2 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



means to attack, if once it receives a stroke from the powerful bony snout of our 

 saurian (for he means to use it as a battering ram), it will lie a crushed and help- 

 less mass upon the surface and the bubbling waters will suck it in ; on the bottom 

 of the ocean it will be dragged hither and thither by sharks and other rapacious 

 fishes which will have many a dainty feast from its body. The soft mud of the 

 ocean's bed will at last cover and bury the skeleton and preserve it for ages ; fu- 

 ture explorers will gather up and admire the finely marked bones for the attach- 

 ment of muscles. A fleet of smaller saurians heave in sight ; they twine their long 

 delicate necks together or dive beneath the surface for some luckless fish, which, 

 on again appearing, they hold in their long glistening teeth. "The air is dark- 

 ened by great flying saurians that flap their leathery wings over the deep," or 

 dive in pursuit of prey. As evening approaches they flock to the shore and sus- 

 pend themselves by their claw-armed fingers to the cliffs. Wandering along the 

 shore, I find that a huge fish, twenty feet in length has become entangled in the 

 shifting sands of a shallow bay. It seems to be in agony, and, seeking the cause, 

 I find it has been pierced by the long bony snout of some smaller fish that uses 

 this weapon as the sword-fish of modern oceans does his sword. The beach is 

 strewn with large oyster-like shells, twenty-seven inches in diameter. " They 

 seem to be the remains of a feast of some titanic race." 



As the explorer approaches the beds of the Niobrara Group, he often sees in 

 the distance a city of imposing grandeur. Wide streets, lined with buildings of 

 dazzling whiteness meet his eye, and only a near approach will convince him 

 that he is looking at nature's handiwork. The rains of ages have cut and fash- 

 ioned the soft limestone into the semblance of cities. The shale beds of this for- 

 mation contain great quantities of the salts of soda and magnesia and the waters flow . 

 ing from or through these beds are strongly impregnated with "alkali." They 

 also contain iron pyrites and gypsum. I have often, while wandering along 

 some wash (where the chalk and shale has been denuded), found some fossil 

 bones scattered along, and by following them up to where bones project from 

 bluff or bank, I find I have stumbled upon the burial ground of a denizen of the 

 ancient cretaceous seas. Perhaps it is a species of Leiodon and reaches a length 

 of eighty feet. Its long teeth glisten in the sunlight, and its powerful paddles 

 reach far in the bluffs on either side, requiring days of toil to lay them bare. 

 The great bony snout (the characteristic of all his race), which, with other pe- 

 culiaritiee, places him in Cope's new sub order of Pythonomorpha, Ues pointing 

 heavenward. I find that he is without an expansible gullet, as in modern ser- 

 pents; another method of swallowing his food whole is given 'him, as without it 

 he could not exist, as he has no teeth for masticating, and I find that the jaws are 

 provided with a set of hinges, of ball and socket pattern, just back of the dentary 

 bone. He is thus enabled to expand the cavity of the mouth. All now that was 

 necessary to allow the passage of large morsels into the stomach, was a loose, 

 baggy, pelican-like throat, with which he was doubtless provided. His teeth were 

 long and conical, slightly recurved ; his head long and conical, with eyes directed 

 upward. He, perhaps, had the faculty of flattening his head like the python. 



