THE EMPIRE OF THE GREAT REPTILES. iSi 



representing the less specialised and less ornate building. 

 As yet the origin of that idea, and the mode of carrying it 

 out to completion, remain unknown, except to the Architect 

 and Builder, who may reveal them to earnest seekers for truth 

 in His own good time. 



As to Imks of connection with the Mammalia, these are still 

 more obscure. In the Mesozoic the mammals are represented 

 as yet only by a few small species allied to the pouched 

 quadrupeds (Marsupials) of Australia, and these are closely 

 linked with some of the smaller carnivorous Mammalia of the 

 early Tertiary ; but neither approach very closely to any known 

 reptilian types. Nor have we yet any connecting links between 

 the great marine reptiles and the Cetaceans and Sirenians 

 which in the Tertiary take their place in the sea. 



It is an interesting fact, to come before us in our next 

 chapter, that the great land reptiles of the Mesozoic survived 

 long enough to become contemporary with the introduction 

 and first luxuriance of the modern types of vegetation in the 

 later Cretaceous. It would be natural to suppose that acres"'* 

 to these grea* supplies of better food .vould have stimulated 

 the increase and development of the herbivorous species, and 

 would have indirectly had the same effect on those that were 

 carnivorous ; but the opposite result seems to have followed, 

 and in the next period the reptiles altogether gave place to the 

 mammals, unless, indeed, they were themselves by some 

 mysterious and comparatively rapid process transformed into 

 Mammalia, to suit them to the better conditions of an improved 

 world. 



So far as yet known, the reign of reptiles was world-wide in 

 its time ; and the imagination is taxed to conceive of a state of 

 things in which the seas swarmed with great reptiles on every 

 coast, when the land was trodden by colossal reptilian bipeds 

 and quadrupeds, in comparison with some of which our 

 elephants are pigmies, and when the air was filled with the 

 grotesque and formidable Pterodactyls. Yet this is no fancy 



