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All these "Saurians" are believed to have frequented the sea or rivers; but another called the Great-lizard, was a land-animal, as was the Forest-lizard, and a monster kind of Toad with very curiously formed teeth.
He had been standing there some ten minutes, and was giving but scant attention to the saurians. He was casting furtive glances around him, as though looking for someone.
"That is quite true," observed Raleigh, with a pacificatory nod at Noah. "You were eminently unselfish, and while, with Mr. Barnum, I exceedingly regret that the Saurians and Therii and other tribes were left on the pier when you sailed, I nevertheless think that you showed most excellent judgment at the time."
On the deck of the steamer were various tourists who enjoyed themselves by shooting the beautiful birds and interesting saurians of the region mere wanton killing, with never any stop to pick up the bodies of these creatures.
On this bank lay, to all appearance, three logs washed thither by the current. But now, oh horror, Jack saw these logs move and raise themselves. They were huge alligators sunning themselves and waiting for prey. It was clear that the vast saurians had noted the movement on the surface of the river. One by one they slid down the sand and vanished into the stream.
But one must remember that during the heyday of the great saurians, there were as yet no birds and no mammals.
They possessed a perfect organisation, gigantic proportions, prodigious strength. The saurians of our day, the alligators and the crocodiles, are but feeble reproductions of their forefathers of primitive ages. I shudder as I recall these monsters to my remembrance. No human eye has ever beheld them living.
From the mineralogical tables the visitor stepped aside to examine the wondrous revelations of extinct animal life recovered from the bowels of the earth; he saw the colossal megatherium, the towering mastodon, and the great Irish elk. He understood something of the progress of animal life, from the fishes and the saurians.
In their narrow-mouthed caves the natives, whoever they might be, had refuges into which the huge saurians could not penetrate, while with their developed brains they were capable of setting such traps, covered with branches, across the paths which marked the run of the animals as would destroy them in spite of all their strength and activity. Man was always the master.
But throughout all, we see the rise, culmination, and decay of many transitory and apparently preparatory groups such as, for example, the Labyrinthodons and Urodelas preceding the modern types of Amphibia; ancient fish-forms preceding modern ones, and either dying out or leaving but a few and distant representatives; or again, the whole tribes of ancient Saurians, of which something has already been said.
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