MONSTROSITIES 301 



In this connection it is interesting to note that in the Yoric 

 Museuin there is a unique Plesiosaur. It is ticketed PL Zet- 

 landicus (Phillips) from the Lias of Lofthouse'near ' Radnor. It 

 has a much shorter neck and a much 

 larger head -than the ordinary Plesio- 

 saurs. It may be one of the transition 



forms between the Ichthyosaurs and 

 the Plesiosaurs. Its large head is not 



Ti ^1 j_ r T 1 .1 T. • 1 Fig. 94. — [a\ distal row of car- 



unlike that of an Ichthyosaur. It is the p,i bor>es; (V metacarpal bones 



only example known of this species. °f "^« "ght manus (dorsal aspect) 



._, , of Water Tortoise ; Mammals, by 



i hen let us compare for a moment Flower and Lydekker, p. 48. 

 the carpal and metacarpal bones of 



certain animals. In the Water Tortoise we find two regular 

 rows of carpal bones, of five bones, in each row, each' meta- 

 carpal bone articulating with only one of the carpal bones, as 

 shown in Fig. 94 ; while in the hand of the Plesiosaur (Fig. 93) 

 we find the carpal bones reduced, and huddled up in two' irregular 

 rows, the metacarpal bones articulating quite differently from 

 those of the Water Tortoise, although the number of metacarpal 

 bones is the same in both animals. 



Such a difference in the disposition of the carpal bones, and in 

 their articulation with the metacarpal bones, in these two animals 

 may have occurred gradually, but there is no good reason why it 

 could not have occurred suddenly by a process which we would 

 now call monstrous, or, to use a scientific term, teratological. 



There is one other great conclusion to be drawn from the study 

 of the records of sex-digitate men and women. In spite of their 

 marrying individuals in whose families no such abnormality 

 occurred, sex-digitation, as we ha've seen, persistently appeared 

 among their descendants, so that the notion which some 

 evolutionists hold, viz., that a variation which may suddenly 



