H. N. Hutchinson

“ The idea of digging round trees with its claws in order to uproot them, must be partly, if not entirely, given up; for Professor Owen has proved, by a masterly piece of reasoning, that this cumbrous creature, instead of climbing up trees as modern sloths do, actually pulled down the tree bodily, or broke it short off above the ground by a tour de force, and, in order to do so, sat up on its huge haunches and tail as on a tripod, while it grasped the trunk in its long powerful arms! Marvellous as this may seem, it can be shown that every detail in its skeleton agrees with the idea. ”

“ The teeth were very powerful. Our elephant is an awkward animal, but compared with this Mammoth it is as an Arabian steed to a coarse, ugly dray-horse. I could not divest myself of a feeling of fear as I approached the head; the broken, widely-open eyes, gave the animal an appearance of life, as though it might move in a moment and destroy us with a roar.... The bad smell of the body warned us that it was time to save of it what we could, and the swelling flood, too, bid us hasten. First of all we cut off the tusks, and sent them to the cutter. ”

“ It is not very difficult to imagine a Megalosaur lying in wait for his prey (perhaps a slender, harmless little mammal of the ant-eater type) with his hind limbs bent under his body, so as to bring the heels to the ground, and then with one terrific bound from those long legs springing on to the prey, and holding the mammal tight in its clawed fore limbs, as a cat might hold a mouse. Then the sabre-like teeth would be brought into action by the powerful jaws, and soon the flesh and bones of the victim would be gone! ”

“ That to assume that naturalists have perfect cognisance of every existing marine animal of large size, would be quite unwarrantable. It appears to me more than probable that many marine animals, unknown to science, and some of them of gigantic size, may have their ordinary habitat in the sea, and only occasionally come to the surface; and I think it not impossible that amongst them may be marine snakes of greater dimensions than we are aware of, and even a creature having close affinities with the old sea-reptiles whose fossil skeletons tell of their magnitude and abundance in past ages. ”

“ Being air-breathers, they would be compelled occasionally to seek the surface of the sea, in order to obtain a fresh supply of the life-giving element—oxygen; but, being cold-blooded and with a small brain, needing a much less supply of oxygen for its work, the fish-lizards had, like fishes, this advantage over whales, which are warm-blooded—that their stern-propeller, or tail-fin, could take the form best adapted for a swift, straight-forward course through the water. ”

“ In course of time she slowly raised up sea-beds and lake-bottoms to make them into dry land. This museum is everywhere around us. We have but to enter quarries and railway cuttings, or to search in coal-mines, or under cliffs at the sea-side, and we can consult her records. As the ancient Egyptians built tombs, pyramids, and temples, from which we may learn their manner of life and partly read their history, so Nature has entombed, not one race only, but many races of the children of life. ”

“ Cuvier, the illustrious founder of the science of organic remains, was enabled, by his accurate and minute knowledge of the structures of living animals, to prove to his astonished contemporaries that the Mammoth bones and teeth, so plentifully discovered in Europe, were not such as could have belonged to any living elephant, and consequently that there must have existed, at some previous period in the world’s history, an elephant of a different kind, and quite unknown to naturalists. ”

“ It yields, the roots fly up, the earth is scattered wide upon the surrounding foliage, and the tree comes down with a thundering crash, cracking and snapping the great boughs like glass. Then the coveted food is within reach, and the giant reaps the reward of his Herculean labours. ”

“ Our first group of monsters is taken from a tribe of armed warriors that lived in the seas of a very ancient period in the world’s history. Like the crabs and lobsters inhabiting the coasts of Britain, they possessed a coat of armour, and jointed bodies, supplied with limbs for crawling, swimming, or seizing their prey. They were giants in their day, far eclipsing in size any of their relations that have lived on to the present time. ”

“ This is one of the songs which Fabri heard in Canada: “When the great Manitou descended to the earth, in order to satisfy himself that the creatures he had created were happy, and he interrogated all the animals, the bison replied that he would be quite contented with his fate in the grassy meadows, where the grass reached his belly, if he were not also compelled to keep his eyes constantly turned towards the mountains to catch the first sight of the ‘Father of the Ox,’ as he descended, with fury, to devour him and his companions.” ”

“ Fossils have too often been left to the attention of geologists not always well acquainted with the structures of living animals. The more frequent introduction of fossil specimens side by side with modern forms of life would not only be a gain to the progress and spread of geological science, but would be a great help to students of anatomy and natural history. The tree of life is but a mutilated thing, and half its interest is gone, when the dead branches are lopped off. ”

“ The object of this book is to describe some of the larger and more monstrous forms of the past—the lost creations of the old world; to clothe their dry bones with flesh, and suggest for them backgrounds such as are indicated by the discoveries of geology: in other words, to endeavour, by means of pen and pencil, to bring them back to life. The ordinary public cannot learn much by merely gazing at skeletons set up in museums. One longs to cover their nakedness with flesh and skin, and to see them as they were when they walked this earth. ”

