3 ^ 
EXTINCT MONSTERS, 
India, and China; and you will find that our discoveries in 
geology, astronomy, and ethnology go far to prove that the 
traditions of these ancient peoples, however derived, after making 
due allowance for Oriental allegory and poetic hyperbole, are not 
far from the truth. To the Babylonian tradition of the monstrous 
forms of life at first created we have already alluded ; but in other 
fields of discovery we find the same foreshadowing of discoveries 
made in our own day. Take the vast cycles of Egyptian tradition, 
wherein the stars returned to their places after a circle of constant 
change, only to start again on their unwearied round ; the atomic 
theory of Lucretius, now expanded and incorporated into modern 
chemistry; or the philosopher’s pregnant saying — Omne vivmn 
ex ovo (“ Every living thing comes from an egg ”). These and other 
examples might be cited to show how true the old saying is. 
There is nothing new under the sun.” In the writings of ancient 
authors may be found singular notices of bones and skeletons 
found in “the bowels of the earth,” which are referred to an 
imaginary era of long ago, when giants of huge dimensions walked 
this earth. One is inclined sometimes to wonder whether the old 
fables of griffins and horrid dragons may not be to some extent 
based upon the occasional discovery, in former times, of fossil 
bones, such as evidently belonged to animals the like of which 
are not to be seen nowadays. (See chaps, xiii. and xiv.) 
The illustrious Cuvier, in his day, considered the fish -lizard to be 
one of the most heteroclite and monstrous animals ever discovered. 
He said of this creature that it possessed the snout of a dolphin, 
the teeth of a crocodile, the head and breast-bone of a lizard, the 
paddles of a whale or dolphin, and the vertebrae of a fish ! No 
wonder that naturalists and palaeontologists, whose realm is the 
natural history of the past, were obliged to make a new division, 
or order, of reptiles to accommodate the fish-lizard. It is obvious 
that a creature with such very “mixed” relationships would be 
out of place in any of the four orders into which living reptiles, 
as represented by turtles, snakes, lizards, and crocodiles are 
