ANOTHER SEA SERPENT. 565 



o-etnoved around it, and underneath laj^ some ribs three inches in diameter, 

 with other bones. 



The rocks in the vicinity were fall of fragments. Selecting one of 

 these, we lifted off a large cap of sandstone above it and disclosed a perfect 

 ■shoulder, ulna and radius, of another somewhat smaller animal, the thick- 

 ness of the bones averaging about five or six inches. This, lying as it was 

 like a beautiful sculpture on the sandstone, we succeeded in removing ex- 

 :actly as we found it. Several smaller bones of animals of various sizes 

 were discovered. We succeeded in dragging our prizes, on a temporary 

 sled, down the cliff to the road, and bringing home to the neighboring vil- 

 'lage a wagon load of bones and depositing them in a shanty, preparatory 

 to packing them off East to Prof. Marsh, of Yale College, for identification. 

 'The monster to whom the bones belonged could not have been less than 

 sixty or even eighty feet long. 



Along the shores of this ancient sea squatted and leapt the dinosaurus 

 or the terrible lizards, one of whom (the l^laps) was 24 feet long. From 

 the length of his hinder legs, it is supposed that he was able to walk up- 

 right like a biped, carrying his head 12 feet in the air. There was another 

 still larger, 35 feet long, and of the same habits. In the air overhead, huge 

 bat-like creatures (Pterodactyls), combining a lizard, a crocodile, and a bat, 

 "flapped their feather}^ wings (25 feet from tip to tip) over the sea, plunging 

 every now and then into the Avater for a fish. There were birds, too ; a 

 •diver (Hesperornis) five and one-half feet high, and some, strange to say, 

 with spinal vertebras like a fish and armed with pointed teeth in both jaws. 

 Enormous tortoises" and turtles were the boatmen of the age. One dis- 

 covered by Cope, In Kansas, was fifteen feet across the end of one flap»per 

 to the end of the other. Huge clams also lay scattered over those ancient 

 ■shores, twenty-six inches in diameter. Our saurian did not fall short of 

 the biggest of these monsters ; he could not have been less than sixty or 

 seventy feet long, and probably either a Mosasaurus or lizard, allied to the 

 Elasmosaurus, 



The ocean in which these creatures lived was gradually enclosed by the 

 upheaval of the sea bottom on the west, and soon became almost an inland 

 sea. As the elevator continued and its area was contracted, ridges would 

 ansa, insolating portions of the sea into salt lakes and imprisoning the life 

 in them. The stronger soon destroyed the weaker, till the water, by evapo- 

 ration, becoming shallower, all life finally died, became skeletons, and, in 

 •course of ages, fossils in sandstone. — Colorado Springs Gazette. 



ANOTHER SEA SERPENT. 



On the 2d of June last the royal yacht Osborne, while cruising off the 

 •coast of Sicily, encountered what was supposed to be by many on board 

 the veritable sea serpent. According to Lieutenant Haynes, his attention 

 was first attracted, in a perfectly smooth sea, hj seeing a ridge of fins above 



