"The fiend, O'er bog, or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies."
Now, when the details of such facts are brought before us, it is very natural to feel that it is the history of monsters, and that the Centaurs, the Gorgons, and Chimeras of the ancients, are no more unlike existing animals than these resurrections from the rocks. But further examination rectifies our mistake, and we recognize them as parts of one great system. All the peculiarities of size, and structure, and form, which we meet, we find to be only wise and benevolent adaptations to the different circumstances in which animals have been placed. The gigantic size of many of them, compared with existing races, may be explained by the tropical, or even ultra tropical character of the climate; and not a single anomaly of structure and form can be pointed out, which did not contribute to the convenience and happiness of the species, in the circumstances in which they were placed. It is our ignorance and narrow views alone that give any of them the aspect of monsters. Listen to the opinion of Sir Charles Bell, one of the ablest of modern anatomists. "The animals of the antediluvian world," says he, "were not monsters; there is no _lusus_, or extravagance. Hideous as they appear to us, and like the phantoms of a dream, they were adapted to the condition of the earth when they existed." "Judging by these indications of the habits of the animals, we acquire a knowledge of the condition of the earth during their period of existence; that it was suited at one time to the scaly tribe of the lacertæ, with languid motion; at another, to animals of higher organization, with more varied and lively habits; and, finally, we learn that, at any period previous to man's creation, the surface of the earth would have been unsuitable to him."--_Bridgewater Treatise_, pp. 35 and 31.
A similar view is given of this subject by England's geological poet, (Rev. Mr. Wilks,) in whose playful verses we find more of true science and just inference than in many a ponderous tome of grave prose. In one of his poems he says,--