sunk tlirough several thin laminæ not unlike charred
loaves, which we probed with the most intense concern.
Curious suspicions of Mamm® began to haunt us. We
had hitherto supposed these Sea-dragons oviparous, and
now wc are tempted to think them mammal. The head
here seems enlarged for the maternal dispositions, and if
ever Dragon were destroyed in tlie hey-day of life, this is
the one.
The absence of embryo Shapes in tbe Pelvis of all
known Taninim, and of the decisive marks near the Head
adverted to, disprove nothing, as none other Skeleton extant
proves so vigorous an adultness, and so sudden a
death as the one under our notice. Tlie extremity of the
upper snout, or rather the superior maxillaria, have been
broken off as against a rock ; but whatever the cause of
death, it was instant, and whatever the lamin® of which
we speak, they arc very strange. They also describe an
outline singularly suspicious, reaching forward to the
nostril, and describing outwardly a semi-circle of several
Indies. The attitude, if I may so express it, of the
monster, is also precisely that one which ivould project
the teats as described ; the spongeous texture of which,
gorged with lactiferous matter at the moment of sepulture,
might have a chance of perpetuation in color, and manner
herein found.
If these great Sea-Dragons certainly suckled tlieir
impy brood, which these appearances incline us to believe,
Martin has barely attained, with all his stupendous
Powers, the utter hideousness their own. These huge
Dragons and tlieir horrid Brood ! Well may Berossus have
journeyed to Babylon, where their dread Images were
pictured on the Temple of Bel, by a Pencil inspired
probably by Regal Adam himself.
Thus Egypt not alone boasts a City of magicians with
monsters changed into stone, exactly as they were found
at the moment tlie pétrifie spell fell upon them. Creatures
more weird than they, of a more ancient Ansinis are ours.
In this Tanin especially, we confront Life everywhere ;
the head is instinct with life, the eye glowere in his socket,
as if in the last agony, the spine twists to and fro, as
though the nervous filaments still tortured its extremest
parts, one foot digs into the ground, and the lashing tail
writhes under the general throe, agitating for Death.
Ilis lieart-strings were wrenched asunder so quickly, so
rudely, that Death failed to stamp his Effigies upon the
resisting bones, and so left them there at the bottom of
the Seas, lifeful, despite liimself, as we behold them here.
Peradventure in a conceit. Time thereupon proceeded to
mummify this Sea-dragon with more than peculiar Care ;
Ilis cerecloths he fabricated in the strongest stone, and
folded them up over him innumerable, as though expecting
some at last recurring Cycle of years, when the
wandering Ghost should return again to his inviolate
home, and re-enact the life of which it had been before
the crimson Stage.
If not only the Pharaohs, but prophetic Time have been
careful so much, in that hope of resuscitation in which
universal Earth of old did verily comfort herself, liow
know ye, O lector ! that some God Galvani is not at hand
to restore all things in accomplishment of tlie Primæval
Philosophy, before which our body, soul, and spirit bow-
eth down evermore. “ Blessed and lioly is he that hath
part in the first Resurrection.” Revelations, xx. 6.
SECT. III.
Species III, Rostro retuso, osse huoieri curto. Tub. XXI.
Who but Scharf could so portray the naked bones of
these Taninim, and seize their metaphysical aspect, so
tenuous and shy! With an eye to the outward form,
cerles, and a sense known only to Genius of artistical
dexterity manifested by a stroke, Scharf shall multiply
these Sea-Dragons throughout Christendom, and embellish
our Chronicles beyond all others. The mere colorist
may heed the plates nothing; men who expire with joy
before Angelus Bonarota, Rafael, and Titian may scan
them without a thought, and contemn them because they
perceive not one thought in them. But the metaphysician
who sees more in a square than its four sides, and who
reasons to infinity with the figures which avail oi-dinary
men only for dullest arithmetic, is above .them. True,
the Souls of the Masters were attuned to vocalities as
lofty, and Ideas as grand as are those of whom we speak,
if, indeed they were not of all men the greatest, and their
works do follow them.
