THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 1 55 



MESOZOIC REPTILES : HAVE THEY LIVING 

 REPRESENTATIVES ? 



Read before the Geological Section, April 22nd, i8g2. 

 BY COL. C. C. GRANT. 



In answer to this question, "Decidedly not," was the. reply of 

 one of the greatest palaeontologists of our age. " Surely, if they had, 

 we must have obtained some remains in proof of their existence. 

 Now, as regards the mythical sea-serpent, I hold that to be merely 

 an optical delusion." Well, it may be so in some instances, but, 

 taking all the evidence into account, are we justified in ignoring 

 what has been urged in the affirmative ? 



We must not forget how . modern naturalists contemptuously 

 dismissed, as unworthy of credit, the dimensions of a cuttle-fish as 

 given by the elder Pliny and others. Instead of exaggerating the 

 size, it has been proved beyond any doubt that specimens of far 

 greater magnitude are living yet in the North Atlantic, as was shown 

 recently by Professor Varril and others. When Chevalier Bunsen, 

 of Berlin, Ambassador to the English Court, clearly pointed out 

 that the city of Memphis, in Egypt, was founded by Menes, 

 pyramids erected and copper mines worked nearly four thousand 

 years before Christ, the great German scholar was looked upon, in 

 church circles, as a dangerous Teuton, who had imbibed the false 

 chronology of the priests of Isis. When a little later the English 

 geologist, Godwin Austin, published a work and adduced positive 

 proof of man's extstence in the valley of the Nile, perhaps thousands 

 of years before a stone of the great pyramid was quarried, (3229 B.C.) 

 he was bitterly assailed for implying any doubt regarding the 

 accepted belief in the truth of Biblical chronology. He called 

 attention to the fact that when Egypt became a portion of the 

 Roman Empire the Romans erected pillar stones to mark the 

 inundation of the Nile ; that in the 2000 years which elapsed since 

 then only five feet of silt or mud had been deposited ; that pits 



