22 
THE BOOK OF THE GREAT SEA-DRAGONS. 
Not for this do their hateful carcases survive the Scorpion 
Soul, torn out of them and punished for ever: Despite 
the unhappy Power in which they originated they betray 
a Chapter of the Defeat suffered in their persons, long 
anterior to the final discomfiture he shall undergo with 
reference to our own, with so different a result. The 
Carcases themselves we dash in the teeth of the Fiends 
by whom they were articulated and animalizedtheir 
inductions afford us a hopeful prestige of the Times when 
Adrammelek and all his Hosts shall be hurled out of the 
World unto his place,—“fulmine luridum missos ad 
arcum,” and the ages renewed, re-commerce afresh, Virgo 
and the golden Signs. 
Regnum.—G edolim Taninim.— DJ’Jn O'^u. 
Sub-Regnum.— Plesiosaurus.— n^o-iov, et traugo* 
Genus.— Pentatarsostinus.—Ehy-raj ra^crof, et oirreov. 
(Quinque ossibus in tabs.) Animalium La- 
certiformium in pago Street, cura et opere 
Thom* Hawkins in lucem prolatorum genus. 
Tab. XXVII. 
If to discover the most signal distinctions which hold 
amongst Ichthyosauri, it was necessary to enucleate the 
immense Collection, over which we dwelt with so much 
satisfaction as the rich reward of a devotion unbounded, 
■an industry untiring, a singleness unshaken, and a good 
fortune peculiarly our own; how much more indispensa¬ 
ble are multiplied spoils of Plesiosauri, which offer us 
varieties of form remarkable indeed, but infinitely less 
conspicuous than those of their contemporary monsters. 
Endowed with passions of a more subtle kind, and a 
bodily figure of a more compact.and perfect order whereby 
to accomplish them, the Plesiosauri gathered their Tribes 
within a Province of their own, proudly repelling the 
Piscal Races at their side, and arrogated the prerogatives 
of a higher class in the Scale of Being. 
Ichthyosauri ran into every Gender with ease, luxuri¬ 
ating in change, dubious even of the order by which they 
stood in the midst of the world. The rude spirit of Belial 
hurried them along in ceaseless lust of blood, brutal immi¬ 
tigable, and insatiate Fiends; with eyes, and ears, and 
bodies intent upon carnage and gore. From a mecha¬ 
nism like this it is impossible to detach an idea of blind 
and headlong fury, insensible to danger, and every other 
sentiment but the bloody one to which appetite confined 
it, so that of all brutes this was the most brutal and un¬ 
redeemed. 
There are other Faculties which tend to the same frui¬ 
tion, but by a more circuitous path, and elaborate an 
action, and other Dives’ than Belial have tried their black 
art upon matter with a success commensurate and as cun¬ 
ning. Plesiosauri are their handiwork : if the Old Serpent 
himself did not shed his own teeth upon the ground, out 
of which these Sea-Dragons, armed with all the virility 
of Evil instant sprung. Emulous, Satan seems to have 
been thrice seized, generating Horrors commanding, and 
realizing a teeming Spawn fitted for the lowest Abysm of 
Chaos. Long uncouth limbs, lank bodies, egregious tails, 
necks ambitious of the most terrible Serpents, and heads 
crowning them with Kindred guile, behold the Dragon 
Plesiosaurus confest. 
The deformities of body with which they came forth 
were accompanied by immoral powers of a congenerous 
and ugly order, and physical dispositions quick to fulfil 
them. The Jaws bristling with sharpest teeth, the mus¬ 
cular neck twisting to and fro, not alone were experienced 
by the victim they impaled; a more fatal agent than 
either subserved them both : the snaky crest, the fury no 
longer, but the Jaws remain, over the anterior margin of 
which did once dart a forked tongue, the gums distilling 
poison at every pore. 
Had the Adamites been formed upon less conservative 
principles, or had not the Almighty neutralized the dele¬ 
terious substances which compose these Sea-Dragons, the 
long march of Ages might not suffice, and their Virus 
may have guided Death to the recesses even of our own 
hearts, through the absorbents of the fingers by which we 
expose their bones. 
So concentrated a Horror, we could expect to present 
scarcely a variety of aspect. The Summit of Arimanes 
his Creation must come like all other things to a point: 
Plesiosauri are an order so frightful that the least addition 
would commit it to the grotesque. 
It were vain then to look for lines of generic demarca¬ 
tion as broad as those of Ichthyosauri; may be some 
Plesiosauri were green, and black, and yellow, like Indian, 
others spotted and mottled, like African Snakes; some 
were large, some small, but they all belong to a category 
with a single point: the Skeletons which remain to us, 
although they differ from one another, suffice for a Generic 
but scarcely a special system : and it now becomes our 
duty to inquire after and record the varieties which have 
come to our Knowledge, and to award the result to each 
which may appear its due. 
Certain naturalists, struck with the fashion in which 
Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri are contrived and put to¬ 
gether, influenced, perhaps, by the Pythagorean doctrine 
of Species, and beguiled by the seemingly endless confor¬ 
mation which holds throughout every individual known, 
have speculated upon and even entertained a notion that 
both Regna were related to each other intimately, con¬ 
verging each to the other in a long graduated chain of 
persons, at last meeting and uniting in the most Cordial 
brotherhood together. 
It was sufficiently shown, we presume, in our memoirs, 
not certainly by an examination of each side by side, but 
by the more simple and studious description of each one 
in his proper place, that any such an hypothesis is wholly 
untenable. A community of disposition to blood is all 
that the Taninim had together. It may be also allowed 
that they were amphibious, but in far differing degrees, 
the spine, and pensile paddles confining Ichthyosauri 
entirely to the Sea, while the more thick-set and bony 
Plesiosauri may have splashed through the Shallows and 
ooze of the Sea to spawn, or to ambush in the marginal 
Algm and Flags, with scarcely an effort. It is impos¬ 
sible to carry resemblance farther; the long crocodile- 
head of the one fixed immoveably to his back modelled 
from a fish, his tapering and slender tail, his paddles too 
made up of circular or pentagonal bones enclosed in cuti- 
cular fat, but ill accord with the characteristics of the 
other. Rather say that the minute viper-head, pivoted 
upon that astonishing neck, the heavy quadrupedal car¬ 
case of the Plesiosaurus, and his thick and labouring tail, 
his hands, his feet too framed like our own but webbed, 
present the very antithesis of the former, and deny with 
one consent any relation whatever. The Giants of either 
kind sped the waves, and battling, may have reddened 
them often with mutual blood, demons as they both were: 
