360 Geological Age of Reptiles; 



bones are associated, belong also to a very different order of things 

 from that in which the modern oviparous quadrupeds are placed 5 

 and we are compelled to conclude that \he condition of the earth, at 

 the period when it was peopled by reptiles, must have been wholly 

 different from its present state, and that it probably was' then unfit for 

 the habitation of animals of a more perfect organization. It is, more- 

 over, interesting to remark, that some of these ancient and lost races 

 are, as it were, the types of the existing orders and genera; and that 

 in the pigmy Monitor and Iguana of modern times, we perceive stri- 

 king resemblances to the colossal Megalosaurus and Iguanodon of 

 the ancient world. 



It is also worthy of observation, that, as in the present epoch the 

 herbivorous quadrupeds are those of the greatest magnitude, so at 

 the period when reptiles were the principal inhabitants of our planet, 

 the herbivorous were those of the most gigantic proportions. The 

 geological period when the existence of reptiles commenced must, 

 according to the present state of our knowledge, be placed immedi- 

 ately after the formation of the coal measures; the remains of Moni- 

 tors having been found in the bituminous slate of Thuringia ; and 

 ithose of a crocodile in the gypseous red sandstone of England : but 

 at is not till we arrive at the Lias that the remains of reptiles occur 

 in any considerable quantity. At that period the earth must have 

 ^teemed with oviparous quadrupeds ; and the enaliosauri, or those 

 which inhabited the sea, appear to have been equally numerous with 

 those of the land and rivers. The prodigious quantity of the remains 

 <of these animals which has, within a comparatively short period, been 

 found in England alone, is truly astonishing ; and if to these we add 

 the immense numbers that have been discovered in France, Ger- 

 many, h,c., and reflect that for one individual found in a fossil state, 

 ihousands must have been devoured or decomposed ; and that even 

 of those that are fossilized, the number that comes under the notice 

 of the naturalist must be trifling compared W'ith the quantities unob- 

 served or destroyed by the laborers, we shall have a faint idea of the 

 myriads of " cree/;i?7o- things''^ which inhabited the ancient world. 



In England, the lias contains more especially the remains of two 

 extinct marine genera, the Ichthyosaurus, (fish-like lizard,) and Ple- 

 siosaurus, (animal resembling a lizard,) whose osteology is most ex- 

 traordinary, combining chai-acters observable in the cetacea, fishes, 

 and saurians, but yet decidedly belonging to the order of Reptiles. 

 The Ichthyosaurus, of which several species have been discovered. 



