Note 6 — Chapter III · SUB-KINGDOM IX.—VERTEBRATA.

“Pleˌsi-o-sauˈrus.” The word means like a lizard. It is a remarkable fossil sea-reptile, which shows a long, snake-like neck, in which there are thirty-three vertebræ, ten more than in the longest neck of any bird. The body and head are comparatively short. Its whole length, when living, was probably twenty-five or thirty feet. Buckland describes it as follows: “To the head of a lizard it united the teeth of a crocodile, a neck of enormous length, resembling the body of a serpent, a trunk and tail having the proportions of an ordinary quadruped; the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of a whale.” There were fifty teeth in each jaw. Conybeare says of it: “That it was marine is evident from its paddles; that it may have occasionally visited the shore, the resemblance of its extremities to those of the turtle may lead us to conjecture; its motion must have been, however, very awkward on land; its neck must have impeded its progress through the water. May it not therefore be concluded—since, in addition to these circumstances, its respiration must have required frequent access to the air—that it swam upon or near the surface, arching back its neck like the swan, and occasionally darting it down at the fish which happened to float within its reach? It may, perhaps, have lurked in shoal water along the coast, concealed among the sea weed, and, raising its nostrils to the surface from a considerable depth, may have found a sure retreat from the assaults of dangerous enemies, while the flexibility of its neck may have compensated for the want of strength in its jaws and its incapacity for swift motion through the water, by the suddenness and agility of the attack which it enabled it to make on every animal fitted for its prey which came within its reach.”