132 FOSSIL SAURIANS. 



our planet, we cannot but regard with feelings of new and 

 unusual interest, the comparatively diminutive existing 

 orders of that most ancient family of quadrupeds, with the 

 very name of which we usually associate a sentiment of 

 disgust. We shall view them with less contempt, when we 

 learn from the records of geological history, that there was 

 a time when reptiles not only constituted the chief tenants 

 and most powerful possessors of the earth, but extended their 

 dominion also over the waters of the seas ; and that the an- 

 nals of their history may be traced back through thousands 

 of years, antecedent to that latest point in the progressive 

 stages of animal creation, when the first parents of the hu- 

 man race were called into existence. 



Persons to whom this subject may now be presented for 

 the first time, will receive, with much surprise, perhaps, 

 almost with incredulity, such statements as are here ad- 

 vanced. It must be admitted, that they at first seem much 

 more like the dreams of fiction and romance, than the sober 

 results of calm and deliberate investigation ; but to those 

 who will examine the evidence of facts upon which our 

 conclusions rest, there can remain no more reasonable 

 ■doubt of the former existence of these strange and curious 

 creatures, in the times and places we assign to them ; than 

 is felt by the antiquary, who, finding the catacombs of 

 Egypt stored with the mummies of Men, and Apes, and 

 Crocodiles, concludes them to be the remains of mammalia 

 and reptiles, that have formed part of an ancient population 

 on the banks of the Nile. 



