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Flying Dragons (Geology does better)

"Geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing lost creations than in tracing veins of lead or beds of iron."-RUSKIN. THE great Ocean of Air was not uninhabited during the long ages of the Mesozoic era, when fishes swarmed in the seas, and reptiles, such as we have attempted to describe in the last five chapters, trod the earth, or swam across lakes and rivers. With such an exuberance of life in various forms, it would indeed have been strange if the atmosphere had only been tenanted by humble little insects like dragon-flies, locusts, or butterflies and moths, all of which we know were living then.

Now, the record of the rocks tells us that one great order of reptiles somehow acquired the power of flying, and flitted about as bats or flying-foxes do now. Since they were undoubtedly reptiles in spite of certain resemblances to birds we have ventured to call them "flying dragons," as others have done. The notion of a flying reptile may perhaps seem strange, or even impossible to some persons; but no one has a right to say such and such a thing "cannot be," or is "contrary to Nature," for the world is full of wonderful things such as we should have considered impossible had we not seen them with our eyes. Charles Kingsley, in his delightful fairy tale, The Water-Babies, makes some humorous remarks on that matter, which we may quote here. He says, "Did not learned men too hold, till within the last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? People call them Pterodactyls; but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist."

The illustrious Cuvier observes that it was not merely in magnitude that reptiles stood pre-eminent in ancient days, but they were distinguished by forms more varied and extraordinary than any that are now known to exist on the face of the earth. Among these extinct beings of ages incalculably remote, are the Pterodactyls,¹ or "wing-fingered" creatures, which had the power of flight, not by a membrane stretched over elongated fingers as in bats, nor by a wing without distinct or complete fingers, as in birds, but by a membrane supported chiefly by a greatly extended little finger, the other fingers being short and armed with claws. The only reptile now existing which has any power of sustaining itself in the air is the little Draco volans, or "flying lizard," so called; but this can scarcely be regarded as a flying animal. Its ribs, however, are prolonged to such an extent that they support a broad expansion of the skin, so spread out from side to side as to perform the office of a parachute, thus enabling the creature to spring from tree to tree by means of extended leaps; and this it does with wonderful activity.