Not for tliis do their hateful carcases survive the Scorpion
Soul, torn out of them and punished for ever; Despite
the unhappy Power in which they originated they betray
a Chapter of the Defeat suffered in their persons, long
anterior to the final discomfiture he shall undergo with
reference to our own, with so different a result. The
Carcases themselves we dash in the teeth of the Fiends
by whom' they were articulated and animalized; their
inductions afford us a hopeful prestige of the Times when
Adrammelek and all his Hosts shall be hurled out of the
World unto his place,—“ fulmine luridum missos ad
arcum,” and the ages renewed, re-commerce afresh, Viigo
and the golden Signs.
Regnum.—Gedolim Taainim.—OJun
Sun-ReGNUH.—Plesiosaurus.—nxntrio», et aaufos.
Genus.—P entatarsostinus.—Tltirai Toftro!, et d
(Quinqué ossibus in talis.) Animaliuin La-
certiformium in pago Street, cura e t opere
Thomas Hawkins in lucem prolatorum genus.
Tab. XXVII.
If to discover the n s which hold
t Ichthyosauri, it was necessary to enucleate-the
immense Collection, over which we dwelt with so much
satisfaction as the rich reward of a devotion unbounded,
an industry untiring, a singleness unshaken, and a good
fortune peculiarly our own ; how much more indispensable
are multiplied spoils of Plesiosauri, which offer us
varieties of form remarkable indeed, but infinitely less
conspicuous than those of their contemporary monsters.
Endowed with passions of a more subtle kind, and a
bodily figure of a more compact and perfect order whereby
to accomplish them, the Plesiosauri gathered their Tribes
within a Province of their own, proudly repelling the
Piscal Races at their side, and arrogated the prerogatives
of a higher class in the Scale of Beiog.
Ichthyosauri ran into every Gender with ease, luxuriating
in change, dubious even of the order by which they
stood in the midst of the'world. The rude spirit of Belial
hurried them along in ceaseless lust of blood, brutal immitigable,
and insatiate Fiends; with eyes, and ears, and
bodies intent upon carnage and gore. From a mechanism
like this it is impossible to detach an idea of blind
and headlong fury, insensible to danger, and every other
sentiment but the bloody one to which appetite confined
it, so that of ail brutes this was the most brutal and unredeemed.
There are other Faculties which tend to the same fruition,
but by a more circuitous path, and elaborate an
action, and other Dives’ than Belial have tried their black
art upon matter with a success commensurate and as cunning.
Plesiosauri are their handiwork : if the Old Serpent
himself did not shed his own teeth upon the ground, out
of which these Sea-Dragons, armed with all the virility
of Evil instant sprung. Emulous, Satan seems to have
been thrice seized, generating Horrors commanding, and
realizing a teeming Spawn fitted for the lowest Abysm of
Chaos. Long uncouth limbs, lank bodies, egregious tails,
necks ambitious of the most terrible Serpents, and heads
crowning them with Kindred guile, behold the Dragon
Plesiosaurus confest.
The deformities of body with which they came forth
were accompanied by immoral powers of a congenerous
and ugly order, and physical dispositions quick to fulfil
them. The Jaws bristling with sharpest teeth, the muscular
neck twisting to and fro, not alone were experienced
by the victim they impaled; a more fatal agent than
either subserved them both : the snaky crest, the fury no
longer, but the Jaws remain, over the anterior margin of
which did once dart a forked tongue, the gums distilling
poison at every pore.
Had the Adamites been formed upon less conservative
principles, or had not the Almighty neutralized the deleterious
substances which compose these Sea-Dragons, the
long marcli of Ages might not suffice, and their Virus
may have guided Death to the recesses even of our own
iiearts, through the absorbents of the fingers by which we
expose their bones.
So concentrated a Horror, we could expect to present
scarcely a variety of aspect. The Summit of Arimanes
his Creation must come like all other things to a point;
Plesiosauri are an order so frightful that the least addition
would commit it to the grotesque.
