all the inhabitants of the deep; its jaws are twenty feet long, and as it opens its mouth, it is appalling to think what an engine of destruction it must be, and what a number of living creatures must be devoured daily to support a carcase nearly one hundred feet long, and equal in bulk to more than two hundred fat oxen! He is armed with two large fins, with powerful claws at the ends of them, and will grasp the enormous sharks which abound in the sea and devour them instantly. Such was the Cetiosaurus, the largest marine reptile with which we are acquainted.

There are, however, other monsters of great size and strange forms sporting in the water; amongst these, the Plesiosaurus has a neck longer than that of any other creature that we are acquainted with, and he swims along with his neck contracted and his head almost hidden in the sea, until an unfortunate bird passes over him within a few feet of the water, when, suddenly darting up his head, he catches his prey; or else, perhaps, some poor fish comes within eight or ten feet of him, and is in like manner a victim.

But, fierce and destructive as this creature is, his companion, the Ichthyosaurus, is much more so. This was an air-breathing reptile, upwards of thirty feet long. It was covered, like the whale, with a smooth naked skin, thickly folded under the belly for the purpose of protection. The form of the head, as well as that of the jaws and teeth, was like the crocodile. Its eyes were very large, being eighteen inches across, and adapted to all lights; night and day, deep and shallow water, were all the same, and the open air and deep ocean were alike transparent to it. It moved with difficulty on land, but swam with ease and swiftness in the water, whilst its large and vertical tail made it a strange mixture of the whale, fish, and reptile.

But whilst looking upon the sea, we must not forget the animals that are around us on the land; for there are monsters on the land as strange and fearful as any that inhabit the deep. Indeed, this seems to be the age of monsters; and there are around us reptiles as terrible as the famous dragon of fable, which was slain by our noble St. George.

First and foremost amongst these is a large vegetable-eating reptile, called the Iguanodon. The bodies of two of the largest elephants would not make up that enormous carcase. The legs are ten feet high from the foot to the point of the shoulder'; it is between sixty and seventy feet long, and-per parenthesis-the

specimen restored at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, is sufficiently large to admit of twenty gentlemen dining in the inside of it. It is difficult to give a plain and popular idea of this enormous creature; and a glance at a good picture would do more to give a correct idea of it than a whole page of printed matter would convey. But there are other creatures associated with it, scarcely inferior in size, and more rugged in their form. The Megalasaurus, or great sauroid, is amongst the most remarkable of this group; but there are others which are of less size, though of more monstrous shapes. The Labyrinthodon, a frog-like reptile, was perhaps the most ugly and grotesque creature that ever breathed; but the Pterodactylus was, of all creatures, the most singular.

Still retaining the old coast in our imagination, we may behold the pterodactylus sitting on the ground, or standing like a swan, with the long neck resting upon the back to support with ease the heavy head, which is like that of the crocodile. Approach it, and it will rise into the air and fly like a bird, or cling against the cliff like a bat. Whilst you watch it, it will perhaps leave the rock, and, taking to the sea, commence fishing. You will thus perceive that this creature possesses, in the organization of one animal, the head of the crocodile, the neck of the swan, the wings of the bat, a rude resemblance to the hand of a man, and legs and feet which enabled it to swim and walk. In all points of bony structure, from the teeth to the extremity of the nails, it was a reptile, covered with scaly armour, and having a true reptilian heart and circulating organs. But it was at the same time provided in a very admirable way with the means of flying. Its wings, when not in use, were folded back like those of a bird, and it could suspend itself with claws attached to the fingers from the branches of a tree. Its usual position, when not in motion, or suspended, was standing on its hind feet, with its neck set up and curved backward, lest the weight of the enormous head should disturb the equilibrium of the animal. With the huge monsters already described crawling over the land, and tens of thousands of these flying reptiles hovering round the rocks or darkening the air with their wings, England must have been a strange place in the times of the iguanodon.

It will thus be seen how much may be learnt from a few bones. A poor workman, in breaking a stone in Tilgate quarry, found the tooth of an iguanodon imbedded in it.

He

sold it for a pot of beer to a man of science, who soon perceived that it could not have belonged to any known animal. On further search being made, other bones were discovered, and the whole structure of the animal was then known. Near it were found the bones of other creatures who had lived along with it; and gradually, as the light enters a dark room, the whole country thus came back to us peopled with its former inhabitants; and we have only to pause over the picture with the poet and artist, and we may live for a while in these old times so old that it seems to us as the morning of the world. But the whole are now gone; death has swept them into his garner, and nothing but their bones remain to tell the story of their life.1

A CONVERSATION ABOUT THE PRECIOUS METALS. (From Barbauld and Aitken's “ Evenings at Home.”) Trans-pa'rent, adj. (L. trans, | Min-er-alo-gy, n. (Fr. miner, Gr.

pareo).

