THE DINOSAURS 89 



upward of twenty-five feet in length, it is probable that 

 his combats were mainly with those of this own kind 

 and the subject of dispute some fair female upon whom 

 two rival suitors had cast covetous eyes. What a sight 

 it would have been to have seen two of these big brutes 

 in mortal combat as they charged upon each other with 

 all the impetus to be derived from ten tons of infuriate 

 flesh! We may picture to ourselves horn clashing upon 

 horn, or glancing from each bony shield until some skil- 

 ful stroke or unlucky slip placed one combatant at the 

 mercy of the other, and he went down before the blows 

 of his adversary "as falls on Mount Alvernus a thunder- 

 smitten oak." 



A pair of Triceratops horns in the National Museum 

 bears witness to such encounters, for one is broken mid- 

 way between tip and base ; . and that it was broken 

 during life is evident from the fact that the stump is 

 healed and rounded over, while the size of the horns 

 shows that their owner reached a ripe old age. 



For, unlike man and the higher vertebrates, reptiles 

 and fishes do not have a maximum standard of size 

 which is soon reached and rarely exceeded, but continue 

 to grow throughout life, so that the size of a turtle, a 

 crocodile, or a Dinosaur tells something of the duration 

 of its life. 



Before quitting Triceratops let us glance for a 

 moment at its skeleton. Now among other things a 

 skeleton is the solution of a problem in mechanics, and 

 in Triceratops the head so dominates the rest of the 

 structure that one might almost imagine the skull was 

 made first and the body adjusted to it. The great head 

 seems made not only for offence and defence; the 

 spreading frill serves for the attachment of muscles to 

 sustain the weight of the skuU, while the work of the 

 muscles is made easier by the fact that the frill reaches 



