﻿RELATION TO REPTILES AND QUADRUPEDS. 5 



lizards, which belonged to a remote era of our globe, we 

 see the wings and legs of a bat ; a long snout, which 

 might be mistaken for a bill, were not the jaws provided 

 with a few teeth ; and a neck nearly the length of the 

 body, which immediately reminds us of a wading bird. 

 This peculiar structure, which has no analogy to any 

 existing reptile, is precisely what we should look for 

 in a group of animals connecting reptiles with birds, 

 and offers a far more perfect link of affinity than that 

 between a tortoise and a penguin. There have been dis- 

 covered no less than three species of these birdlike 

 reptiles in the different limestone slates of Europe ; and 

 they obviously belong, with the Plesiosaurus and others, 

 to a distinct order of their own class, nearly all of which 

 were swept away by one of those convulsions of the 

 globe which preceded the creation of the last and most 

 perfect of the Almighty's works — Man. 



(5.) The approximation of birds to reptiles being 

 thus established, let us now see in what manner the 

 former are connected to quadrupeds, at the opposite ex- 

 tremity of their circle. For this purpose we may select 

 either the Ornithorhynchus in one, or the ostrich in the 

 other class, as equally tending to effect this union. The 

 Ornithorhynchus, indeed, is a quadruped ; but so totally 

 unlike its congeners, that it stands alone among them as 

 a completely oviparous animal. The similarity of its 

 jaws to those of a bird is so strong, that, upon its first 

 discovery, it was strongly suspected the specimen sent to 

 Europe was a deception, practised by some cunning fel- 

 low on the credulity of naturalists, by engrafting the 

 bill of a duck upon the skull of a quadruped. On turn- 

 ing to the ostrich family, we find an equally strong ap- 

 proximation to quadrupeds. The wings, which are the 

 great characteristic of birds, are so small as to become, 

 for the purposes of flight, absolutely useless. — The body 

 of the emu is covered with a sort of hair, rather than 

 with feathers ; while its thick feet and tramping gait 

 remind us more of a horse than of a bird. The os- 

 triches, in fact, are without two of the three primary 

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