be so filled up as to give the general outline of a modern porpoise or grampus, with an enormous eye, and add thereto four broad fin-feet or paddles, with a long and powerful tail; let him imagine all this upon a scale of thirty or forty feet in length, (for some of the largest of the species must have been, at least, so long,) and he will have no very incorrect idea of an ichthyosaurus. Throughout the whole organization of this tyrant of the seas of a former world, a perfect harmony of parts is obvious, while the parts themselves the eyes, the jaws, the vertebræ, the sternal apparatus, for example-exhibit the most consummate adaptation. But we must permit Dr. Buckland to give his own conclusion : 'If the laws of co-existence are less rigidly maintained in the ichthyosaurus than in other extinct creatures which we discover amid the wreck of former creations, still these deviations are so far from being fortuitous or evidencing imperfection, that they present examples of perfect appointment and judicious choice, pervading and regulating even the most apparently anomalous aberrations. 6 Having the vertebræ of a fish, as instruments of rapid progression, and the paddles of a whale, and sternum of an ornithorhyncus, as instruments of elevation and depression, the reptile ichthyosaurus united in itself a combination of mechanical contrivances, which are now distributed among three distinct classes of the animal kingdom. If, for the purpose of producing vertical movements in the water, the sternum of the living ornithorhyncus assumes forms and combinations that occur but in one other genus of mammalia, they are the same that co-existed in the sternum of the ichthyosaurus of the ancient world; and thus, at points of time separated from each other by the intervention of incalculable ages, we find an identity of objects effected by instruments so similar, as to leave no doubt of the unity of the design in which they all originated. It was a necessary and peculiar function in the economy of the fish-like lizard of the ancient seas to ascend continually to the surface of the water in order to breathe air, and to descend again in search of food it is a no less peculiar function in the duck-billed ornithorhynchus of our own days to perform a series of similar movements in the lakes and rivers of New Holland. 'The introduction in these animals of such aberrations from the type of their respective orders, to accommodate deviations from the usual habits of these orders, exhibits an union of compensative contrivances, so similar in their relations, so identical in their objects, and so perfect in the adaptation of each subordinate part, to the harmony and perfection of the whole, that we cannot but recognise throughout them all the workings of one and the same eternal principle of wisdom and intelligence, presiding from first to last over the total fabric of creation.'-pp. 184-186. Nor is it the skeleton merely of these sea-lizards that is preserved to us. Dr. Buckland's discovery of their petrified fæces has has enabled him to determine the nature of their food, to ascertain the structure of their intestines, and to show even the shape of the minute vessels, and the folds of the mucous membrane with which these were lined. The facts elicited from the coprolitic remains of the ichthyosauri afford, indeed, a new and curious contribution to the evidences of Natural Theology. They prove the existence of beneficial arrangements and compensations even in those perishable yet important parts which formed the organs of digestion of the extinct inhabitants of our planet. And thus from the meanest substances, strangely preserved through countless ages in the mud into which they were originally voided, the geologist extracts a new, beautiful and striking testimony to the unity, wisdom, and goodness of the creative intelligence! There is something in minutiæ of this homely character, which creates a yet more vivid impression of the reality of these strange monsters of the ancient world even than their petrified skeletons. 6 When we see the body of an ichthyosaurus, still containing the food it had eaten just before its death, and its ribs still surrounding the remains of fishes, that were swallowed ten thousand, or more than ten times ten thousand years ago, all these vast intervals seem annihilated, time altogether disappears, and we are almost brought into as immediate contact with events of immeasurably distant periods, as with the affairs of yesterday.'-pp. 201, 202. The plesiosauri next claim our attention; and, if the ichthyosaurus be considered extraordinary, we know not what term to apply to the plesiosaurus; an animal, whose structure, as Cuvier observes, is the most heteroclite, and its character altogether the most monstrous, of any that have yet been found amid the ruins of a former world. A lizard's head with crocodile teeth set on a serpent-like or rather swan-like neck of great length (the vertebræ being about thirty-three), a trunk and tail with the proportions of those of an ordinary quadruped, the ribs of a cameleon, and the paddles of a whale : 'Such are the strange combinations of form and structure in the plesiosaurus; a genus, the remains of which, after interment for thousands of years amidst the wreck of millions of extinct inhabitants of the ancient earth, are at length recalled to light, and submitted to our examination, in nearly as perfect a state as the bones of species that are now existing upon the earth. The plesiosauri appear to have lived in shallow seas and estuaries, and to have breathed air like the ichthyosauri, and our modern cetacea. We are already acquainted with five or six species, some of which attained a prodigious size and length; but our present observations will be chiefly limited to that which is the best known, and perhaps perhaps the most remarkable of them all, viz. the P. Dolichodeirus.' -p. 203. We cannot have a better account of its habits than that which Conybeare, who first discovered the genus, has put on record in the Transactions of the Geological Society of London:— "That it was aquatic is evident, from the form of its paddles; that it was marine is almost equally so, from the remains with which it is universally associated; that it may have occasionally visited the shore, the resemblance of its extremities to those of the turtle may lead us to conjecture; its motion, however, must have been very awkward on land; its long neck must have impeded its progress through the water; presenting a striking contrast to the organization which so admirably fits the ichthyosaurus to cut through the waves. May it not, therefore, be concluded, (since, in addition to these circumstances, its respiration must have required frequent access of air,) that it swam upon, or near the surface; arching back its long neck like the swan, and occasionally darting it down at the fish which happened to float within its reach? It may, perhaps, have lurked in shoal water along the coast, concealed among the sea-weed, and raising its nostrils to a level with the surface from a considerable depth, may have found a secure retreat from the assaults of dangerous enemies; while the length and flexibility of its neck may have compensated for the want of strength in its jaws, and its incapacity for swift motion through the water, by the suddenness and agility of the attack which they enabled it to make on every animal fitted for its prey, which came within its reach.'