Indeed when we consider the
extraordinary compactness and rotundity of the modern cetaceans, as
compared with the tall limbs and straggling skeleton of the huge
Jurassic deinosaurs, I am inclined to believe that the tonnage of a
decent modern rorqual must positively exceed that of the gigantic
Atlantosaurus, the great lizard of the west, _in propria persona_. I
doubt, in short, whether even the solid thigh-bone of the deinosaur
could ever have supported the prodigious weight of a full-grown family
razor-back whale. The mental picture of these unwieldy monsters hopping
casually about, like Alice's Gryphon in Tenniel's famous sketch, or
like that still more parlous brute, the chortling Jabberwock, must be
left to the vivid imagination of the courteous reader, who may fill in
the details for himself as well as he is able.
If we turn from the particular comparison of selected specimens (always
an unfair method of judging) to the general aspect of our contemporary
fauna, I venture confidently to claim for our own existing human period
as fine a collection of big animals as any other ever exhibited on this
planet by any one single rival epoch. Of course, if you are going to
lump all the extinct monsters and horrors into one imaginary unified
fauna, regardless of anachronisms, I have nothing more to say to you; I
will candidly admit that there were more great men in all previous
generations put together, from Homer to Dickens, from Agamemnon to
Wellington, than there are now existing in this last quarter of our
really very respectable nineteenth century.
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