26 
THE BOOK OF THE GREAT SEA-DRAGONS. 
the cranial Caverns in which their brutal appetites lurked, 
and handle and expatiate on teeth nursed from the cradle 
in blood : But the Theme demands a loftier tone; of ante- 
human Time, from Nox and Erebus, and of our mighty 
mother Earth, the fell Autochthones, these Taninim 
Gedolim invoke the lowermost diapason of the Spheres: 
Over the eternal infinitude floating, that mortal which 
haply listens the music of the tremendous Soul of Time, 
joins involuntary in the mighty Chorus: Alp on Alp 
uprising, the “unknown Tongue” cometh intuitively upon 
him, in the which we can alone pronounce and communi¬ 
cate with the Powers of that Universe of which we were 
born co-gods. 
Thus, pondering the long Cycle in the vast backward 
of Ages, in which coursed these fierce sea-beasts malig¬ 
nant, over whose innumerous Populations a black god 
pitiless reigned, the Ghost of Chaos guiding us through 
the ancient Ossuary of the world, strown thick with the 
skeletons of these huge Dragons,—we realize an Intellec¬ 
tual Image immeasurably grand and terrible. 
From the busy Seas of our own Time, adventurously 
sailing forth into the Ocean of the Past, out upon the 
lines of universal waters, stretching into dead Infinitude, no 
Continent, nor Isle to break the awful expanse, we look. 
The Niagaras of Time too, falling each a tremendous 
Ocean from one System to another, over the Universe 
from the Lap of hoary Eternity,—we hear them Roar. 
Maleficent wings, leathery, carefully glazed and strung 
in Hell, overshadowing the ugly Aborigines of the watery 
world, Serpents all,—we behold. 
And over them all, and above all, inaccessible to the 
loftiest flight of the Halcyon Soul, in far immensity, 
alone, Jehovah, blessed be His Holy Name, whom we 
worship and adore. 
CONCLUSION. 
T HE Current of our Argument gliding past more 
than one “pons asinorum” of the modern School, 
as contradistinguished from the Ancient Academus, we 
have ventured to assume the roundness of the primitive 
Earth, and a universal Climatal Law over its entire 
circumference, during the greater part of the Epoch to 
which the Primary and Secondary Rocks belong. 
We have also insisted upon the Succession of organ¬ 
ized matter, from Vegetables to molluscous Fish through 
all their kinds, to Reptiles marine, serial, and aquatic, 
and appropriated the superior Transitionary and the Se¬ 
condary Rocks for themselves, to the exclusion of any 
real terrestrial animals whatever. 
To prove the roundness of the Globe, in its original 
chaotic State, requires only the simplest figures and pro¬ 
cesses of reason, matter being the numerator and deno¬ 
minator both. The generic organic remains too of any 
given rock on one side of the Earth, are repeated at its 
antipodes. Mr. Darwin found at the Pass of Puquena, 
South America, not only Lias, but the gryphites, ostras, 
turritellse, ammonites, and terebratulse which belong to 
the Lias under our feet. Commodore Sir. C. Bullen 
collected at Fernando Po, Accra, and Sierra Leone, fossil 
organic remains congenerous with those of Lyme Regis. 
A series of Secondary Limestones Covers a vast Area in 
South Europe and Asia, the organic Creatures of which 
existed in the cotemporaneous Ocean which then covered 
America. The Mosasaurus,of Maestricht, have been found 
thousands of miles apart, while the petrified Vegetables 
of Melville’s Island, in the Frozen Zone, as triumphantly 
show that one general thermal temperature pervaded the 
whole globe. 
The conflicting Elements of our own time result in any¬ 
thing but harmonies like these. No causes after the 
fashion now in operation could produce these universal 
Formations, nor sustain the creatures which we find every¬ 
where entombed in their bowels. The old Populations 
of the Globe were as foreign to those of the present day, 
as are those, probably, of Saturn, and the conditions of 
the Earth they occupied were necessarily no less different 
from our own. 
And with respect to the creative order of Living Things, 
the priority of Vegetable life is a self-demonstrated fact, 
no creature being able to exist without vegetables, either 
by instant assimilation, or through a subsidiary person. 
The numerous Species too into which the unstratified 
Rocks are metamorphosed, prove them to have been fused 
by heat, each one Stratum arranging itself in proportion 
to the length of its liquidity; and as these constitute the 
very Foundations of the Globe, it is certain that a degree 
of heat formerly invested it which no Salamander could 
breathe. The highest temperature in which any creature 
on this Earth is known to exist is about 150°, in which 
some fishes live in the hot springs of the Manillas, while 
Sonnerat mentions several plants flourishing in a thermal 
rivulet 174°. 
We have paused upon the “ Footmarks, ” in the Red 
Sandstone, the Stonesfield “ Opossum,” and the alledged 
discovery of the bones of terrestrials in secondary Rocks, 
upon which subjects geologists altogether differ. And 
since many fervently abet these allegations, which they 
are, nevertheless, quite unable to maintain, we have no 
hesitation in repeating that they carry with them no proof 
of any value whatever, and utterly reject and defy them 
all. 
That Strange Saurus, both bird and reptile, the Ptero- 
dactyle, with his long neck, tooth-armed beak, dun 
membraneous wings phalangal tipped with nails, claims 
the Sea. His short Coccygis and the peculiar mechanism 
of the wings, spread by one long digit, while all the other 
fingers are stunted; his head too so heavy that it must 
have confined his flights in the air to the merest distance; 
all these and many other singularities prove the Ptero- 
dactyle to have lived chiefly in the sea. Squatting his lean 
haunches upon rocks outjutting over the black Abysses, 
or over or under the waters, this monster dragon lived 
through many weary ages, a sooty Fiend dolorous and 
Lord of the dead wastes of the briny Sea. 
a 
