428 .Reviews — Creatures of Other Days. 



to the welfare of intellectual communities ; and fanatical ignorance 

 has only damaged the credit of its votaries. Figures of the restored 

 Hadrosaurus and Dryptosaurus (Lcslaps) are reproduced in Chap. vii. 

 in two plates from the Central Park Reports for 1869-70 ; that of 

 Hadrosaurus is also given at page 488 of J. La Conte's " Elements 

 of Geology," 1886. 



Still more strongly may it be said of Mr. Hutchinson's work 

 (in presenting to the general public so many exemplifications of 

 animal variety resulting from the fixed and inexplicable laws of 

 life in successive ages, long before Man's appearance on Earth), 

 that he not only opens up for many, unthought-of scenes with 

 strange actors, but strengthens the intellectual growth of the rising 

 generation ; for, the more that is known of the Earth and its 

 history, the broader and better is popular knowledge in general, 

 and the more exact and aptly useful is professional knowledge. 



The accepted series of Geological Formations characteristic of the 

 several periods, when Invertebrates, Fishes, Reptiles, Mammals, and 

 Man have been successively abundant or dominant, is given in the 

 Appendix i. A classification of Vertebrate Animals, in Appendix ii., 

 shows how the many kinds, both existing and extinct, fall into 

 order, according to their known structure, and form correlative 

 groups, linking fishes, at the lowest end of the scale, to Man at the 

 highest. With these plans or sj'nopses of nature before him, the 

 reader can better grasp the meaning of the author's arrangement 

 of his subject, and the details given in his twelve chapters. 



The markings left on mud-fiats and other soft surfaces by various 

 burrowing, trailing, crawling, and walking animals are referred to 

 as " footprints on the sands of time," in Chap. i. ; those made by 

 four-footed animals being chiefly noticed. The Fishes, as the lowest 

 of the back-boned animals, come in Chap, ii., with notes as to their 

 evidence of the " law of progress." As in all the other chapters, the 

 author makes careful allusion to those who have collected, recorded, 

 and elucidated the fossils. 



The Batrachian and other Amphibia of the present day are the 

 tropical Coecilians, Illyrian Proteus, American Siren, Axolotl, and 

 Menobranchus, Javanese Menopoma, European Newts, and world- 

 wide Frogs and Toads. Of these the Frog group is represented 

 in the Tertiary formations only; but, as Chap. iii. fully shows, 

 there were very numerous creatures more or less allied to such 

 Salamanders as Menopoma and its allies in foregone periods of 

 the Earth's history, when the Carboniferous, Permian, and Triassic 

 beds were being formed. Of these the Archcegosaurus and Lahyrin- 

 iliodon are frequently mentioned. Their sculptured skull-bones and 

 dermal plates, their teeth with internal labyrinthic structure, and 

 their peculiar skeletal bones, are very characteristic, sometimes 

 giving a salamandroid, and sometimes an elongate fish-like shape. 

 The different size of the well-known Triassic prints of the fore and 

 hind feet at first suggested a somewhat frog-like, shambling body 

 (Owen) ; and as such it appeared in various text-books in 1850-60. 

 During that period it had taken the more toad-like position in 



