Another strange and monstrous group of creatures, the Elasmosaurs and their allies, combined the long neck of Plesiosaurs with the swimming tail of Ichthyosaurs, the latter enormously elongated, so that these Creatures were sometimes fifty feet in length, and whale-like in the dimensions of their bodies. It is curious that these composite creatures belong to a later period of the Mesozoic then the typical Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs, as if the characters at one time separated in these genera had united in their successors. One of the relatives of the Plesiosaurs, the Pliosaur, of which genus several species of great size are known perhaps realized in the highest degree possible the idea of a huge marine predaceous reptile. The head in some of the species was eight feet in length, armed with conical teeth a foot long. The neck was not only long, but massive and powerful, the paddles, four in number, were six or seven feet in length and must have urged the vast bulk of the animal, perhaps forty feet in extent, through the water with prodigious speed. The capacious chest and great ribs show a powerful heart and lungs. Imagine such a creature raising its huge head twelve feet or more out of water, and rushing after its prey, impelled with perhaps the most powerful oars ever possessed by any animal. We may be thankful that such monsters, more terrible then even the fabled sea-serpent, are unknown in our days. Buckland, I think, at one time indulged in the _jeu d'esprit_ of supposing an Ichthyosaur lecturing on the human skull. "You will at once perceive," said the lecturer, "that the skull before us belonged to one of the lower orders of animals. The teeth are very insignificant, the power of the jaws trifling, and altogether it seems wonderful how the creature could have procured food." We cannot retort on the Ichthyosaur and his contemporaries, for we can see that they were admirably fitted for the work they had in hand; but we can see that had man been so unfortunate as to have lived in their days, he might have been anything but the lord of creation.