THE GREAT SEA-LIZARDS AND THEIR ALLIES. 53 
of the entire skeleton of Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus ; and the 
accuracy of that restoration is still universally acknowledged. 
This fine specimen was in the possession of the Duke of 
Buckingham, who kindly placed it at the disposal of Dr. 
Buckland, for a time, that it might be properly described and 
investigated. 
A glance at our illustration, Plate III., will show that this strange 
creature was not inaptly compared at the time to a snake 
threaded through the body of a turtle. 
Dr. Buckland truly observes that the discovery of this genus 
forms one of the most important additions that geology has made 
to comparative anatomy. “It is of the Plesiosaurus,” says that 
graphic author, in his Bridgewater Treatise, “that Cuvier asserts 
the structure to have been the most heteroclite, and its characters 
altogether the most monstrous that have been yet found amid the 
ruins of a former world. To the head of a lizard it united the 
teeth of a crocodile; a neck of enormous length, resembling 
the body of a serpent ; a trunk and tail having the proportions of 
an ordinary quadruped ; the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles 
of a whale ! Such are the strange combinations of form and 
structure in the Plesiosaurus — a genus, the remains of which, after 
interment for thousands of years amidst the wreck of millions of 
extinct inhabitants of the ancient earth, are at length recalled to 
light by the researches of the geologist, and submitted to our 
examination in nearly as perfect a state as the bones of species 
that are now existing upon the earth.” 
Perhaps the best way in which we can gain a clear idea of the 
general characters of a long-necked sea-lizard, as we may call our 
Plesiosaurus, is by comparing it with the fish-lizard, described in 
the last chapter. Its long neck and small head are the most 
conspicuous features. Then we notice the short tail. But if we 
compare the paddles of these two extinct forms of life, we notice 
at once certain important differences. In the fish-lizard the bone 
of the arm was very short, while all the bones of the fore-arm 
