from their operation, we infer the perfection of the wisdom by which all this mechanism was designed, and the immensity of the power by which it has ever been upheld.
Cuvier asserts of the Mosasaurus that before he had seen a single vertebra, or a bone of any of its extremities, he was enabled to announce the character of the entire skeleton, from the examination of the jaws and teeth alone, and even from a single tooth. The power of doing this results from those magnificent laws of co-existence, which form the basis of the science of comparative anatomy, and which give the highest interest to its discoveries.
SECTION VIII.
PTERODACTYLE.[1]
Among the most remarkable disclosures made by the researches of Geology, we may rank the flying reptiles, which have been ranged by Cuvier under the genus Pterodactyle; a genus presenting more singular combinations of form, than we find in any other creatures yet discovered amid the ruins of the ancient earth.[2]
The structure of these animals is so exceedingly anomalous, that the first discovered Pterodactyle (Pl. 21) was considered by one naturalist to he a bird, by another as a species of bat, and by a third as a flying reptile.
This extraordinary discordance of opinion respecting a creature whose skeleton was almost entire, arose from the
- ↑ See Pl. 1, Figs. 42, 43, and Plates 21, 22.
- ↑ Pterodactyles have hitherto been found chiefly in the quarries of lithographic limestone of the jura formation at Aichstadt and Solenhofen; a stone abounding in marine remains, and also containing Libellulæ, and other insects. They have also been discovered in the lias of Lyme Regis, and in the oolitic slate of Stonesfield.
