86 THE PHYSICAL KINSHIP 



the Mesozoic ages was represented by the most 

 immense and powerful monsters that have ever 

 Hved upon the earth. Mesozoic civiHsation was 

 pre-eminently saurian. Reptiles were supreme 

 everywhere — on sea and land and in the air. Their 

 rulership of the world was not so bloody and 

 masterful as man's, but quite as remorseless. 

 Imagine an aristocracy made up of pterosaurs 

 (flying reptiles), with teeth, and measuring 20 feet 

 between wing - tips ; great plesiosaurs (serpent 

 reptiles) and ichthyosaurs (fish reptiles), enormous 

 bandits of the seas; and dinosaurs and atlanto- 

 saurs, giant land lizards, 30 feet high and from 

 50 to 100 feet in length. A government of demagogs 

 is bad enough, as king-ridden mankind well know, 

 but dragons would be worse, if possible. The 

 atlantosaurs were the largest animals that have 

 ever walked upon the earth. They were huge 

 plant-eaters inhabiting North America. It has 

 been surmised that one of these behemoths ' may 

 have consumed a whole tree for breakfast.' It was 

 the mighty saurians of the Mesozoic time who 

 brought into everlasting subordination the pisca- 

 torial civilisation of the Devonian and carboniferous 

 ages. 



Toward the latter part of the Reptilian Age, 

 and somewhere along about the time of the ap- 

 pearance of hard-wood forests, came the birds, 

 those beautiful and emotional beings who, in spite 

 of human destructiveness, continue to fill our 

 groves and gardens with the miracles of beauty 

 and song. The bird is a ' glorified reptile.' How 



