ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 57 
was nearly 50 feet long, and is estimated to have weighed about 20 
tons. Its head was small, and its neck long. It was plantigrade, 
and each footprint occupied an area of about 1 square yard. 
Only two days ago, whilst writing these lines, I received from 
Prof. O. C. Marsh another token of his unflagging zeal in the study of 
these Jurassic forms of reptilian life, in a paper on the Diplodocide, 
Dinosaurs distinguished by the ‘ doubleness” of their chevrons, 
The skull figured by Prof. Marsh is so perfect that every suture is 
discernible, and the general figure is undistorted. The teeth, in 
several rows, are weak, cylindrical, adapted for plucking soft vege- 
table food. The snout has a small oval vacuity in the maxilla, 
and a larger antorbital opening. ‘The orbit is situated very 
posteriorly, being nearly over the articulation of the lower jaw.” 
The external nostril is large and on the top of the head, between the 
upper borders of the orbits. 
The flood of light which is now coming from the New World to 
illuminate our darkness, in return for the feeble glimmerings of 
truth that we (whose best ‘ finds” are commonly only a few muti- 
lated fragments of a skeleton) have been able to evolve at the cost 
of much toil and frequent stumbling and many disappointments, 
would make us envious of their better fortune, were envy possible. 
Happily it is unknown among us, and we rejoice in their success. 
And now, Gentlemen, I must conclude. Ithank you for having 
hstened so long to what, I fear, must have been somewhat wearisome 
to those whose chief interest 1s concentrated in the inanimate world. 
Yet some acquaintance with paleontology is indispensable even to 
such ; for the light which the dry bones of the past cast upon the 
physical history of our globe, often is a very precious aid to the 
decipherment of its frequently almost illegible and obscure pages. 
Can these dry bones live again and tell their tale? Yes, they not 
only can, but they do; being dead they yet speak a language audible 
to the attentive ear, and intelligible to the receptive mind. 
As the paleontologist surveys the past, he sees, as in Ezekiel’s 
allegory, bone come to its bone, sinews and flesh come upon them, 
and the skin cover them; his imagination breathes into them life ; 
and the past is no more the region of the dead, but peopled with a 
countless multitude of living beings, links in that wonderful chain 
of life, of which the earliest were forged in the remotest ages, when 
our globe first was habitable; the intermediate ones are those 
around us; and the latest are those of a far distant future.. 
