ancient authors may be found singular notices of bones and skeletons found in "the bowels of the earth," which are referred to an imaginary era of long ago, when giants of huge dimensions walked this earth. One is inclined sometimes to wonder whether the old fables of griffins and horrid dragons may not be to some extent based upon the occasional discovery, in former times, of fossil bones, such as evidently belonged to animals the like of which are not to be seen nowadays. (See chaps. xiii. and xiv.) The illustrious Cuvier, in his day, considered the fish-lizard to be one of the most heteroclite and monstrous animals ever discovered. He said of this creature that it possessed the snout of a dolphin, the teeth of a crocodile, the head and breast-bone of a lizard, the paddles of a whale or dolphin, and the vertebræ of a fish! No wonder that naturalists and palæontologists, whose realm is the natural history of the past, were obliged to make a new division, or order, of reptiles to accommodate the fish-lizard. It is obvious that a creature with such very "mixed" relationships would be out of place in any of the four orders into which living reptiles, as represented by turtles, snakes, lizards, and crocodiles are divided. Here is what Professor Blackie says of the Ichthyosaurus-- "Behold, a strange monster our wonder engages! If dolphin or lizard your wit may defy. Some thirty feet long, on the shore of Lyme-Regis, With a saw for a jaw, and a big staring eye. A fish or a lizard? An ichthyosaurus, With a big goggle eye, and a very small brain, And paddles like mill-wheels in chattering chorus, Smiting tremendous the dread-sounding main." A glance at our restoration, Plate II., will show that the fish-lizard was a powerful monster, well endowed with the means of propelling itself rapidly through the water as it sought its living prey, to seize it within those cruel jaws. The long and powerful tail was its chief organ of propulsion; but the paddles would also be useful for this purpose, as well as for guiding its course. The pointed head and generally tapering body suggests a capability of rapid movement through the water; and since we know for certain that it fed on fishes, this conclusion is confirmed, for fishes are not easily caught now, and most probably were not easily caught ages ago. The personal history of the fish-lizard, merely as a fossil or "remain," is interesting; so much so, that we may perhaps be allowed to relate the circumstances of his _début_ before the scientific world, in the days of the ever-illustrious Cuvier, to whom we have already alluded. 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.