“The hind legs and feet are those of the lizard. The body is covered with fine scales, is marbled with touches of a darker color, and ends in an abbreviated tail. Take away from this strange animal its bat’s wings, its long neck and its bird’s head, and you will have something closely resembling the lizard, the creature that basks in the sun on old walls, or that other one, larger and all green, which gives us a start when it scuttles away among the dead leaves or in the dense growth of the hedge.” “And was it a lizard, then, or a bird?” asked Emile. “It was a reptile, certainly,” was the reply, “and it might be called a sort of lizard. There were several species, varying from the size of a lark to that of a crow. Like the bat, the animal left its retreat in the hollow of rocks and came out at night to flutter awkwardly about in the air by the aid of its wings of stretched skin. With its toothed beak it snapped up in their flight immense dragon-flies, the chief insects of that time. Its hunger appeased, it took its repose on the ground, wings folded against its sides, body supported by the hind legs; or else it hung down from the rocks, suspended by its claws. Its name is pterodactyl, which means wing-fingered. “Let us consider another of these prehistoric creatures. This time it is a bird, and what a marvelous bird, too, my friends! Its beak, no less monstrous than that of the pterodactyl, had likewise the two mandibles armed with a ferocious-looking set of teeth. Pointed teeth in the jaws of a reptile, such as a lizard, crocodile, or serpent, are nothing extraordinary; but in a bird’s mouth, that is unheard-of. To-day one would search in vain all over the earth for anything like it. There are beaks of all shapes and sizes, there are short ones and long ones, straight ones and crooked ones, strong ones and weak ones; but all are toothless, as are the hen’s and the sparrow’s. What a singular custom in the primitive bird, to adopt for beak the toothed jaws of the reptile! “And that is not all. This bird adopted also the reptile’s tail, but covered it with feathers. Birds of the present day have a short, wide rump, from which grow a dozen coarse feathers. The first bird in the order of time had its tail composed of a long succession of little bones, each supporting two feathers. Here is a picture of that tail just as it was found in the rock where the strange creature left its remains. The bird to which the tail belonged is called by the learned an archæopteryx, or ancient winged animal. “One more of these monsters, and that will suffice. The animal that you see here is the mammoth, a sort of enormous shaggy elephant, so tall that its back would have touched the ceiling in most of our great halls. Its height was as much as six meters. By its side the ordinary elephant, the largest of extant terrestrial animals, would look no larger than a sheep beside an ox.