The Tilgate beds of the Wealden series, just mentioned, have yielded
numerous fragments of the most remarkable reptilian fossils yet
discovered, and whose wonderful forms denote them to have thronged
the shallow seas and bays and lagoons of the period. In the grounds
of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham the reader will find restorations
of these animals sufficiently perfect to illustrate this reptilian
epoch. They include the _iguanodon_, an herbivorous lizard exceeding
in size the largest elephant, and accompanied by the equally gigantic
and carnivorous _megalosaurus_ (great saurian), and by the two yet more
curious reptiles, the _pylæosaurus_ (forest, or weald, saurian) and the
pterodactyl (from _pteron_, ‘wing,’ and _dactylus_, ‘a finger’), an
enormous bat-like creature, now running upon the ground like a bird;
its elevated body and long neck not covered with feathers, but with
skin, naked, or resplendent with glittering scales; its head like that
of a lizard or crocodile, and of a size almost preposterous compared
with that of the body, with its long fore extremities stretched out,
and connected by a membrane with the body and hind legs.
Suddenly this mailed creature rose in the air, and realised or even
surpassed in strangeness _the flying dragon of fable_: its fore-arms
and its elongated wing-finger furnished with claws; hand and fingers
extended, and the interspace filled up by a tough membrane; and its
head and neck stretched out like that of the heron in its flight. When
stationary, its wings were probably folded back like those of a bird;
though perhaps, by the claws attached to its fingers, it might suspend
itself from the branches of trees.