62 
EXTINCT MONSTERS. 
Amidst much diversity there is yet a strange similarity in the 
dragons that figure in the folk-lore of Eastern and Western 
peoples. Probably our European traditions were brought by the 
tribes which, wave after wave, poured in from Central Asia. 
They are, for the most part, unnatural beasts, breathing out 
fire, and often endowed with wings, while at the same time 
possessing limbs ending in cruel claws, fitted for clutching their 
unfortunate victims. The wings seem, to say the least, very much 
in the way. Poisonous fangs, claws, scaly armour, and a long 
pointed tail were all very well, — but wings are hardly wanted, 
unless to add one more element of mystery or terror. Some, 
however, are devoid of wings : the Imperial Japanese dragons 
showing no sign of such appendages. The Temple Bar griffin is 
a grim example of a winged monster. Nevertheless, in spite of 
all the manifest absurdities of the dragons of various nations and 
times, geology reveals to us that there once lived upon this earth 
reptiles so great and uncouth that we can think of no other but 
the time-honoured word “ dragon ” to convey briefly the slightest 
idea of their monstrous forms and characters. 
So there is some truth in dragons, after all. But then we must 
make this important reservation — viz. that the days of these 
dragons were long before the human period ; they flourished in 
one of those dim geological ages of which the rocks around us 
bear ample records. 
It is a strange fact that human fancy should have, in some 
cases at least, created monsters not very unlike some of those 
antediluvian animals that have, during the present century, been 
discovered in various parts of Europe and America. Some 
unreasonable persons will have it that certain monstrous reptiles 
of the Mesozoic era, about to be described, must have somehow 
managed to survive into the human period, and so have suggested 
to early races of men the dragons to which we have alluded. 
But there is no need for this untenable supposition. By a free 
blending together of ideas culled from living types of animals it 
