Show DISAPPEARANCE OF THE REPTILES Reptiles are at present a small and dying race They have seen their beet days But in the great secondary age as Tennyson graphically puts it alA monstrous eft was of old the lord and master of earth At tho beginning begin-ning of that time the mammals had not been developed at all and even at its close they were but a feeble folk represented only by weak oreatui es like the smaller pouched animals ef Australia and Tasmania Accordinqy during the secondary period the reptiles rep-tiles had things everywhere pretty much their own way ruling over the earth as absolutely as man and the mammals do now Like all dominant types for the time being they eplit up into many and various forms In tbe sea they became huge paddling enalioaaurians on the dry land they became great erect dinosaurian in the air they became terrible flying pterodactyls For a vast epoch they inherited the earth and then at last they began to lail in competition with their own more developed descendants des-cendants the bird and mammals One by one they died out before the lace of the younger fauna until at font only a few crocodiles and alligators alli-gators a few great snakes and a few big turtles remain among the wee skulking lizards and geckos to remind UB of the enormous reptilian h pes that crowded he surface of the IiMSic oreans Long before the actual arrival l of = true birds upon the scene however sundry branches of the reptilian class had been gradually approximating to and foreshadowing the future flying things Indeed one may say tbat at an early period the central reptilian stock consisting of the long lithe fourlegged forme like the lizards still I closely allied ia shape to their primitive primi-tive newtlike and eellike ancestors began to divide literally into sundry important branches Some of them lost their limb and became serpents others acquired bony bodycovering and became turtles but the vast majority ma-jority wentofl in one of directions I either aa fishlike sea saurian or as birdlike landsauriana It is with tbis last division alone that we shall have largely to deal in tracing out tbe pedigree of our exist g Btro f Grant Allen in Popular Science Monthly n |