208 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. VIII. 
to creep or climb, or suspend itself from trees. It is 
probable also that the Pterodactyles had the power of 
swimming, which is so common in reptiles, and which is 
now possessed by the vampire bat of the island of Bonin. 
“ Thus, like Milton’s fiend, all qualified for all services 
and all elements, the creature was a fit companion for the 
kindred reptiles that swarmed in the seas, or crawled on 
the shores of a turbulent planet. 
1 The fiend, 
O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, 
With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, 
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.’ 
Paradise Lost ) Book II., line 947 
With flocks of such-like creatures flying in the air, and 
shoals of no less monstrous ichthyosauri and plesiosauri 
swarming in the ocean, and gigantic crocodiles and tortoises 
crawling on the shores of the primaeval lakes and rivers, 
air, sea, and land must have been strangely tenanted in 
these early periods of our infant world.” 1 
“ As the most obvious feature of these fossil reptiles is the 
presence of organs of flight, it is natural to look for the 
peculiarities of the Bird or Bat, in the structure of their 
component bones. All attempts, however, to identify them 
with birds are stopped at once by the fact of their having 
teeth in the beak, resembling those of reptiles : the form 
of a single bone, the os quadratum , enabled Cuvier to 
pronounce at once that the creature was a Lizard : but a 
Lizard possessing wings exists not in the present creation, 
and is to be found only among the Dragons of romance and 
heraldry ; while a moment’s comparison of the head and 
teeth with those of Bats shows that the fossil animals 
in question cannot be referred to that family of flying 
•mammalia. As an insulated fact, it may seem to be of 
little moment whether a living Lizard or a fossil Ptero- 
dactyle might have four or five joints in its fourth finger, 
Geological Trans. (London), N. S., vol. iii., Part I. 
