NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 79 



tiles — a portion of the terrestrial tribes whose imper- 

 fect respiratoi-y system peiiinps fitted them for enduring 

 an atmosphere not yet quite suitable for birds or mam- 

 mifers.* The specimens found in the muschelkalk are 

 allied to the crocodile and lizard tribes of the jiresent 

 day, but in the latter instance are upon a scale of mag- 

 nitude as much superior to present forms as the lepi- 

 dodendron of the coal era was superior to the dwar.^: 

 , club-mosses of our time. These saurians also combine 

 some peculiarities of structure of a most extraordinary 

 character. 



The animal to which the name icJithyosaurus has been 

 given, was as long as a young whale, and it was fitted 

 for living in the water, though breathing the atmo- 

 sphere. It had the vertebral column and general bodily 

 form of a fish, but to that were added the head and 

 breast-bone of a lizard, and the paddles of the whale 

 tribes. The beak, moreover, was that of a porpoise, 

 and the teeth were those of a crocodile. It must have 

 been a most destructive creature to the fish of those 

 early seas. 



The 2^l<''Siosaurus was of similar bulk, with a turtle-like 

 body and paddles, showing that the sea w^as its element, 

 but with a long sei'pent-like neck, terminating in a saurian 

 head, calculated to reach prey at a considerable distance. 

 These two animals, of which many varieties have been 

 discovered, constituting distinct species, ai-e supposed to 

 have lived in the shallow borders of the seas of this and 

 subsequent formations, devouring immense quantities 



* The ininiediatc efiects of the slow respiration oi' tlio reptilia are, 

 a low temperature in their bodies, and a slow consumption of food, 

 Requiring little oxygen, they could have existed in an atmosphere 

 containing a less proportion of that gas to carbonic acid gas than 

 what now obtains. 



