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What could have been the Megatherium and the Ichthyosaurus, and all the fire-spitting dragons of antiquity compared to the traction engines of the nineteenth century? "It's a steam plough!" ejaculated Beatrice, below her breath. "D n!" cried her uncle, not at all below his breath.
Small as these are they have accomplished infinitely more than all that ever was done by the ichthyosaurus, the plesiosaurus, the pterodactyl, and the whole tribe of monsters that once filled the earth. Immense districts and whole mountains have been built up by these minute creatures. They have been at work for ages, and are still at work.
Elfreda had accepted Laura Atkins's invitation to spend Easter with her, and was already convulsing the three Oakdale girls with excerpts from conversations to take place, supposedly, between herself and Laura's learned father. "I have been reading up a lot on the pterodactyl and ichthyosaurus and other small, playful animals of the beginning of the world variety," she confided to Miriam.
But where did the dragons come from? Are they a confused recollection of the monsters that existed before the flood? Were they conceived from the contemplation of the carcasses of the ichthyosaurus and pteropod, and did the terror of men hear the sound of their feet in the tall grass and the wind howl when their voices filled the caves?
As the members waited they grew chilly, although it was only autumn, and a fire was lighted, which threw a cheerful shine upon the varnished skulls, urns, penates, tesserae, costumes, coats of mail, weapons, and missals, animated the fossilized ichthyosaurus and iguanodon; while the dead eyes of the stuffed birds those never-absent familiars in such collections, though murdered to extinction out of doors flashed as they had flashed to the rising sun above the neighbouring moors on the fatal morning when the trigger was pulled which ended their little flight.
It is supposed to have lived in shallow seas and estuaries, and to have breathed air like the Ichthyosaur and our modern cetacea. One specimen of Ichthyosaurus platydon, from the Lias at Lyme, now in the British Museum, must have belonged to an animal more than 24 feet in length; and there are species of Plesiosaurus which measure from 18 to 20 feet in length.
One of the stained-glass windows is a memorial to that celebrated daughter of Lyme Mary Anning, who with the enthusiasm of a greybeard hammered and chipped at the cliffs around in a most ungirlish style, but to such good purpose that she unearthed the Ichthyosaurus that now astonishes the visitor to the Natural History Museum in Kensington.
These diagrams of the plesiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, the pterodactyle, give you a notion of some of these extinct reptiles. And here is a cast of the pterodactyle and bones of the ichthyosaurus and the plesiosaurus, just as fresh as if it had been recently dug up in a churchyard. Thus, in the reptile class, there are no less than half of the orders which are absolutely extinct.
Thus the chalk contains remains of those strange flying and swimming reptiles, the pterodactyl, the ichthyosaurus, and the plesiosaurus, which are found in no later deposits, but abounded in preceding ages. The chambered shells called ammonites and belemnites, which are so characteristic of the period preceding the cretaceous, in like manner die with it.
Then, forth from that archaic sea, the Ichthyosaurus Uprose upon his finny wings, with neocomian fuss, "Oh, Iguanodon!" he cried, as he approached the shore, "Why art thou thus dysthynic, love? Come, rise with me, and soar, Or leave these estuarian seas, and wander in the grove; Behold! a bird-like reptile fish is dying for thy love!"
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