Extinct Monsters and Creatures of Other Days: A Popular Account of Some of the Larger Forms of Ancient Animal Life

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Chapman & Hall, 1910 - 329 pages
 

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Page 187 - We heard the sweet bells over the bay ? In the caverns where we lay, Through the surf and through the swell The far-off sound of a silver bell ? Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep ; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam ; Where the salt weed sways in the stream...
Page 1 - Let us make man to our image and likeness, and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.
Page 204 - 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...
Page 82 - ... 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...
Page 316 - To the head of a Lizard, it united the teeth of a Crocodile ; a neck of enormous length, resembling the body of a Serpent: a trunk and tail having the proportions of an ordinary quadruped, the ribs of a Chameleon, and the paddles of a Whale.
Page 82 - 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...
Page 76 - IlandarT) and Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) de la Beche. They gave it this name in order to distinguish it from the Ichthyosaurus, and to record the fact that it was more nearly allied to the lizard than the latter.1 Conybeare, with the assistance of De la Beche, first described it in a now-classic paper read before the Geological Society of London, and published in the Transactions of that Society in the year 1821. In a later paper (1824) he gave a restoration of the entire skeleton of Plesiosaurus...
Page 240 - ... the Pliocene, we have the last stage of the series before reaching the horse, in the genus Pliohippus, which has lost the small hooflets, and in other respects is very equine. Only in the upper Pliocene, does the true Equus appear, and complete the genealogy of the Horse, which in the Post-tertiary roamed over the whole of North and South America, and soon after became extinct. This occurred long before the discovery of the Continent by Europeans, and no satisfactory reason for the extinction...
Page 82 - ... 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.
Page 30 - The Historian or the Antiquary may have traversed the fields of ancient or of modern battles; and may have pursued the line of march of triumphant Conquerors, whose armies trampled down the most mighty kingdoms of the world. The winds and storms have utterly obliterated the ephemeral impressions of their course. Not a track remains of a single foot, or a single hoof, of all the countless millions of men and beasts whose progress spread desolation over the earth. But the Reptiles, that crawled upon...

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