408 Marsh— Restoration of European Dinosaurs. 
You are all doubtless familiar with the story told by your 
witty countryman, George Lewes, in his life of Gcethe, of an 
international attempt to reconstruct the camel. To complete 
this task, the Englishman, it is said, travelled to distant lands, 
studied the animal in its native wilds, and then prepared his 
report; the Frenchman went to the museum in Paris, exam- 
ined stuffed specimens and skeletons, and wrote his account; 
while the German remained in his study at home, meditated 
on the subject, and finally evolved his idea of the camel from 
his inner consciousness. Similar methods, but not on the 
same international lines, have been followed in the ease of the 
Dinosaurs, and if some of those that have been restored could 
speak, whatever they might say about the prehistoric enemies 
that destroyed them, they would surely ask to be saved from 
their latter-day friends. 
Seriously, I think justice has not been done to this remark- 
able group of reptiles in rehabilitating them for the benefit of 
the rising generation in science, and some of the attempts, I 
fear, have been so firmly implanted in text-book literature, 
that, like the oft-repeated myth of the “coral insect,” the 
errors will pass down to the next century before being erad- 
icated. The German method has sometimes been used by 
Anglo-Saxons, and with a suecess quite equal to that in the 
ease of the camel. To take one instance familiar to you all, 
let me mention JMegalosaurus, the first Dinosaur deseribed, 
and also Jguanodon, an herbivorous colleague, on which it 
doubtless preyed. The first restoration of these two reptiles 
made them, as they were supposed to be in life, quadrupedal, 
or four-footed animals of forbidding aspect, and as such they 
have since haunted the visions of several generations, young 
and old, by night and by day. I have just made a pilgrimage 
to Sydenham to see with my own eyes these famous restora- 
tions, and, so far as I can judge, there is nothing like unto 
them in the heavens, or on the earth, omin the waters under 
the earth. We now know from good evidence that both 
Megalosaurus and [guanodon were bipedal, and to represent 
them as creeping, except in their extreme youth, would be 
almost as incongruous as to do this by the genus Homo. 
Lest it be supposed that I consider the Dinosaurs alone to 
have suffered from the attempts of their friends to restore 
them to life, I might recall to your remembrance the well- 
known figure in the text-books, of Dznotherium, reclining 
peacefully, with its feet and limbs concealed, for the simple 
reason that no one knew anything about them; or that other 
picture of the Labyrinthodon without a tail, deliberately 
making foot-prints upon the sands of time, while no such form 
has yet been discovered. I might refer to still more frightful 
examples of the dangers encountered by over-zealous historians 
of ancient life, but those given will suffice. 
