438 



THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 



oolitic or cretaceous seas may be judged of by the frequency 

 of their remains, and the 120 species that have been hitherto 

 discovered. Belemnites two feet long have been found, so 

 that, to judge by analogies, the animals to which they belonged 

 as cuttle-bones must have measured eighteen or twenty feet 

 from end to end, a size which reduces the rapacious Onycho- 

 teuthis of the present seas to dwarfish dimensions. 



But of all the denizens of the mesozoic seas none were more 

 formidable than the gigantic Saurians, whose approach put 

 even the voracious sharks to flight. The first of these monsters 

 that raises its frightful head above the waters is the dreadful 

 Ichthyosaurus, a creature thirty or even fifty feet long, half 



fish, half lizard, and combining in 

 strange assemblage the snout of the 

 porpoise, the teeth of the crocodile, 

 and the paddles of the whale. Sin- 

 gular above all is the enormous eye, 

 in size surpassing a man's head. Woe 

 to the fish that meets its appalling 

 glance ! No rapidity of flight, no weapon, be it sword or saw, 

 avails, for the long-tailed gigantic saurian darts like lightning 

 through the water, and its dense harness bids defiance to every 

 attack. Not only have fifteen distinct species of Ichthyosauri 

 been distinguished, but the remains of crushed and partially 

 digested fish-bones and scales, which are found within their 

 skeleton, indicate the precise nature of their food. Their fossil 

 remains abound along the whole extent of the lias formation, 

 from the coasts of Dorset, through Somerset and Leicestershire 

 to the coast of Yorkshire, but the largest specimens have been 

 found in Franconia. 



Along with this monster, another and still more singular 



Ichthyosaurus communis. 



Plesioaaurus. 



deformity makes its appearance, the Plesiosaurus, in which the 

 fabulous chimasras and hydras of antiquity seem to start into 



