PLESIOSAURDS. 157 



wisdom and design, that are unfolded by the researches of 

 Geology; and supplies a new link to that important chain, 

 which connects the lost races that formerly inhabited our 

 planet, with a species that are actually living and moving 

 around ourselves.* The systematic recurrence, in animals 

 of such distant eras, of the same contrivances, similarly 

 disposed to etfect similar purposes, with analogous adapta- 

 tions to peculiar conditions of existence, shows that they all 

 originated in the same Intelligence. 



When we see the body of an Ichthyosaurus, still contain- 

 ing the food it had eaten just before its death, and its ribs 

 still surrounding the remains of fishes, that were swallowed 

 ten thousand, or more than ten times ten thousand years 

 ago, all these vast intervals seem annihilated, time altogether 

 disappears, and we are almost brought into as immediate 

 contact with events of immeasurably distant periods, as 

 with the affairs of yesterday. 



SECTION VI. 



PLESIOSAURUS.f 



We come next to consider a genus' of extinct animals, 

 nearly allied in structure to the Ichthyosaurus, and co-ex- 

 tensive with it through the middle age of our terrestrial 

 history. The discovery of this genus forms one of the most 

 important additions that Geology has made to comparative 



♦ Le temps qui repand de la dignite sur tout ce qui echappe ii son pou- 

 voir destructeur, fait voir ici un exemple singuiier de son influence : ces 

 substances si viles dans leur origine, etant rendues h la lumiere Jipres tant 

 de si^cles, deviennent d'une grande importance puis qu'elles servent k 

 remplir un nouveau chapitre dans i'histoire natureile du globe. — Bulletin 

 See. Imp. de Moscow, No. VI. 1833, p. 23, 



t See PI. 16, 17, 18, 19. 



VOL. I. — 14. 