Lithography, although a humble liandinaid, is very
useful to the fine arts, and more especially to Science.
In geology, above all, she seizes the lithological character
of fossil remains, and describes both it and the original
themselves in the happiest manner.
Covered with parasitic ostr® and other shells, the
Tanira, so beautifully drawn by Scliarf in Plate XXI, was
disinterred in the same year as was tbe last Skeleton,
an extraordinary occurrence finding two Saurians
year, the average of more than ten years yielding
3 annually. And yet some of our most accomplislied
geologists believe that these Sea-Dragons are as the sand
the Sea-shore. “ Est modus in rebus! suntcerti denique
fines.”
The Street, as are all the neighbouring quarries of lias,
commence with a thick bed of external Clay, verging into
with marly partings. In the liardest.
and most desireable Stratum of marl, sixteen feet deep,
lay this magnificent Skeleton. In the act of casting
away a piece, the laborer detected a section of the tail,
and gave me immediate notice of the fact. The slab was
replaced, the Skeleton traced out, the circumjacent lias
squared, cut out of the pit, and translated to Sharpham
the same day.
The mark I usually strike at first is a pectoral paddle ;
next day a paddle came forth, attached to its Great Tribe,
the Paramecostinus, but demanding a Family Name of its
The Scapul® are in their place, the right humerus,
radius, and ulna thrown upward, and all the phalanges
scattered round about them. The Skull, filled by many
of these dislocated bones, gradually emerges, an obtuse
snout appears, both snout and head having a contour
differing from all others in my Cabinets. The teeth arc
almost hidden by the intermaxillary and other bones, the
bead having fallen almost upon its vertex, so as to show
much of its internal order inferiorly. The spine, obscured
at first by many overlying ribs, yields ; it breaks, but the
spinous apophyses hold on upon one another until the
vertebr®, recovering themselves, proceed more orderly
toward the natural bend of the tail ; there they are irrevocably
scattered, one of them being driven two or three
inches out of his track ; but the tail, nevertheless, proceeds,
one bone following the other nearly to the end,
when the same disturbing power against which the whole
Spine contended with so much difficulty, succeeds in
carrying off tlie Rattle, which is lost for ever.
It is impossible to laud the vertebral Column of this
Tanin too much. It lies in ruins, one joint fallen upon
another frequent, but the ruin is more impressive than
the uprightest shaft. The waters of the Great Deep overturned
it lovingly, and the gravid Seas fell lightly over
it. Just as the Sculptor leaves his finished work, we find
these remains uncrushed, perfect, but overthrown. If the
Architect did once build them up, they have been quietly
undermined by that interesting Decay, which, stealing the
more evanescent Emblems of Time, compunctiously leaves
the radicle Beauty behind, and sometimes even a grace
passing that which is conjured away.
Another valuable fact belonging to this Dragon is also
obtained. Falling down upon his back, we have the
abdominal concavity exposed ; and the fortunate displacement
of certain of the left ribs discloses a body which
can only belong to tbe Viscera themselves ; its color is
russet black, it covers the internal paries of the right I'ibs,
and gathers itself up upon them into a bag, the size of an
infant’s hand. But the most precise words avail little to
describe it ; the moment you look there into the abdomen,
you believe you see the stomach collapsed, and a few
meagre contents besieging the intestinal canal ; these are
manifestly so insufficient to his sustentation, that the
Dragon at once appears, inane, languidly sinking to
bottom of the Sea, and giving up the famished ghost.
The Solemn Seas themselves hold requiem over his
bones, and old Time, warned to the scene, agitates them
iu his turn. The Profound quivers, accordant with the
upper waves, the dead Carcase of the Dragon moves, and
there in the presence of Time, and before the Shivering
waters, uplifts his hands. Slowly the waters cease vibration,
Time throws the Shroud of Oblivion over another of
his sacred dragons, “ injecta monstris Terra dolet s
and the Cycles onward run.
