REVIEWS — POPULAR GEOLOGY. 409 



fast siDking, and, as the light thickens, the reaches of the neighbouring river dis- 

 play their frequent dimples, and now and anon long scaly jacks are raised over 

 its surface. Its numerous crocodileans are astir ; and now they quit the stream, 

 and we see its thick hedge-like lines of equeseticeal open and again close, as they 

 rustle through, to scour in quest of prey, the dark meadows that line its banks- 

 There are tortoises that will this evening find their protecting armour of carapace 

 and plastron all too weak, and close their long lives of centuries. And now we 

 saunter downwards to the shore, and see the ground swell breaking white in the 

 calm against ridges of coral scarce less white. The shores are strewed with shells 

 of pearl. The whorled Ammonite and the Nautilus ; and amid the gleam ganoi- 

 dal scales, reflected from the green depths beyond, we may see the phosphoric trail 

 of the Beleramite, and its path is over shells of strange form and name, — the 

 sedentary Gryphsea, the Pema, and the Plagiostoma. 



" But, lo 1 yet another monster. A snake-like form, surmounted by a crocodilean 

 head, rises high out of the water within yonder coral ledge, and the fiery, sinister 

 eyes peer inquiringly round, as if in quest of prey. The body is but dimly seen, 

 but it is short and bulky compared with the swan-like neck, and mounted on pad- 

 dles instead of limbs; so that the entire creature, wholly unlike anything which 

 now exists, has been likened to a vast boa constrcitor threaded through the body 

 of a turtle. We have looked upon the Pleuosaurus. And now outside the ledge 

 there is a huge crocodilean head raised, and a monstrous eye, huger than that of 

 any other living creature, — for it measures a full foot across, — glares upon the 

 slimmer and less powerful reptile, aud in an instant the long neck and small head 

 disappear. That monster of the immense eye, — an eye so constructed that its 

 focus can be altered at will, and made to compromise either near or distant 

 objects, and the organ itself adapted either to examine microscopically or to ex- 

 plore as a telescope, — is another be-paddled reptile of the sea, the Tchyosaurus, 

 or fish-lizard. But the night comes on, and the shadows of the woods and rocks 

 deepen ; there are uncouth sounds along the beach and in the forest ; and new 

 monsters of yet stranger shape are dimly discovered moving amid the uncertain 

 gloom. 



" Reptiles, reptiles, reptiles, — flying, swimming, waddling, walking, — the age is 

 that of the cold-blooded, ungenial reptiles ; and, save in the dwarf and inferior 

 forms of the marsupials and insectivora, not one of the honest mammals has yet 

 appeared. And now the moon rises in clouded majesty ; aud now her I'ed wake 

 brightens in one long strip of the dark sea ; and we may mark where the Ceteo- 

 saurus, a sort of reptileau whale, comes into view as it crosses the lighted track, 

 and is straightway lost in the gloom. But the night grows dangerous, and these 

 monster-haunted woods were not planted for man. Let us return then to the safer 

 and better furnished world of the present time, and to our secure and quiet 

 homes." 



The above may appear but the vision of a poetic fancy, but " those 

 who have read of the book of nature " can testify to its reality ; 

 and to our readers it is a sample of much else in the volume which 