It were vain then to look for lines of generic demarcation
as broad as those of Ichthyosauri; may be some
Plesiosauri were green, and black, and yellow, like Indian,
others spotted and mottled, like African Snakes; some
were large, some Small, but they all belong to a category
with a single point: the Skeletons which remain to us,
although they differ from one another, suffice for a Generic
but scarcely a special system: and it now becomes our
duty to inquire after and record the varieties wiiicb have
come to our Knowledge, and to award the result to each
which may appear its due.
Certain naturalists, struck with the fashion in which
Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri are contrived and put together,
influenced, perhaps, by the Pythagorean doctrine
of Species, and beguiled by the seemingly endless conformation
which holds throughout every individual known,
have speculated upon and even entertained a notion that
both Regna were related to each other intimately, converging
each to the other in a long graduated chain of
persons, at last meeting and uniting in the most Cordial
brotherhood together.
It was sufficiently shown, we presume, in our memoirs,
not certainly by an examination of each side by side, but
by the more simple and studious description of each one
in his proper place, that any such an hypothesis is wholly
untenable. A community of disposition to blood is all
that the Taninim had together. It may be also allowed
that they were amphibious, but in far differing degrees,
the spine, and pensile paddles confining Ichthyosauri
entirely to the Sea, while the more thick-set and bony
Plesiosauri may have splashed through the Shallows and
ooze of the Sea to spawn, or to ambush in the marginal
Alg® and Flags, with scarcely an effort. It is impossible
to carry resemblance farther; the long crocodile-
head of the one fixed immoveably to his back modelled
from a fish, his tapering and slender tail, his paddles too
made up of circular or pentagonal bones enclosed in cuticular
fat, but ill accord with the characteristics of the
other. Rather say tliat the minute viper-head, pivoted
upon that astonishing neck, the heavy quadrupedal carcase
of the Plesiosaurus, and liis tliick and labouring tail,
his hands, his feet too framed like our own but webbed,
present the very antithesis of the former, and deny with
one consent any relation whatever. The Giants of either
kind sped the waves, and battling, may have reddened
them often with mutual blood, demons as they both were:
but the company was not of choice, none other passions
but of rage and alien hate possessing them twain.
Moreover, it has been supposed that botli Dragons had
a rugous, or even a hairy hide, and fins for which no use
can be assigned, nor evidence of them found; as though
the lank, the ungainly monsters were not yet sufficiently
extraordinary, and Nature delighted herself in the absurd.
It were as profitless too to search amongst these Dragons
for analogies with living Races. Tlie world has grown
testy in her Old Age, and will not brook any such attempt.
Where we now freeze half the year, of yore there
was a perennial Summer, these Taninim bathing through
all tlieir lengthened Generations in tepid Deeps: tlie constitution
of things was unlike the present, as was the
Creation of which these Creatures made the dark and
trembling side: the Canicular Times were tlieivs, their
god Typlion in his prime, the Storm of God’s wrath
couching in the clouds afar off.
The Snakes, aud uncouth things, and deadly, in our
own Earth, and the unclean, may have been imitated from
the fragments of these Taninim, over which the besom of
Destruction eventually swept, but what boots the posthumous
likeness. We know that Crocodiles, and Cheloni®,
and Chameleons, and the Ophisauriati Tribes claim descent
from these ancient Races, but the family records are
for the most part illegible, and of value only In a genera!
sense. We may pore over tbem by these modern lights,
and, perchance, identify a character here and there, but
the Great Book of Dead Times is unique, the later Editions
are incomplete, the Court-hand having been altered
for another; and these Sea-Dragons remain in their primal
State, alone, approached but awful, the wizard
Giants of Time, and the wonder of tbe world.
Thus it is seen that the Remains of Plesiosauri must
be looked at for themselves only. Congregating all the
known individuals, and testing them by one another, we
ventured in our former Book to prefer the tarsus for the
required distinctions, and thence identified four several
Species. The Rule has so much more comprehensive a
basis in Ichthyosauri, that for that reason we may be
dissatisfied with it in tJie present instance. But the
choice is imperative. The head, neck, trunk, tail, may
and do differ in all the Skeletons, in shape, in size, and in
relation, but we can detect in either no mark anyway
equal to the one elected, and therefore it must Continue.
