Part 3 (1/2)

Mr Pterodactyl est of his five digits It helped support and operate that big bat-like wing extending from his arms to his toes]

THE EARLIEST RULERS OF THE SEA

The firstthe land itself, were in the sea[5] For a tiiant fish, armor-plated like a man-of-war, and with awful appetites, just about ran everything

Then can of the sharks Soht of a door--six feet or over Next in succession, as rulers of the sea, were the fish-lizards, of whoe-jawed Mesosaur was one Of another of these fish-lizards a fah University, Professor Blackie, wrote that funny verse at the head of this chapter The bones of this particular speciis, a popular watering-place in the English Channel, by a pretty English girl as strolling along the beach

[5] ”The Strange Adventures of a Pebble”

[Illustration: A FAMILY PARTY

The iination of the artist enables us to picture this family party--Mrs Ichthyosaurus and her children out for a stroll in prehistoric waters]

The Ichthyosaurus, as Professor Blackie says in his verse, was soe head--like an alligator's--set close to his body Another fish-lizard, well and unfavorably known by his neighbors of the sea, was the Plesiosaurus

Instead of fins he had big paddles rese those of the seal He was a kind of side-wheeler, like the Mississippi River stea and he darted after the smaller creatures he lived on

REIGN OF THE LIZARD FAMILY

But these queer fish see lizards, they after a while s to the reptile farew, in course of time, reptiles which lived, not in the sea but in the swa the sea These reptiles were the Dinosaurs, and they are related to the Minosaurs and the Ichthyosaurus, and the rest of the Saurs, as you can see by the family name; for ”saur” means lizard

Dinosaur means ”terrible lizard” Don't you think he looks it?

Although soer than chickens, others were by far the largest creatures that ever were, on sea or land Many of the biggest lived on grass, just like an old cohile the flesh-eating Dinosaurs lived on them Some of these Dinosaurs went on all fours, while others ran about on their hind legs, and when they stood still, propped thearoos The Camptosaurus, one of whose favorite resorts was the land that is now Wyo Another called the Brontosaurus, was sixty feet long The Atlantosaurus, one of the pioneers of Colorado, hty feet from the end of his nose to the end of his tail, and all of theosaurus, also an early settler in Wyo out all along his back from the nape of his neck to the end of his tail He seely and hu

After the swa, ca the Mastodons and the Mah the forests

HOW SOME MONSTERS PLOUGHED THE FIELD

But besides what they did in the way of fertilizing the land with their flesh and bones so these early ploughmen were the Mastodons and the Mammoths, and another elephant-like creature with two tusks, that he wore, not after the fashi+on a down frooatee He used these tusks, it is supposed, not only for self-defense, but for grubbing up roots which he ate If so, they hs as those crooked sticks that were used by the early far primitive peoples

THE ELEPHANT FAMILY AS PLOUGHMEN

Whattusks stirred the soil with them is that his cousins, the elephants of to-day, are therass and the tender shoots of trees, but on bulbs buried in the soil, which they hunt out by their fine sense of sround Elephants also do a great deal of ploughing by uprooting trees so as to et at their tender tops Sir Samuel Baker, the explorer, says the work done by a herd of elephants in a reat and that trees over four feet in circuest trees several elephants work together, so under the roots with their tusks To be sure, the round is no sineering

Another early ploughs, but his s were simply enormous, and so were his feet New Zealand seems to have been the headquarters of the Moas There used to be loads of thee deposits of their bones They are supposed to have been killed in countless nues in the Southern Hees in the Southern as well as the Northern He in wars, bones of the Moas were found in such countless nuathered at these springs to keep warreat freezes

THE MILLSTONES OF THE MOAS

Besides the work they did with feet and bills you round up in their crops during the izzard of a Moa--full of pebbles as big as hickory nuts Scattered about the springs where their bones are found are little heaps of these pebbles, each the contents of a gizzard Like miniature tumuli, they mark the spots where the bodies of the Moas returned to dust

Perhaps so once in a while, too; for one theory is that those ridiculous little ars, just as the crocodiles and the alligators and the turtles dig nests for their eggs to-day For all these ani to the reptile fa out nests for their eggs

[Illustration: A PUZZLE PAGE FROM THE GREAT STONE BOOK