The vertebrae are stout, and they have stout spines. The tail is remarkably short, stout, and stumpy; it could have been of no use whatever in the water for propulsion or even for steering. The front legs are short and stout; the forearm bones are short, suggesting either swimming or digging habits, and the foot is short and broad. The pelvis or hip bones are massive and were very firmly connected with the backbone by the aid of six vertebrae, a very unusual number in reptiles. The hind legs, as figured, show no indications whatever of aquatic adaptation, unless possibly the very slight shortening of the shin may be so construed. Watson believes that the bones of the pelvis, indicate, aside from its strong union with the backbones, strong swimming powers, but of this again the present writer is very skeptical. The very strong ischia and the flatness of the pelvis are both characters found among American Permian reptiles, which do not show otherwise the slightest indications of water habits. If then _Lystrosaurus_ was a powerful swimmer, as has been maintained, it is very evident that the hind legs must have been used as the seals or sea-otters use them, to propel and to guide; but they in nowise resemble the legs of these swimming mammals. It seems altogether more reasonable to suppose that _Lystrosaurus_ lived in the marshes, feeding upon vegetable food obtained by aid of its strong jaws and tusks—if the tusks were possessed by both sexes; and that the position of the nostrils may be ascribed to causes like those which brought about their recession in the Phytosauria, and not to strictly aquatic habits. Possibly the animal had habits somewhat similar to those of the hippopotamus; that it was an expert swimmer appears, to the present writer, improbable. The powerful front legs may be indicative of digging habits; the animal may have used them as an aid to its powerful jaws and tusks in uprooting marsh and water plants. However, _Lystrosaurus_, whatever may have been its habits, was a curious reptile. It was about three feet in length, massive in all its structure, and doubtless of slow and sluggish gait. CHAPTER VIII ICHTHYOSAURIA Early in the eighteenth century a curious work in the Latin language was published by a famous physician and naturalist—a professor in the University of Altorf by the name of Scheuchzer—entitled _Querulae Piscium_, or “Complaints of the Fishes.” The work was illustrated by many expensively engraved figures of various fossil remains, including one of some vertebrae which the author referred to as “the accursed race destroyed by the flood”! The history of the finding of these famous bones is recorded by Cuvier as follows: