THE DINOSAURS 85 



dwelt on land and others that habitually resided in the 

 water, those that walked upright and those that crawled 

 about on all fours; and, while there are no hints that 

 any possessed the power of flight, some members of the 

 group are very bird-like in form and structure, so much 

 so that it has been thought that the two may have had a 

 common ancestry. 



The smallest of the Dinosaurs whose acquaintance we 

 have made were little larger than chickens; the largest 

 claim the distinction of being the largest known quad- 

 rupeds that have walked the face of the earth, the giants 

 not only of their day, but of all time, before whose huge 

 frames the bones of the Mammoth, that familiar by- 

 word for all things great, seem slight. 



For Brontosaurus, the Thunder Lizard, beneath 

 whose mighty tread the earth shook, and his kindred 

 were from 40 to 70 feet long and 10 to 14 feet high, their 

 thigh bones measuring 5 to 6 feet in length, while some 

 of the vertebrae were 4^ feet high, exceeding in dimen- 

 sions those of a whale. 



The group to which Brontosaurus belongs, including 

 Diplodocus and Morosaurus, is distinguished by a 

 large, though rather short, body, very long neck and tail, 

 and, for the size of the animal, a very small head. In 

 fact, the head was so small and, in the case of Diplodo- 

 cus, so poorly provided with teeth that it must have 

 been quite a task, or a long-continued pleasure, according 

 to the state of its digestive apparatus, for the animal to 

 have eaten its daily meal. 



An elephant weighing 5 tons eats 100 pounds of hay 

 and 25 pounds of grain for his day's ration; but, as this 

 food is in a comparatively concentrated form, it would 

 require at least twice this weight of green fodder. 



It is a difficult matter to estimate the weight of a live 

 Diplodocus or a Brontosaurus, but it is pretty safe to 



