The hand : its mechanism and vital endowments, as evincing design, and illustrating the power, wisdom, and goodness of God . imals of the world were notmonsters; there was no lusus or extravagance. Hideousas they appear, and lilie the phantoms of a dream, theywere adapted to the condition of the earth when theyexisted. I could have wished that our naturalists hadapplied to the inliabitants of that early condition of theglobe, names less scholastic; we have the plesiosaurus,and plesiosaurus dolichodeiios, and ichthyosaurus, mega-losaurus, and hylseosaurus, and iguanodon, pterodact
The hand : its mechanism and vital endowments, as evincing design, and illustrating the power, wisdom, and goodness of God . imals of the world were notmonsters; there was no lusus or extravagance. Hideousas they appear, and lilie the phantoms of a dream, theywere adapted to the condition of the earth when theyexisted. I could have wished that our naturalists hadapplied to the inliabitants of that early condition of theglobe, names less scholastic; we have the plesiosaurus,and plesiosaurus dolichodeiios, and ichthyosaurus, mega-losaurus, and hylseosaurus, and iguanodon, pterodactyles,with long and short beaks, tortoises, and crocodiles;these are found among reeds and grasses of giganticproportions, algae and fuci; and a great variety of mol-lusca, of inordinate bulk compared with those of thepresent day, as ammonites and nautih, are discoveredin the same spots. Every thing declares that theseanimals inhabited shallow seas, and estuaries, or gTeat CHAP. II. THE TIME OF THEIR EXISTENCE. 35 inland lakes: that the surface of the earth, at theseparts, did not rise up in peaks and mountains, or per-. pendicular rocks bound in the seas; but that it wasflat, slimy, and covered with a loaded and foggy at-mosphere. Looking to the class of animals, as we haveenumerated them, such a condition of the earth wouldcorrespond with them : they were scaly; they swam inwater, or crept upon the margins; they were not ex-posed to animals possessing greater rapidity of motion,nor were there birds of prey to stoop upon them; therewas, in short, a balance of the power of destruction andof self-preservation, the same as we see now obtainmgm higher animals since created, with infinitely variedinstincts and means for defence or attack. There is,indeed, every reason to believe that at that period, thtclasses mammalia and birds* were not created. And itseems obvious that if man had been placed upon the * In the secondary strata, of the period sometimes called by geologists the age
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjecthand, bookyear1874
