IJISTINCTlVfi CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 



211 



rated, is the gigantic monster first discovered as early as the year 1 766, 

 in ther limestone quarries at Maestricht, and which was at that time re- 

 garded by some naturalists as a whale, by others as a crocodile, and by a 

 third set as an enormous unknown fish. M. Cuvier has sufiiciently as- 

 certained that it must have formed an intermediate genus between those 

 animals of the lizard tribe which possess a long and forked tongue, and 

 those with a short tongue and a palate armed with teeth ; and it is hence 

 generally regarded in the present day as a monitor, making an approach 

 towards the crocodile. The length of the skeleton seems to have been 

 about twenty-foUr feet : the head is a sixth part of the whole length of the 

 animal, which is nearly the proportion it bears in the crocodile. The tail 

 mtist have been very strong, and its width at the extremity to have ren- 

 dered it a most powerful oar, capable ijideed of opposing any violence of 

 the waters ; and it is hence chiefly that M. Cuvier regards it as having 

 been an inhabitant of tlie ocean : though we are hereby put into posses- 

 sion of a kind or species far surpassing in size and power any of those 

 which it most nearly resembles, and at least rivalling the magnitude of the 

 crocodile.* 



I'he circumstances under which most of the preceding large and fossil 

 animals have been found, and especially those traced in Siberia, afford 

 sufficient proof that the catastrophe which arrested them must have over- 

 taken them suddenly, while in their native regions ; and that they could 

 not have been brought into their present situations from a remote distance. 

 And we have hence facts to show, as we had occasion to observe formerly, 

 that various quadrupeds of the largest size, as the elephant, mammoth, 

 rhinoceros and hippopotamus, which are now traced in a living state in 

 the hot parts of Asia, Africa, or America alone, formerly existed, as to 

 certain species that have been long extinct, in the highest northern lati- 

 tudes : and that consequently such species must have had such a discre= 

 pancy of habit and organization, like the dog and the ox tribes of our own 

 day, as enabled them to endure the difference. 



Such then is a brief sketch, I will not say of the animal kingdom, but 

 of the most popular arrangements v/hich have hitherto been attempted 

 concerning it. It would have been much easier, and might have been 

 much more interesting, to have extended the survey : but the thread of 

 connexion would then, probably, have escaped from us, and we should 

 have lost the system in the fulness of the description. 



Enough, however, and more thati enough has, I trust, been offered to 

 prove that the study of zoology is of a most interesting and inviting cha- 

 racter, equally calculated to win the heart, and to inform the head. 1 have 

 dwelt somevirhat more at large upon th6 three lowest classes of worms, 

 insects, and fishes, for the very reason that these classes have too often 



* The fossil a&imals of this class have been sisee corislderably enlarged by other disco- 

 veries ; among the most curious of which, perhaps, are the Plesiosaurus of the late Mr. 

 Conybeare, and the Megalosaurus of professor Buckland. The remains of the last are the 

 most imperfect ; though from a large portion of the lower jaw dug up from the soil at 

 Stonesfieid, near Oxford, and a thigh bone, found at Cuckfield, in Sussex, Mr. Buckland has 

 been able to ascertain its mode of dentition, as also to estimate that its face must have termi- 

 nated in a flat, straight, and very narrow snout. Its length seems to have been upwards of 

 sixty feet, and its bulk to have equalled that of aa clephaiit seven feet high. Geoh Trans. 

 Series II. Vol. I. Part II. 



The structure of this genus makes an approach to that of fishes, but it has a length and 

 flexibility of neck like that of the larger birds ; and from the form of its paddles, it is proba- 

 ble that, like the crocodile, it swam on the surface of the ocean ; an idea which is confirmed 

 by various specimens found on the DorsetKshire coast, where the present writer hns seen osr 

 Or two nearly entire specimens. 



