[CHAP. XI.]
THE REPTILES OF THE OCEAN.
The Saurians of the Past Seas.—The Anatomical Structure of the Turtles.—Their Size.—Their Visits to the Shores.—The Dangers that await their Young.—Turtles on the Brazilian Coast.—Prince Maximilian of Neuwied and the Turtle.—Conflicts of the Turtles with Wild Dogs and Tigers on the Coast of Java.—Turtle-catching on Ascension Island.—Tortoise-shell.—The Amblyrhynchus cristatus.—Marine Snakes.—The Great Sea-Snake.
There was a time when the reptiles were the monarchs of the sea, when the ocean swarmed with gigantic saurians, tyrants of the fishes, combining the swiftness of the dolphin with the rapacity of the crocodile. Had those monsters of the deep been endowed with human intelligence, they would most likely also, with human arrogance, have boasted of an eternal sway. For where in the whole ocean was the enemy that could cope with them? Did not all beings flee wherever they appeared? and did not the inexhaustible sea promise them an everlasting supply of food?
Ichthyosaurus.
But in spite of their colossal power, the saurians, like all created beings, have been forced to succumb to time.
Centuries and centuries passed on, the sea and air gradually changed, the temperature of the elements no longer remained the same, and thus by degrees a new ocean and a new atmosphere were formed, uncongenial to the nature of those huge reptiles. Thus they have been effaced from the roll of living things, and some petrified remains alone bear testimony to their former existence.