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Other zoophytes swarming near the sponges consisted chiefly of a very elegant species of jellyfish; mollusks were represented by varieties of squid that, according to Professor Orbigny, are unique to the Red Sea; and reptiles by virgata turtles belonging to the genus Chelonia, which furnished our table with a dainty but wholesome dish. As for fish, they were numerous and often remarkable.
Really, by-the-by, I cannot give you a better instance of what I mean, than in my little diatribe on the Geryon Trifurcifer, a small reptile which I found, some years ago, inhabiting the mud of the salt lakes of Balkhan, which fills up a long-desired link between the Chelonia and the Perenni branchiate Batrachians, and, as I think, though Professor Brown differs from me, connects both with the Herbivorous Cetacea, Professor Brown is an exceedingly talented man, but a little too cautious in accepting any one's theories but his own.
No evidence of past existence of minutely intermediate forms when such might be expected a priori. Bats, Pterodactyles, Dinosauria, and Birds. Ichthyosauria, Chelonia, and Anoura. Horse ancestry. Labyrinthodonts and Trilobites. Two subdivisions of the second relation of species to time.
What the Protamniota were like, I do not suppose any one is in a position to say, but I cannot think that the thoroughly Lacertian Protorosaurus had anything to do with them. The reptiles which are most amphibian in their characters, and therefore, probably, most nearly approach the Protamniota, are the Ichthyosauria and the Chelonia.
Cheiroptera, absence of secondary sexual characters in. Chelae of crustacea. Chelonia, sexual differences in. Chenalopex aegyuptiacus, wing-knobs of. Chera progne. Chest, proportions of, in soldiers and sailors; large, of the Quechua and Aymara Indians. Chevrotains, canine teeth of. Chiasognathus, stridulation of. Chiasognathus Grantii, mandibles of.
Above this bed lie those which have been called the Wealden, from their full development in the Weald of Sussex; and these as incontestably argue that the dry land forming the dirt-bed had next afterwards become the area of brackish estuaries, or lakes partially connected with the sea; for the Wealden strata contain exuviae of fresh-water tribes, besides those of the great saurians and chelonia.
I survey the whole space that stretches overhead; it is as desert as the shore was. Still my imagination carried me away amongst the wonderful speculations of palaeontology. Though awake I fell into a dream. I thought I could see floating on the surface of the waters enormous chelonia, preadamite tortoises, resembling floating islands.
Or among the Teleostei in what respect is the Beryx of the Chalk more embryonic, or less differentiated, than Beryx lineatus of King George's Sound? Or to turn to the higher Vertebrata in what sense are the Liassic Chelonia inferior to those which now exist? How are the Cretaceous Ichthyosauria, Plesiosauria, or Pterosauria less embryonic, or more differentiated, species than those of the Lias?
Or among the Teleostei in what respect is the Beryx of the Chalk more embryonic, or less differentiated, than Beryx lineatus of King George's Sound? Or to turn to the higher Vertebrata in what sense are the Liassic Chelonia inferior to those which now exist? How are the Cretaceous Ichthyosauria, Plesiosauria, or Pterosauria less embryonic, or more differentiated, species than those of the Lias?
Similarly, in reptiles the Chelonia are distinguished by the most extraordinary union of skin-bones and internal skeleton enclosing the body in rigid armour: it may be said that the function of this is protection, that it is adaptation, and can be explained by natural selection, but the adaptation in this case is so indefinite that it is difficult to be convinced of it.
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