SECT. IV.
;s IV. Rostvo porrecto. ThJ. XXIII.
The thoughtless avidity with which Fashion pursues
the minutest distinctions of things, the microscopic eye
with which she pries into nature, has filled the world witli
books of description without an Idea hy which they can
only deserve to exist. We dive into the Deeps for an
animalcule, prick out his tiny heart with the faintest
needle, and complacently count up the pulses which fulfil
his life of scarcely a moment’s duration. The invisible
tentacles o fa Zoophyte, the feathers of an Ephemeris, the
ova of a herring, the farina of the most prolific plants,
are tbe favorite objects of study, because they afford the
Times exactly the childish sport which interests tliem
most.
Tbe natural eye of a man, steadily fixed upon a given
point, loses its sight; and Savages, as soon as they can
count their fingers, in an extasy, proceed to count them
over again and again. And so it is with Nations. When
the World, having passed away, the final summation of
Empires, and their achievements, shall be cast up by the
Arithmetic of Jehovah, we shall learn that Peoples have
foi^otten, nay, lost themselves in the gainless Spirit to
which we allude. It may be, it is very well to comprehend
and enjoy every thing in its measure; but the Cyclops
none the less so understood lesser things, because, forging
the thunderbolts of Jupiter, they comprehended a vastness
and a grandeur which obtains them Immortality. Tliese
were the primitive Giants of Renown, who if they did
err, it was like as gods, and as gods were they used too.
The Modern Goths need not wonder that the Latins
and Greeks boast only an Aristotle and a Pliny, while
every dish and saucer from China, and every Shaw] from
the looms of Ispahan and India glows with minutest Iris’
copied from the Flora of the papilionaceous East. But
these have PersepoHs and Elephanta, and many other
mighty Works, and much WUdom too, upon wliich no
European has ever safely ventured forth; wliilo we, tlie
Crowned Kings of Men, effect nothing worthy acceptance
of the Generations that are to come.
All our most original Essays tend but to a little point;
we have admitted a convention which smiles at every
thing beyond a certain meridian, and pride ourselves in
that Hermaphrodite Reason which Antiquity tolerated
but by degrees. A disposition like this leads but to extinction;
the Tritchinopoly chains are much esteemed,
but the patient Smith who forges them is a Slave. In
fact, nothing little iu Nature is worth more than an instant's
notice, since she has filled all her Kingdoms with
Monuments of surpassing Grandeur, which the longest-
lived Nations can hope to glimpse barely a half.
Who then can endure to pore over the infinitessimal
diflerences of age, of race, of color, of shape, in which
Creatures are found. Will not posterity deem us triflers
for the pains taken to record so many minute points, even
while we neglect the greater Principles of Things. And
all our more elaborate Works on Natural History, will
they not pass unheeding by them, seeing that the persons
they so laboriously set forth are common to the eyes and
understandings of all men.
We coast the Marginal Countries of the Earth industriously,
crowding our Log with accounts of the grasses,
the herbs, and mosses which fringe their shores; and it is
at last come to this, that Naturalists assiduously search
after a new thing in vain, since the contraction of our
vision ha-s put out of its focus all that is not adjusted to
the circumscribed field to which it is so foolishly confined.
Hence individuals are ever contending over the last found
Helix, or the latest variety of a thing, so that the tulipo-
mania of the last Century luxuriates in another but no
less exaggerated a Species, and distracts the domains of
Science, in which the Ancients scarcely ever heard, nor
would they have tolerated a brawl.
Every tree bleeds under a thousand knives inscribing
as many names; every leaf groans expectant of a like
fate. The Vandal treads not alone our Cathedrals, he
not alone desecrates their Sacred Marble and Shrines
with his savage Name; the Realms of Creation are in