THE BOOK OF THE GREAT SEA-DRAGONS. 
23 
but the company was not of choice, none other passions | 
but of rage and alien hate possessing them twain. 
Moreover, it has been supposed that both Dragons had 
a rugous, or even a hairy hide, and fins for which no use 
can be assigned, nor evidence of them found ; as though 
the lank, the ungainly monsters were not yet sufficiently 
extraordinary, and Nature delighted herself in the absurd. 
It were as profitless too to search amongst these Dragons 
for analogies with living Races. The world has grown 
testy in her Old Age, and will not brook any such at¬ 
tempt. Where we now freeze half the year, of yore there 
was a perennial Summer, these Taninim bathing through 
all their lengthened Generations in tepid Deeps : the con¬ 
stitution of things was unlike the present, as was the 
Creation of which these Creatures made the dark and 
trembling side: the Canicular Times were theirs, their 
god Typhon in his prime, the Storm of God s wrath 
couching in the clouds afar off. 
The Snakes, and uncouth things, and deadly, in our 
own Earth, and the unclean, may have been imitated from 
the fragments of these Taninim, over which the besom of 
Destruction eventually swept, but what boots the posthu¬ 
mous likeness. We know that Crocodiles, and Chelonias, 
and Chameleons, and the Ophisaurian Tribes claim des¬ 
cent from these ancient Races, but the family records are 
for the most part illegible, and of value only in a general 
sense. We may pore over them by these modern lights, 
and, perchance, identify a character here and there, but 
the Great Book of Dead Times is unique, the later Edi¬ 
tions are incomplete, the Court-hand having been altered 
for another; and these Sea-Dragons remain in their pri¬ 
mal State, alone, approached but awful, the wizard 
Giants of Time, and the wonder of the world. 
Thus it is seen that the Remains of Plesiosauri must 
be looked at for themselves only. Congregating all the 
known individuals, and testing them by one another, we 
ventured in our former Book to prefer the tarsus for the 
required distinctions, and thence identified four several 
Species. The Rule has so much more comprehensive a 
basis in Ichthyosauri, that for that reason we may be 
dissatisfied with it in the present instance. But the 
choice is imperative. The head, neck, trunk, tail, may 
and do differ in all the Skeletons, in shape, in size, and in 
relation, but we can detect in either no mark anyway 
equal to the one elected, and therefore it must Continue. 
And, now, the addition of two entire Skeletons to the list 
of Plesiosauri impose a further necessity. The Duke of 
Buckingham’s, Lord Cole’s, that at the British Museum by 
Miss Anning, and the author’s—recorded in our Memoirs, 
are corrected by these discoveries, and enabled to take 
precedence another step. They assume a generical Title, 
and we hasten to record the persons by the discovery of 
which it is authorized and assured. 
First, the Pentatarsostinus of Plate XXVII. 
The panygeric of this and all the other Taninim per¬ 
petuated by us, is inscribed in golden numbers in our 
National Archives; it having been pronounced first by 
Imperial Buckland, and repeated in parliament with ac¬ 
clamation. 
The beautiful Remain of Plate XXIV startled and 
delighted the most eminent Naturalists, so that they 
exhausted the vocabulary of praise, Conybeare himself 
setting the example. But the Skeleton before us tran¬ 
scends even that. He has paid no tribute to Time, nor to 
Death, and malicious Fate has succeeded in spoiling him 
only of a few phalanges of the right hand, which may 
have been pointed at her in defiance, and sacrificed in the 
act. Of all his Tribe, he only is known : they are sunk 
in oblivion all, leaving this one Dragon behind them 
crowned with values of the highest kind, kingly and alone. 
We subjoin extracts from Journal, showing the manner 
in which, and by what a happy chance, he fell into our 
hand. 
“ 1834. June. Wednesday. My attention was yester¬ 
day solicited by a quarrier, to the section of a few small 
bones at the bottom of Bond’s quarry: they appear so 
little promising, that I passed them by. 
“ Thursday. A whim possesses me to examine more 
particularly the bones in Bond’s quarry, to which I shall 
at once go. 
“ Friday. Instinct, only another word for Intuition, is 
surer than reason. To my agreeable surprize the section 
has led to the most interesting result; upon excavating 
the overlying strata the rudiments of an entire Skeleton 
faintly presented themselves, through a thick covering of 
Limestone. With difficulty I have traced the larger 
bones of a Plesiosaurus, which lies in a bed of lias ten 
inches thick, and the most compact and crystallized of all 
the layers. 
Saturday. The prize safely delivered up at Sharpham.” 
The Journal proceeds.—“ The teeth of this Plesiosaurus 
are exactly like those of all others known, save the gigantic 
Races, curved superiorly, and sharp, striated upon the ex¬ 
ternal enamel, and perfectly smooth upon the alveolar 
body, which is hollowed to protect the nascent tooth 
waiting to usurp its place. The teeth of Ichthyosauri 
vary to infinity, and for that very reason compel us to 
forego them as specifical marks, or to isolate every frag¬ 
ment with a tooth in it, in a Class by itself. These 
Dragons, on the contrary, afford but two sorts of teeth, 
which belong to the Greater and the Less Plesiosauri. 
There are so many vital differences among the latter 
Tribes, that it is impossible they could have originated 
in one common Stock, their teeth then manifestly also fail 
us in the identification of Species. 
The neck of Plate XXVII, curved sinister, presents 
three-fourths of its circumferential parts in all the order 
and regularity of Life itself. Except, indeed, where it 
approaches the Sternum, towards which the right lateral 
processes of the three vertebrae anterior to it have been 
thrown. 
The great and unknown Race Plesiosaurus, dimly seen 
through the Perspective of Ages, may well have agitated 
the Antiquary of Science, in that infrequent Path, across 
which it flitted before him. It must have been a strange 
moment for Mr. Conybeare, that wherein, piercing the 
Shades he descried one of the Eleusinia of Time, so long 
jealously buried under the Pillars of Matter; a grand Fact 
unveiled before him ! the Skeleton thereof hideous thrice, 
but the accompanying inductions astonishing and sub¬ 
lime. Mr. Conybeare invoking Homer, called it “ Doli- 
chodeirus.” What right the original Plesiosaurus, upon 
which that epithet was conferred, may have to the same, 
contradistinguished from others, it is impossible to define; 
the neck and Sternum having been dislocated and scattered. 
But this much we know, that the neck of these Monsters 
no more than the teeth, hold the Generic secret. We 
learn this from the subject of Plate XXVII, and my Lord 
Cole’s beautiful Plesiosaurus; both which have a common 
number of cervical bones, and signally oppose each other in 