And, now, the addition of two entire Skeletons to the list
of Plesiosauri impose a further necessity. The Duke of
Buckingham’s, Lord Cole’s, that at the British Museum by
Miss Anning, and the author’s—recorded in our Memoirs,
are corrected by these discoveries, and enabled to take
precedence another step. They assume a generical Title,
and we hasten to record the persons by the discovery of
which it is authorized and assured.
First, the Pentatarsostinus of Plate XXVII.
The panygeric of this and all the other Taninim perpetuated
by us, is inscribed in golden numbers in our
National Arcliives; it having been pronounced first by
Imperial Buckland, and repeated in parliament witli acclamation.
The beautiful Remain of Plate XXIV startled and
delighted the most eminent Naturalists, so that they
exhausted tlie vocabulary of praise, Conybeare himself
setting the example. But the Skeleton before us transcends
even that. He has paid no tribute to Time, nor to
Death, and malicious Fate has succeeded in spoiling him
only of a few phalanges of the right liand, which may
bave been pointed at her in defiance, and sacrificed in the
act. Of all his Tribe, he only is known : they are sunk
in oblivion all, leaving this one Dragon behind them
crowned with values of the highest kind, kingly and alone.
We subjoin extracts from Journal, showing the manner
in which, and by what a happy chance, he fell into our
hand.
“ 1834. June. Wednesday. My attention was yesterday
solicited by a quarrier, to the section of a few small
bones at the bottom of Bond’s quarry ; they appear so
little promising, that I passed them by.
“ Thursday. A whim possesses me to examine more
particularly the bones in Bond's quarry, to which I shall
at once go.
“ Friday. Instinct, only another word for Intuition, is
surer than reason. To my agreeable surprize the section
has led to the most interesting result ; upon excavating
the overlying strata the rudiments of an entire Skeleton
faintly presented themselves, through a thick covering of
Limestone. With difficulty I have traced the larger
bones of a Plesiosaurus, which lies in a bed of lias ten
inches thick, and the roost compact and crystallized of all
the layers.
Saturday. Tlie prize safely delivered up at Sharpham.”
The Journal proceeds.—“ The teeth of this Plesiosaurus
are exactly like those of all others known, save tlie gigantic
Races, curved superiorly, and sharp, striated upon the external
enamel, and perfectly smooth upon the alveolar
body, which is hollowed to protect the nascent tootli
waiting to usurp its place. The teeth of Ichthyosauri
vary to infinity, and for that very reason compel us to
forego them as specificai marks, or to isolate every fragment
witli a tooth in it, in a Class by itself. These
Dragons, on the contraiy, afford but two sorts of teeth,
which belong to the Greater and the Less Plesiosauri.
There are so many vital differences among the latter
Tribes, that it is impossible lliey could have originated
in one common Stock, their teeth then manifestly also fail
us in the identification of Species.
Tlie neck of Plate XXVII, curved sinister, presents
three-fourths of its circumferential parts in all the order
and regularity of Life itself. Except, indeed, where it
approaches the Sternum, towards which the right lateral
processes of the three vertebræ anterior to it have been
thrown.
The great and unknown Race Plesiosaurus, dimly seen
through the Perspective of Ages, may well have agitated
the Antiquary of Science, in that infrequent Path, across
which it flitted before him. It must have been a strange
moment for Mr. Conybeare, that wherein, piercing the
Shades he descried one of the Eleusiiiia of Time, so long
jealously buried under the Pillars of Matter; agrandFact
unveiled before him ! the Skeleton thereof hideous thrice,
but the accompanying inductions astonishing and sublime.
Mr. Conybeare invoking Homer, called it “ Doli-
chodeirus.” What right the original Plesiosaurus, upon
which that epithet was conferred, may have to the same,
contradistinguished from others, it is impossible to define ;
the neck and Sternum having been dislocated and scattered.
But this much we know, tliat the neck of these Monsters
no more than the teeth, hold the Generic secret. We
leara this from the subject of Plate XXVII, and my Lord
Cole's beautiful Plesiosaurus ; both which have a common
number of cervical bones, and signally oppose each other in