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    converted it into a telescope . A further advantage of these plates was to enable the eye to resist the pressure of deep waters , and to protect it from other injuries * : The account of the Plesiosaurus is yet more extraordinary : — " It is of the Plesiosaurus that Cuvier asserts the structure to have been

    the most heterochte , and its characters altogether the most monstrous that have been yet found amid the ruins of a former world . 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 cameleon , and the paddles of a whale . "—Vol . i , p . 202 . Dr Buckland thus describes another monster , called the Pterodactyle , which was a speoies of flying reptile : —

    " 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 mammalia . It had a' small skull like reptiles , and a beak furnished with not less than sixty pointed teeth . * * * In external form these animals somewhat resemble our modern bats and vampireg ; most of them had the nose elongated like the snout of a crocodile , and armed with conieal 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 Pterodactyles had the power of swimming . * * * Thus , like Milton ' s fiend , all qualified for all

    services and all elements , the creature was a fit companion for the kin dred reptiles that swarmed in the seas , or crawled on the shores of a tur bulent planet . " < The Fiend , O ' er bog or steep , through straight , 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 With flocks of such like creatures flying in the air , and shoals of no less nonstrous Ichthyosauri and Ptesiosauri swarming in the ocean , and gigantic crocodiles , and tortoises crawling on the snores of the primeval akes and rivers ,- ^ -air , sea , and land , must have been strangely tenanted in hese early periods qf our infant world . "—p . 224 .. ¦

    It is mot uncommon to find on the surface of sandstone cerain indentations- and tracks which mark the passage of small Crustacea and other marine animals , whilst the stone was in a tate of loose sand at the bottom of the sea . In Dumfries-shire here are some fossil footsteps ;—* ' They traverse th 6 rock in a direction either up or down , and not across tie surface of the stratay which are now inclined at an angle of 38 <> . On ne slab there are twenty-four continuous impressions of feet , forming a egular track , with six distinct repetitions of the mark of each foot , the Wfe-foot being differently shaped from the hind-foot ; the marks of claws

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    276 Buckland ? $ Geology .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 1, 1837, page 276, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1831/page/21/