Mal-le-a-bil'i-ty. n. (L. malleus).
Duc-til'i-ty, n. (L. duco).

Fu-si-bil'i-ty, n. (L. fusum, see
fundo).

logos).

Te-nac'i-ty, n. (L. teneo).
Co-he'sion, n. (L. con, haesum, see
haereo).

Al-loy', n. (Fr. allier, L. ad, ligo).

The meanings of these words will be found in the lesson.

TUTOR. If you have a mind I will tell you about metals and their uses.

HARRY. Yes; I should like to hear it of all things.

T. Well, then. First let us consider what a metal is. you think you should know one from a stone?

Do

GEORGE. A stone!-Yes I could not mistake a piece of lead or iron for a stone.

T. How would you distinguish it?

G. A metal is bright and shining.

T. True-brilliance is one of their qualities. But glass and crystal are very bright, too.

H. But one may see through glass, and not through a piece of metal.

T. Right. Metals are brilliant, but opaque, or non-trans

1 In the minds of many worthy individuals an impression still lingers that geology in its teachings is at variance with the sacred records; but we may feel assured that true science and the word of God never will be found eventually at variance. All the discoveries of late years serve to confirm this truth.

parent. The thinnest plate of metal that can be made, will keep out the light as effectually as a stone wall.

G. Metals are very heavy, too.

T. In general they are; but there are some metals which are lighter than water; these light metals, however, are difficult to be procured, and are more curious than useful. Well, what else?

G. Why, they will bear beating with a hammer, which a stone would not, without flying in pieces.

T. Yes; that property of extending or spreading under the hammer is called malleability; and another, like it, is that of bearing to be drawn out into a wire, which is called ductility. Metals have both these, and much of their use depends upon them.

G. Metals will melt, too.

T. Yes; all metals will melt, though some require greater heat than others. The property of melting is called fusibility. you know anything more about them?

Do

G. No; except that they come out of the ground, I believe. T. That is properly added, for it is the circumstance which makes them rank among minerals. To sum up their character, then, a metal is a brilliant, opaque, heavy, malleable, ductile, and fusible mineral.

G. But what are ores? I remember seeing a heap of iron ore which men were breaking with hammers, and it looked only like stones.

T. The ore of a metal is the state in which it is generally met with in the earth, when it is so mixed and combined with stony and other matters, as not to show its proper qualities as a metal. It was probably accident that in the early ages discovered that certain minerals by the force of fire might be made to yield a metal. The experiment was repeated on other minerals; so that in length of time all the different metals were found out, and all the different forms in which they lie concealed in the ground. The knowledge of this is called Mineralogy, and a very important science it is.

G. Yes, I suppose so; for metals are very valuable things. Our next neighbour, Mr. Sterling, I have heard, gets a great deal of money every year from his mines in Wales.

T. He does. The mineral riches of some countries are much superior to that of their products above ground, and the revenues of many kings are in great part derived from their mines.

H. I suppose they must be gold and silver mines.

T. Those, to be sure, are the most valuable, if the metals are found in tolerable abundance. But do you know why they are so?

H. Because money is made of gold and silver.

T. That is a principal reason, no doubt. But these metals have intrinsic properties that make them highly valuable, else probably they would not have been chosen in so many countries to make money of. In the first place, gold and silver are both perfect metals, which are indestructible in the fire. Other metals, if kept a considerable time in the fire, change by degrees into a powdery or scaly matter, called a calx, or oxide. You may see, when you have heated the poker red-hot, some scales separate from it, which are brittle and drossy.

H. Yes the kitchen poker is almost burnt away by being put into the fire.

T. Well, most metals undergo these changes, except gold and silver; but these, if kept ever so long in the hottest fire, sustain no loss or change. They are therefore called perfect metals. Gold has several other remarkable properties. It is a very heavy metal.

H. What, is it heavier than lead?

T. Yes-above half as heavy again. It is between nineteen and twenty times heavier than an equal bulk of water. Gold, too, is the most ductile of all metals. You have seen leaf-gold, which is made by beating a plate of gold placed between pieces of skin, with heavy hammers, till it is spread out to the utmost degree of thinness. And so great is its capacity for being extended, that a single grain of the metal, which would be scarce bigger than a large pin's head, is beat out to a surface of fifty square inches.

G. That is wonderful indeed! but I know leaf-gold must be very thin, for it will almost float upon the air.

T. By drawing gold out on a wire, it may be still farther extended. The gold of a guinea, may thus be made to reach above nine miles and a half. This property in gold of being capable of extension to so extraordinary a degree, is owing to its great tenacity or cohesion of particles, which is such, that you can scarcely break a piece of gold-wire by twisting it; and a wire of gold will sustain a greater weight than one of any other metal, equally thick.

H. Then it would make very good wire for hanging bells.