i88 5 *J 
Testimony in Science. 
199 
fitness of things receive a shock. Everyone must have ob- 
served that in lizards and crocodiles the neck (if we can 
admit that one exists at all in the familiar sense of the term) 
and the head lie in the same plane as the back. In this 
animal, on the contrary, we see a neck — proportionally as 
long as that, e.g., of a greyhound — rising upwards nearly at 
right angles to the back, and supporting a head which pre- 
• sents, externally at least, most of the characters of a 
mammalian head. It is remarked, in the description accom- 
panying the plate, that the head resembles that of a dog. 
There is a prominent forehead, such as we find in certain 
heads of dogs, quite unlike the flattened Saurian type of 
skull. Above all there are two upright external ears, not 
unlike those of the fox. The importance of this feature 
will appear if we reflect that no reptile now living, or as far 
as we know extinCt, possesses an external ear ; the only 
approach in that direction is a fold of skin at the auditory 
opening in the crocodile. Indeed a projecting external ear 
is so essentially a mammalian feature that an animal be- 
longing to any other division of the vertebrates thus equipped 
has to the human mind an uncanny aspeCt. 
_ i'he only non-mammalian character shown in the plate 
lies in the teeth and in the width of the gape. The teeth, 
as far as can be judged from the figure, offer no distinction 
of incisors, canines, and molars, but consist of a row of 
sharp wedges, differing little in size, and all pointing some- 
what backwards. The articulation of the jaws is at a point 
much farther back than in mammals, so that the gape is 
very wide. The lower jaws form almost a flat plate, and no 
trace of a tongue is visible. If that organ, however, is 
formed on the crocodilian type, it will not be apparent on a 
side view of the head, even when the jaws are open. Still, 
notwithstanding these anomalous features, if the figure is 
covered up with paper so as to leave merely the head un- 
covered, non-specialists — in every trial which we have made 
— pronounce it to be the head of some ferocious mammal. 
Whether there exists hair upon the face, or any part of 
the body, does not appear eilher from the figure or the 
description. We must, however, remember that the exist- 
ence of hair in reptiles is not unheard of, since a small hairy 
tortoise has been discovered in China. 
So far, therefore, this animal possesses characteristics 
sufficiently anomalous. What follows, if it does not fully 
justify complete scepticism as to the alleged nature and the 
very existence of this animal, makes us crave eagerly for 
fuller and clearer information. According both to the figure 
