Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.”
Par. Lost, Book I.
But before we enter on a description of these extinct and anomalous creatures, we shall give a sketch of both. No. 1 is the skeleton of the Ichthyosaurus,[[83]] restored from the fragments found chiefly at Lyme Regis: it may be seen, with several of its congeners and contemporaries, in the British Museum. No. 2 is a restored outline of this saurian; from both of which sketches it will be seen that the most justly dreaded monsters of our tropical climates sink into insignificance beside the ancient tenants of the mighty deep, in those remote periods of geological antiquity we are now contemplating. The combination of the forms of the fish and the lizard seems more like a troubled dream of Fuseli, than the calm and philosophic deductions of the most eminent anatomists and philosophers.
The fossil remains of this creature show that it was intended chiefly, if not entirely, for a marine life. Like the seal, it may occasionally have come to bask on the shore, although, like the seal, it possessed no developed legs or feet, but only paddles. The size of these animals was enormous; they sometimes attained a length of upwards of thirty feet; and to realize such a creature, we must imagine our meeting with a monster thus long in some tropical swamp, having a smooth slimy skin like a whale, a long heavy head like a porpoise, teeth like a crocodile, vertebræ hollow, and therefore light, like the vertebræ of a fish, enabling it to dive swiftly to the bottom, and equally as swift to rise again; and paddles like a whale. Again, look at the head,—that is, go into room No. 4 of the British Museum, and look with wonder, as we often have, on Wall-case A(1), and B(2), and C(3), and you will agree with us that the half of the wonders of this heteroclite[[84]] creature have not been told. It had a gape, that is, it could open its jaws seven feet, so that a grenadier guard might walk into his mouth without stooping; it had teeth, not placed in sockets, but arranged in a long continuous trough; it had an eye more marvellous than the eye of the Ancient Mariner, that kept the wedding guest sitting on a stone, who could do nought but hear, for the eye of the Ichthyosaur was often eighteen inches in diameter, so that a man might put his head, hat and all, into its socket,—and this eye was possessed of more wondrous properties than even the eye of the celebrated Irishman that could see round a corner, for the eye of the Ichthyosaur enabled its owner to see all round the country at one time; and as it was a very predatory animal, having doubtless as many enemies as victims, it required this eye both day and night, and accordingly the eye was placed close to the nose, so that the animal could not come to the surface of the water to breathe without being immediately forewarned of danger, or advised of a prize.[[85]]
Next follows the Plesiosaurus,[[86]] which may be seen, in its skeleton parts, restored, and in casts, in room No. 3 of the British Museum, in Wall-cases D(4), E(5), F(6). “The beautiful state of preservation of many of the Plesiosauri, the entire skeleton, from the point of the muzzle to the extremity of the tail, lying in relief, as if it had sunk down quietly on the soft clay, and become petrified on the spot, manifests how different were the conditions in which the strata of the lias and the wealden were deposited; while the exquisite manner in which the investing stone has been removed, attests the consummate skill and indefatigable zeal of the gentleman (Mr. Hawkins) by whom these superb fossils were developed.”[[87]]
Below, No. 1, is a skeleton of the Plesiosaurus, and No. 2 is the restored outline of the animal, whose largest specimen never exceeded seventeen feet.
Cuvier thus describes the Plesiosaur (we borrow the quotation from Buckland):—
“The Plesiosaur is the most heteroclite, and in character the most monstrous, of all the animals that have yet been found amid the ruins of a former world. To the head of a lizard it united the teeth of a crocodile, a neck of enormous length resembling the body of a serpent, a trunk and tail like that of an ordinary quadruped, the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of a whale. Such are the strange combinations of form and structure of the Plesiosaurus, a genus the remains of which, after interment for thousands of years amidst the wreck of millions of extinct inhabitants of the ancient earth, are at length recalled to light by the researches of the geologist, and submitted to our examination in nearly as perfect a state as the bones of species that are now existing on the earth.”