And lastly, it must ever be borne in mind that, as yet, our knowledge of the stratified rocks of the earth’s crust is very limited. In course of time, no doubt, this deficiency will be to a great extent made good; but it will take a long time. Already, within the last thirty years, the labours of zealous geologists in the colonies and in various countries have added largely to our knowledge of the geological record. Still, only a small portion of the earth’s surface has at present been explored; and doubtless one may look forward to future discoveries of extinct forms of animal and plant life as wonderful and strange as those that have been of late years unearthed in the “far West,” in Africa, and India. The Siwalik Hills of Northern India offer a rich harvest of fossils to future explorers. Already, one remarkable and large horned quadruped has come from this region; and it is known that other valuable treasures are sealed up within these hills, only awaiting the “open sesame” of some enterprising explorer to bring them to light.
As previously pointed out, deposits formed in lakes are the most promising field for geologists in search of the remains of old terrestrial quadrupeds and reptiles; but, unfortunately, such deposits are rare.
It is very much to be regretted that the carelessness and indifference of ignorant workmen in quarries, clay-pits, and railway cuttings have sometimes been the cause of valuable fossils being broken up, and so lost for ever. Unless they are accustomed to the visits of fossil-collectors who will pay them liberally for their finds, the men will not take the trouble to preserve any bones they may come across in the course of their work. (An example of this negligence will be found on [p. 95].) But when once they realise that such finds have what political economists call an “exchange value,” or, in other words, can be turned into money, it is astonishing what zealous guardians of Nature’s treasures they become! For this reason collectors often find what Professor Bonney calls the “silver hammer”—in other words, cash—more effective than the iron implement they carry with them.
SEA-SCORPIONS.
“And some rin up the hill and down dale, knapping the chucky stanes to pieces wi' hammers like sae many road-makers run daft. They say ’tis to see how the warld was made.”—St. Ronan’s Well.
Our first group of monsters is taken from a tribe of armed warriors that lived in the seas of a very ancient period in the world’s history. Like the crabs and lobsters inhabiting the coasts of Britain, they possessed a coat of armour, and jointed bodies, supplied with limbs for crawling, swimming, or seizing their prey. They were giants in their day, far eclipsing in size any of their relations that have lived on to the present time. Some of them, such as the Pterygotus ([Fig. 1, p. 26]), attained a length of nearly six feet. They belonged to the humbler ranks of life, and, if now living, would without doubt be assigned, by fishmongers ignorant of natural history, to that vague category of “shell-fish” in which they include crabs, lobsters, mussels, etc.
These lobster-like creatures, though claiming no relationship with the higher ranks of animals, may well engage our attention, not only for their great size, but also for their strange build.