodon, an herbivorous lizard exceeding in size the largest ele- 

 phant, and accompanied by the equally gigantic and carni- 

 vorous megalosaurus (great saurian), and by the two yet more 

 curious reptiles, the pylceosaurus (forest, or weald, saurian) and 

 the pterodactyl (from pteron, ( wing,' and dactylus, ' a finger'), 

 an enormous bat-like creature, now running upon the ground 

 like a bird ; its elevated body and long neck not covered with 

 feathers, but with skin, naked, or resplendent with glittering 

 scales ; its head like that of a lizard or crocodile, and of a size 

 almost preposterous compared with that of the body, with its 

 long fore extremities stretched out, and connected by a mem- 

 brane with the body and hind legs. 



Suddenly this mailed creature rose in the air, and realised 

 or even surpassed in strangeness the flying dragon of fable: its 

 fore-arms and its elongated wing-finger furnished with claws ; 

 hand and fingers extended, and the interspace filled up by a 

 tough membrane ; and its head and neck stretched out like 

 that of the heron in its flight. When stationary, its wings 

 were probably folded back like those of a bird; though perhaps, 

 by the claws attached to its fingers, it might suspend itself from 

 the branches of trees. 



MAMMALIA IN SECONDAEY EOCKS. 



It was supposed till very lately that few if any Mammalia 

 were to be found below the Tertiary rocks, i. e. those above the 

 chalk ; and this supposed fact was very comfortable to those 

 who support the doctrine of " progressive development," and 

 hold, with the notorious Vestiges of Creation, that a fish by 

 mere length of time became a reptile, a lemur an ape, and 

 finally an ape a man. But here, as in a hundred other cases, 

 facts, when duly investigated, are against their theory. A 

 mammal jaw had been already discovered by Mr. Brodie on 

 the shore at the back of Swanage Point, in Dorsetshire, when 

 Mr. Beckles, F.G.S., traced the vein from which this jaw had 

 been procured, and found it to be a stratum about five in-.-iies 



