130 FOSSIL SAUIIIANS. 



or lash of his tail, could in an instant have demolished the 

 Couguar or the Crocodile ? Secure within the panoply of 

 his bony armour, where was the enemy that would dare 

 encounter this Leviathan of the Pampas ? or, in what more 

 powerful creature can we find the cause that has effected 

 the extirpation of his race ? 



His entire frame was an apparatus of colossal mechanism, 

 adapted exactly to the work it had to do ; strong and pon- 

 derous, in proportion as this work was heavy, and calcu- 

 lated to be the vehicle of life and enjoyment to a gigantic 

 race of quadrupeds ; which, though they have ceased to be 

 counted among the living inhabitants of our planet, have, in 

 their fossil bones, left behind them imperishable monuments 

 of the consummate skill with which they were constructed. 

 Each limb, and fragment of a limb, forming co-ordinate 

 parts of a well-adjusted and perfect whole ; and through all 

 their deviations from the form and proportion of the limbs 

 of other quadrupeds, affording fresh proofs of the infinitely 

 varied, and inexhaustible contrivances of Creative Wisdom. 



SECTION III. 



FOSSIL SAURIAN S. 



In those distant ages ihat elapsed during the formation 

 of strata of the secondary series, so large a field was oc- 

 cupied by reptiles, referable to the order of Saurians, that 

 it becomes an important part of our inquiry to examine the 

 history and organization of these curious reUcs of ancient 

 creations, which are known to us only in a fossil state. A 

 task like this may appear quite hopeless to persons unaccus- 

 tomed to the investigation of subjects of such remote an- 

 tiquity ; yet Geology, as now pursued, with the aid of com- 

 parative anatomy, supplies abundant evidence of the struc- 