-pp. 211, 212. Dr. Buckland thus concludes his notice of these most interesting animals : Pursuing the analogies of construction that connect the existing inhabitants of the earth with those extinct genera and species which preceded the creation of our race, we find an unbroken chain of affinities pervading the entire series of organized beings, and connecting all past and present forms of animal existence by close and harmonious ties. Even our own bodies, and some of their most important organs, are brought into close and direct comparison with those of reptiles, which, at first sight, appear the most monstrous productions of creation; and in the very hand and fingers with which we write their history we recognise the type of the paddles of the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus. Extending a similar comparison through the four great classes of vertebral animals, we find in each species a varied adaptation of analogous parts to the different circumstances and conditions in which it was intended to be placed. Ascending from the lower orders, we trace a gradual advancement in structure and office, till we arrive at those whose functions are the most exalted: thus, the fin of the fish becomes the paddle of the reptile plesiosaurus and ichthyosaurus; the same organ is converted into the wing of the pterodactyle, the bird and and bat; it becomes the fore-foot, or paw, in quadrupeds that move upon the land, and attains its highest consummation in the arm and hand of rational man. . . "Usque adeo natura, una eadem semper atque multiplex, disparibus etiam formis effectus pares, admirabili quadam varietatum simplicitate, conciliat."-pp. 213, 214. After a concise but well-digested history of the mososaurus, or great marine animal of Maestricht, most nearly allied to the monitors (monitory lizards) of modern times, though infinitely gigantic in comparison;-an animal which appears to have been introduced during the deposition of the chalk to take the places of the then extinct ichthyosauri and plesiosauri that, from the lias upwards, held their sway over the ocean, and to have been destined in its turn to make room for the cetacea (whales) of the tertiary period; we are thus introduced to the pterodactyle : 'Among the most remarkable disclosures made by the researches of geology, we may rank the flying reptiles, which have been ranged by Cuvier under the genus pterodactyle; a genus presenting more singular combinations of form than we find in any other creatures yet discovered amid the ruins of the ancient earth. The structure of these animals is so exceedingly anomalous that the first discovered pterodactyle was considered by one naturalist to be a bird, by another as a species of bat, and by a third as a flying reptile. This extraordinary discordance of opinion respecting a creature whose skeleton was almost entire, arose from the presence of characters apparently belonging to each of the three classes to which it was referred;-the form of its head, and length of neck, resembling that of birds, its wings approaching to the proportion and form of those of bats, and the body and tail approximating to those of ordinary mammalia. These characters, connected with a small skull, as is usual among reptiles, and a beak furnished with not less than sixty pointed teeth, presented a combination of apparent anomalies which it was reserved for the genius of Cuvier to reconcile. In his hands this apparently monstrous production of the ancient world has been converted into one of the most beautiful examples yet afforded by comparative anatomy, of the harmony that pervades all nature, in the adaptation of the same parts of the frame to infinitely varied conditions of existence. . . We are already acquainted with eight species of this genus, varying from the size of a snipe to that of a cormorant. In external form these animals somewhat resemble our modern bats and vampires: most of them had the nose elongated, like the snout of a crocodile, and armed with conical teeth. Their eyes were of enormous size, apparently enabling them to fly by night. From their wings projected fingers, terminated by long hooks, like the curved claw on the thumb of the bat. These must have formed a powerful paw, wherewith the animal was enabled 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 E 2 vampire vampire bat of the island of Bonin. Thus, like Milton's fiend, 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. "The fiend, O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, 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 primeval lakes and rivers, air, sea, and land must have been strangely tenanted in these early periods of our infant world....... In the case of the pterodactyle we have an extinct genus of the order Saurians, in the class of reptiles, (a class that now moves only on land or in the water,) adapted by a peculiarity of structure to fly in the air. It will be interesting to see how the anterior extremity, which in the fore leg of the modern lizard and crocodiles is an organ of locomotion on land, became converted into a membraniferous wing; and how far the other parts of the body are modified so as to fit the entire animal machine for the functions of flight.'-pp. 221-225. We cannot afford space for the details of this inquiry, which is, however, full of interest, and, as in the instances already mentioned, affords striking proofs that, even in ages incalculably remote, the same care of a common Creator which we witness in the mechanism of our own bodies and those of the myriads of inferior creatures that move around us, was extended to the structure of creatures that at first sight seem made up only of monstrosities. Dr. Buckland next brings in review before us, those gigantic terrestrial lizards, the megalosaurus, iguanodon, and hylæosaurus, reptiles extending some of them to seventy feet in length. Among other instances of adaptation, the internal condition of their bones is shown to differ from that of the aquatic saurians : In the ichthyosauri and plesiosauri, whose paddles were calculated exclusively to move in water, even the largest bones of the arms and legs were solid throughout. Their weight would in no way have embarrassed their action in the fluid medium they inhabited; but in the huge megalosaurus, and still more gigantic iguanodon, which are shown, by the character of their feet, to have been fitted to move on land, the larger bones of the legs were diminished in weight, by being internally hollow, and having their cavities filled with the light material of marrow, while their cylindrical form tended also to combine this lightness with strength.'-pp. 235, 236. The amphibious saurians, or crocodileans of the old world, were nearly similar in their structure to those of the present day. We must refer the reader to the work itself for a very interesting account of them, and pass on to the testudinata (tortoises), which |