Geological Age of Reptiles. 359 
heard this fire ; its noise resembled that of fired wet gunpowder. I 
ordered him to lower the vane and come down, but scarcely had he 
taken the vane from its place, when the fire fixed itself upon the top 
of the main-mast, from which it was impossible to remove it.” 
23. Since, then, the conducting power of bodies differs only in 
degree, and that the action by which they are assailed is the result of 
a great natural agent quite independent of them, we may expect to 
find all bodies liable to be assailed by lightning, though the effects 
may be most apparent when the conducting power is imperfect. 
Thus we find cases on record, of ships struck by lightning in which 
no metallic spindles were present, or other iron work about the mast- 
head ;* moreover, it is by no means an uncommon circumstance to 
find trees and rocks rent asunder by lightning, and to hear of men 
and quadrupeds, even in a plain and open country, destroyéd at the 
time of a thunder-storm, when the electric matter strikes the earth’s 
surface. [A sequel is promised, which has not arrived.]—Ed. of 
Am. Jour. 
Ant. XVII.— The Geological Age of Reptiles; by Giwzon Man- 
TELL, Esq. F.R.S. &c. &e. 
[From the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal.] 
Amone the numerous interesting facts which the researches of 
modern geologists have brought to light, there is none more extra- 
ordinary and imposing than the discovery, that there was a period 
When the earth was peopled by oviparous quadrupeds of a most ap- 
palling magnitude, and that reptiles were the Lords of the Creation, 
before the existence of the human race! These creatures of the an- 
cient world, many of which, from their extraordinary size and form, 
tival the fabled monsters of antiquity, existed in immense numbers, 
and in latitudes now too cold for the habitation of modern oviparous 
 quadrupeds. Their remains occur in strata far more ancient than 
those which contain the reliquiz of viviparous animals, and are found 
in marine as well as in fresh water deposites. Some of them, from 
their organization, have been evidently fitted to live i the sea only, 
while others were terrestrial, and many were inhabitants of the lakes 
and rivers. The animal and vegetable remains with which the fossil 
el a 
* See Philosophical Transactions, vols. xlix. and Ixix. damage done to the sheer 
hulk at Plymouth, and on board the Atlas, East Indiaman. 
