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Our capitals are as clean and quiet and healthful as the country, and these advantages are secured simply by the elimination of the horse, an animal which we should be as much surprised to find in the streets of a town as the plesiosaurus or the pterodactyl.

He used to tell me about the various forms of animal and vegetable life which had covered the globe during former eras, and so I was pretty well acquainted with the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals of paleolithic times. I knew that the thing that had attacked me was some sort of pterodactyl which should have been extinct millions of years ago.

Learned Ben, on the other hand, contrives in his Sejanus and his Catiline, by dint and sheer intellect and erudition, to give us correct waxwork and clockwork Romans; there are no anachronisms in Ben Johnson; never a pterodactyl walks down his Piccadilly.

Dick Talbot-Lowry received this announcement with the mixture of indignation and contempt that might have been anticipated from an old-established Pterodactyl, who has been warned that his hereditary wallow in the Primeval Ooze is about to be wrested from him.

By the time I had begun to find words, I realized that a giant fruit bat had flown from utter darkness across my line of sight; and by close watching we soon saw others. But for a very few seconds these Pterodactyl Pups, as I nicknamed them, gave me all the thrill of a sudden glimpse into the life of past ages. The last time I had seen fruit bats was in the gardens of Perideniya, Ceylon.

"Are you not glad to see me?" She looked straight into my eyes. "I hate you," she said, and then, as I was about to beg for a fair hearing she pointed over my shoulder. "The thipdar comes," she said, and I turned again to meet the reptile. So this was a thipdar. I might have known it. The cruel bloodhound of the Mahars. The long-extinct pterodactyl of the outer world.

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.

The Professor purred with satisfaction. "And then, sir, what did you do next?" "It was the wet season, Mr. Malone, and my stores were exhausted. I explored some portion of this huge cliff, but I was unable to find any way to scale it. The pyramidal rock upon which I saw and shot the pterodactyl was more accessible. Being something of a cragsman, I did manage to get half way to the top of that.

"What do you understand by this athaleb, doctor?" asked Featherstone. "The athaleb?" said the doctor. "Why, it is clearly the pterodactyl." "By-the-bye," interrupted Oxenden, "do please take notice of that name. It affords another exemplification of 'Grimm's Law. The Hebrew word is 'ataleph, and means bat.

She had an especial knack for drawing monstrosities; and I vividly recall the picture of an enormous and hideous lizard, looking like a reptile of the pterodactyl period, which she had dreamed of seeing crawl across the roof of the house.