GEOLOGY. 593 



a slender neck. The smaller species certainly lived on 

 insects, for the remains of these have been found among 

 fossilized skeletons.^ 



Certain naturalists, among them Bory de Saint-Vincent, 

 have been almost inclined to think that these fantastic ani- 

 mals may have suggested the first idea of those images of 

 dragons so frequently represented on the monuments pro- 

 duced in the infancy of art, or whose existence is affirmed 

 by inspired Avriters. This savant supposes that some 

 pterodactyls, having survived the era of general extinc- 

 tion, may have been contemporary with the first men; 

 that these, struck with their strange appearance, possibly 

 preserved a few likenesses of them among their imperfect 

 hieroglyphic designs, and that mythological tradition after- 

 wards more or less distorted the type. 



The second section of the Jurassic period often displays 

 in its strata small yellowish sub-globular concretions, re- 

 sembling in their appearance fish-eggs, which has procured 

 for it the name of Oolite. 



The great feature of this period is the first appearance 

 of mammals. The only vestiges found of them are two 

 little jaws, belonging to species very like the opossum, 

 so well known from the habit of the female of carrying her 

 young family in an abdominal sack, or bearing them on 

 her back." 



^To these amphibiouia reptiles nuist now be added several others. Three new 

 genera liave been recently discovered in the Castlecomar coal-measures in Kilkenny. 

 Kemaius of another new genus, the Pliosaurus, presented to the British Museun], 

 show that the skull of this creature was nearly five feet long. — Tr. 



2 The oolite which produced the famous lithographic slate of Soleuhofeu, 

 yielded the first bird, the skeleton of which has been so far preserved that its 

 nature could be clearly decided upon. This is the Archteopteryx, now iu the 

 British Museum. It exhibits a closer approximation to reptilian structure than 

 aoy modern bird. The tail is very long, and in this respect more like that of a 

 reptile than that of a bird. Two digits of the manus have curved claws, much 

 stronger than those of any existing bird. — Pop. Science Review, vol. vii. p. 241. — Tr. 