“ With a length of perhaps thirty feet, capable of free and rapid movement on land, with strong hind limbs, short head, with long pointed teeth, and formidable claws to its feet, the Megalosaur must have been without a rival among the carnivorous reptiles on this side of the world. It probably walked for the most part on its hind legs, as depicted in our illustration, and Professors Huxley and Owen, on examining the bones in the Oxford Museum, were much impressed with the bird-like character of some parts of the skeleton, showing an approach to the ostrich type. ”

“ After reading these descriptions, it is not difficult to form a mental picture of the great beast laying siege to a tree, and to conceive the massive frame of the Megatherium convulsed with the mighty wrestling, every vibrating fibre reacting upon its bony attachment with the force of a hundred giants; extraordinary must be the strength and proportions of the tree if, when rocked to and fro, to right and left, in such an embrace, it can long withstand the efforts of its assailant. ”

“ The veteran anatomist, Professor Owen, has said, “If I were restricted to a single specimen on which to deduce the nature of an extinct animal, I should choose a vertebra to work out a reptile, and a tooth in the case of a mammal.” Seven or eight different “characters,” he says, may be deduced from a reptilian vertebra. It is, of course, impossible for any one to reconstruct an entire animal from a single bone or a few teeth, yet such fragments indicate in a general way the nature of a lost creation and its position in the animal kingdom. ”

“ The dragon figures in the earliest traditions of the human race, and crops up again in full force in European mediæval or even late romance.
In ancient Egyptian mythology, Horus, the son of Isis, slays the evil dragon. In Greece, the infant Hercules, while yet in his cradle, strangles deadly snakes; and Perseus, after engaging in fierce struggle with the sea-monster, slays it, and rescues Andromeda from a cruel death. In England, we have the heroic legend of St. George and the Dragon depicted on our sovereigns. But it is easy to see a common purpose running through these legends. ”

“ His researches, especially among vertebrates, or backboned animals, revealed an altogether undreamed-of wealth of entombed remains. It is true the old and absurd notion that fossils were mere “sports of Nature,” sometimes bearing more or less resemblance to living animals, but still only an accidental (!) resemblance, had been abandoned by Leibnitz, Buffon, and Pallas; and that Daubenton had actually compared the fossil bones of quadrupeds with those of living forms; while Camper declared his opinion that some of these remains belonged to extinct species of quadrupeds. ”

“ Lazily basking in the sun, when it condescends to shine, and resting his clumsy carcase on the ground that forms the shore near the said geological island at Sydenham, may be seen the old fish-lizard, or Ichthyosaurus, that forms the subject of the present chapter. He looks awkward on land, as if longing to get into his native element once more, and cleave its waters with his powerful tail-fin. His “flippers” seem too weak to enable him to crawl on land. ”

“ But England had its share of illustrious men, too, though lesser lights compared to the founder of comparative anatomy,—such as Sir Richard Owen, on whom the mantle of his friend Cuvier has fallen; Conybeare, De la Beche, and Dean Buckland.
These scientific men, aided by the untiring labours of many enthusiastic collectors of organic remains, have been the means of solving the riddle of the fish-lizard, and of introducing him to the public. ”

“ Our natural-history books deal only with those that are alive now. Few popular writers have attempted to depict, as on a canvas, the great earth-drama that has, from age to age, been enacted on the terrestrial stage, of which we behold the latest, but probably not the closing scenes. ”

“ Thus we see that oxygen not only supports life, but breaks up into simpler forms the unwholesome and dangerous products of decaying matter, thus keeping the atmosphere sweet and pure; but in time, even the dry bones of the bird or rabbit, though able for a longer period to resist the attacks of the atmosphere, crumble into dust, and serve to fertilise the soil that once supported them. ”

“ Air and water are great destroyers of animal and vegetable substances from which life has departed. The autumn leaves that fall by the wayside soon undergo change, and become at last separated or resolved into their original elements. ”

“ Extinct forms of life are often so very different to the creatures inhabiting the world of to-day, that naturalists find it a hard task to assign them their places in the animal kingdom. The classes, orders, and families under which living forms are grouped are often found inadequate for the purpose, so much so that new orders and new families require to be made for them; and then it is often quite impossible to determine the relations of these new groups to the old ones we are accustomed to. Dinosaurs offer a good example of this difficulty. Were they related to ancient crocodiles? ”

“ He may find the vertebral column running far into the limestone that locks him in his last prison; or a paddle extended on the slope, as though entreating aid; or a pair of jaws lined with horrid teeth, which grin despair on enemies they are helpless to resist; or he may find a conic mound, on whose apex glisten in the sun the bleached bones of one whose last office has been to preserve from destruction the friendly soil on which he reposed. Sometimes a pile of huge remains will be discovered, which the dissolution of the rock has deposited on the lower level ”

“ Many people who visit this great museum and find their way to the geological galleries on the right, pass hastily by the cases of bones, teeth, and skeletons. These things, it seems, fail to interest them. They do not know how to interpret them. They cannot picture to themselves the kinds of creatures to which the relics once belonged; and so they pass them by and presently go to the more attractive collection of stuffed birds on the other side. There they see the feathered tribes of the air all beautifully arranged; some poised in the air by almost invisible wires ”