232 
FLYING SAURIANS. 
With regard to their food, it has been conjec- 
tured by Cuvier, that they fed on insects, and 
from the magnitude of their eyes that they may 
also have been noctivagous. The presence of 
large fossil Libellulse, or Dragon-flies, and 
many other insects, in the same lithographic 
quarries with the Pterodactyles at Solenhofen, 
and of the wings of coleopterous insects, mixed 
with bones of Pterodactyles, in the oolitic slate 
of Stonesfield, near Oxford, proves that large 
insects existed at the same time with them, and 
may have contributed to their supply of food. 
We know that many of the smaller Lizards of 
existing species are insectivorous ; some are also 
carnivorous, and others omnivorous, but the 
head and teeth of two species of Pterodactyle, 
are so much larger and stronger than is ne- 
cessary for the capture of insects, that the 
larger species of them may possibly have fed on 
fishes, darting upon them from the air after the 
manner of Sea Swallows and Solan Geese. 
The enormous size and strength of the head and 
teeth of the P. Crassirostris, would not only 
have enabled it to catch fish, but also to kill 
and devour the few small mai'supial mammalia 
which then existed upon the land. 
The entire range of ancient anatomy, affords 
few more striking examples of the uniformity of 
the laws, which connect the extinct animals of 
the fossil creation with existing organized beings, 
