210 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCK LAND. 
[CH. VIII. 
of various dimensions, or on inequalities of the surface of 
the ground or rocks, in the act of climbing or running. 
All these coincidences of number and proportion can only 
have originated in a premeditated adaptation of each part 
to its peculiar office ; they teach us to arrange an extinct 
animal under an existing family of reptiles ; and when we 
find so many other peculiarities of this tribe in almost 
every bone of the skeleton of the Pterodactyle, with such 
modifications, and such only as were necessary to fit it for 
the purposes of flight, we perceive unity of design pervading 
every part, and adapting to motion in the air organs 
which in other genera are calculated for progression on the 
ground, or in the water. . . . 
“ With regard to their food, it has been conjectured by 
Cuvier that they fed on insects, and from the magnitude 
of their eyes that they may also have been noctivagous 
(wandering by night). The presence of large fossil 
Libellulae, or Dragon-flies, and many other insects, in the 
same lithographic quarries with the Ptcrodactyles at 
Solenhofen, and of the wings of coleopterous insects, mixed 
with bones of Ptcrodactyles in the oolitic slate of Stones- 
field, 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 carni¬ 
vorous, and others omnivorous ; but the head and teeth of 
two species of Pterodactyle arc so much larger and stronger 
than is necessary 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 marsupial 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 organised beings, than those we have been 
