Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) DRAGONS OF THE AIR [Illustration: FIG. 47. RHAMPHORHYNCHUS PHYLLUNUS SHOWING THE PRESERVATION OF THE WING MEMBRANES _From the Lithographic slate of Eichstädt, Bavaria_ _Frontispiece_] DRAGONS OF THE AIR AN ACCOUNT OF EXTINCT FLYING REPTILES BY H. G. SEELEY, F.R.S. PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY IN KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON; LECTURER ON GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY IN THE ROYAL INDIAN ENGINEERING COLLEGE WITH EIGHTY ILLUSTRATIONS "I AM A BROTHER OF DRAGONS" _Job_ xxx. 29 NEW YORK: D. APPLETON & CO. LONDON: METHUEN & CO. 1901 PREFACE I was a student of law at a time when Sir Richard Owen was lecturing on Extinct Fossil Reptiles. The skill of the great master, who built bones together as a child builds with a box of bricks, taught me that the laws which determine the forms of animals were less understood at that time than the laws which govern the relations of men in their country. The laws of Nature promised a better return of new knowledge for reasonable study. A lecture on Flying Reptiles determined me to attempt to fathom the mysteries which gave new types of life to the Earth and afterwards took them away. Thus I became the very humble servant of the Dragons of the Air. Knowing but little about them I went to Cambridge, and for ten years worked with the Professor of Geology, the late Rev. Adam Sedgwick, LL.D., F.R.S., in gathering their bones from the so-called Cambridge Coprolite bed, the Cambridge Greensand. The bones came in thousands, battered and broken, but instructive as better materials might not have been. My rooms became filled with remains of existing birds, lizards, and mammals, which threw light on the astonishing collection of old bones which I assisted in bringing together for the University. In time I had something to say about Flying Animals which was new. The story was told in the theatre of the Royal Institution, in a series of lectures. Some of them were repeated in several English towns. There was still much to learn of foreign forms of flying animals; but at last, with the aid of the Government grant administered by the Royal Society, and the chiefs of the great Continental museums, I saw all the specimens in Europe.