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First, he should examine the fossil remains of the ichthyosauri, or fish lizards, ranged in the first three wall cases, particularly that eighteen feet in length, deposited in the third case, one on the upper shelf of the fourth case, and another on the upper shelf of the fifth case.
Man is one of the mistakes of creation like the ichthyosauri. If only he were gone again, think what lovely things would come out of the liberated days; things straight out of the fire. 'But man will never be gone, she said, with insidious, diabolical knowledge of the horrors of persistence. 'The world will go with him. 'Ah no, he answered, 'not so.
The great men with whom he must deal are the great men who are no longer great mammoths and ichthyosauri kindly preserved to us, among the siftings of so many epochs, by the impartial benignity of Time. It is for him to unravel the jokes of Erasmus, and to be at home among the platitudes of Cicero.
"It has been noticed," writes our great zoologist, "that certain types, which are frequently prominent among the representatives of past ages, combine in their structure peculiarities which at later periods are only observed separately in different, distinct types. Sauroid fishes before reptiles, Pterodactyles before birds, Ichthyosauri before dolphins, etc.
Great flocks of pterodactyls, their bodies as large as those of oxen and their necks enormously long, clamored and fought in the air, the broad membranes of their wings making a singular musical humming, unlike anything that I had ever heard. Between them and the ichthyosauri there was incessant battle, and I was constantly reminded of the ancient poet's splendid and original comparison of man to
Dead boughs were scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum, and beyond them were perishing woodbine stems resembling old ropes. From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed with lichen and stockinged with moss. At their roots were stemless yellow fungi like lemons and apricots, and tall fungi with more stem than stool.
Lions and elephants seemed mere puppies, for here were mastodons and ichthyosauri, and animals that lived before the flood was ever dreamed of; and as for Turks and turbans, why, there were people with headdresses that towered up into the skies, and ladies who made rainbows pale. There were queens whose thrones were all one driven pearl, and warriors whose swords were a flash of sunbeams.
The Pterodactyles, which preceded the class of birds, and the Ichthyosauri, which preceded the Cetacea, are other examples of such prophetic types." Now, these reptile-like fishes, of which gar-pikes are the living representatives, though of earlier appearance, are admittedly of higher rank than common fishes. And so, perhaps, of the other prophetic types. Here type and antitype correspond.
To the south and east of this lake are the Everglades, or Grassy Lakes, a region where land and water are mingled, rivers, lakes, dry islands, and wet marshes all jumbled together in confusion, and extending over many hundred square miles, the chosen abode of the alligator, the gar-fish, the snapping-turtle, the moccasin snake, and other hideous and ferocious creatures more or less mythical, and recalling those earlier periods in the earth's history when the great monsters, the Ichthyosauri and the Plesiosauri, wallowed and crawled over the continents.
Horace says well, fortes creantur fortibus et bonis good men beget good children; the rule held even in the geological period; good ichthyosauri begat good ichthyosauri, and would to our discomfort have gone on doing so to the present time, had not better creatures been begetting better things than ichthyosauri, or famine, or fire, or convulsion put an end to them.
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