The atmosphere of the same remote age. The genera Pterodactylus, Ornithopterus, and Rhamphosaurus, with their several species, of which about twenty are now known, represented the order Pterosauria, or ancient flying dragons. Every type of this order has long been blotted out of the book of living creatures. pterodactyles seem to have been introduced into this planet with the ichthyosaur at the beginning of the oolitic period, and both dragons of the air and sea to have disappeared before the commencement of the tertiary epoch in geology. A little harmless insectivorous lizard, however, so far analogous to the pterodactyle as to be able to glide, by means of an expanded parachute, through the air in long flying leaps from branch to branch or from tree to tree, still exists in some of the islands of the Indian Archipelago. Linnæus gave it the name of Draco volans; but its structure presents an essentially distinct modification of the reptilian type from that of the pterosauria. In the modern Draco certain of the slender ribs are much elongated, and sustain, as on the whalebones of an umbrella, the membranes of the wings. In the pterodactyle the bones of the upper-arm and fore-arm, but more especially those of the finger answering to the fifth or 'little-finger,' are much elongated, and must have spread out a long and broad fold of skin like that which forms the wings of bats. The head of the pterodactyle was large-the jaws long and strong-armed with slender recurved sharp-pointed teeth-and in some of the species (Rhamphorhynchus)-sheathed at their extremities with horn: thus combining the characteristic armature of both birds and beasts. The neck-bones were proportionally robust to sustain and wield the doubly-armed head, and were not more than seven in number, as in mammals, but were constructed after the type of those of reptiles. The ribs, slender as in lizards, not flat and broad as in birds, were nevertheless connected to a broad sternum by bony'sternal ribs,' as in birds, and supported likewise osseous supracostal processes, as in the feathered class. A greater number of vertebra were anchylosed to form a 'sacrum' than in other reptiles, though not so many as in birds, nor is the pelvis of the pterodactyle of such a construction as to have enabled it to walk on the hind-legs, as birds do. The hocked claws on the non-elongated fingers of the hand would not only have enabled this saurian to suspend itself when it wished to rest, but to drag itself prone on the earth,—and there is much reason for concluding, with our author, that the pterodactyle shuffled along upon the ground, after the manner of a bat, and scuttled through the water when it had occasion to swim.' A brief sketch of the conflicting opinions to which the hetero clite organization of the pterosaurian gave rise, before the mastereye of Cuvier discerned its true relations, is prefixed to the chapter on Flying Dragons.' Collini (1784) considered it a fish, Blumenbach (1807) a bird, and Soemmering (1810) a mammal;pregnant signs of the discrepant characters of structure which were associated together in the flying reptile of the secondary æra. Indeed, so anomalous are the combination and modification of parts in the skeleton of the pterodactyle, that there are still dissentients from the authority of Cuvier. Even M. Agassiz has deemed it an error to regard this extinct animal as a reptile of flight he thinks rather that it must have lived in the water along with the ichthyosaur and plesiosaur, and groups them together into the family of palæosaurians.' But the experienced and indefatigable Von Meyer says,* in a recent description of one of the most extraordinary forms of the order pterososauria, that long-continued study of the very interesting structure of these animals had only the more convinced him of the accuracy of the views published by Cuvier so early as 1800. The pterodactyles were flying saurians. The thin compact walls and large cavities of the bones, the connexion of the vertebral ribs with the sternum by means of osseous ribs, the processes of the chief ribs in order to confer greater firmness on the chest, the long sacrum, as well as the circumstance that in the posterior limbs the tibia is the longest bone, so strikingly recall the structure of birds, that it seems incomprehensible how anybody can doubt that they were flying animals. M. Von Meyer believes also, with Cuvier, that the pterodactyles were not clothed with feathers like birds, nor yet with hair like bats, but had a naked skin, which the author of the Recreations' surmises to have been of lurid hue and shagreen-like texture, resembling in some degree the external tegument of a chamæleon or guana, except the smooth membrane of the wing. The average size of the pterodactyles seems to have been that of a crow or a raven, but indications of a species (Pter. giganteus) perhaps as large as an eagle, have lately been detected in the chalk-formations of Kent. MM. Van Breda and Von Meyer have recently disclosed a new feature in the organization of certain species of Pterodactyle (Pt. longicaudus, Pt. Münsteri, and Pt. Gammingi), viz., a long stiff tail, formed by the coalescence of many caudal vertebræ, and serving doubtless to increase the extent of the tegumentary parachute, and to give more precision and more rapid and extensive changes of direction to the flight. We hope we have extracted and abridged enough to give a * Palæontographica, 4to. 1 heft, 1846. fair notion of Mr. Broderip's volume. It has taught or agreeably reminded us of many zoological facts and some generalizations of much interest; and, being simply written, enlivened by the stores of a rich and varied erudition, and pervaded with gleams of gentle humour, the fit accompaniment of a pure benevolence of spirit, we feel assured that it will prove to old and young readers a source of real recreation. ART. VI.-1. Reports of the Society for improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes. 1845-1846. 2. First Report of the Constabulary Force Commissioners. 1839. a man sets himself to the WHEN of exposure festerany ing mischief, which afflicts and dishonours a large portion of our people, he is apt to be met by some erudite pundit of statistics, who replies, with pedantic joy:-I will undertake to show the hollowness of your complaints-things are far better than they were; I will prove from this chronicle and that record how many in such a period died of cold, how many of starvation, how many of sweating-sickness, plague, or small-pox; I will prove, too, that the necessaries of life were dear, and the wages of labour low; compare, good sir, carefully A.D. —— with A.D. 1847, and acknowledge yourself to be refuted.' We need not pause to test these assertions, because we maintain that, were they all true and correct, there is a higher standard to which our practice should now be conformed. It would be but a meagre satisfaction to a hungry pauper, to hear the value of his own small fare illustrated by a banquet after the manner of the ancients; and, while devouring his allotted morsel of wheaten bread in his foul garret or cellar, to be assured, on the authority of Juvenal, that the Sabines rejoiced in acorns-and, from references to the Venerable Bede, that his dwelling-place is better than the pigsties of the Saxons. We must test these things, not by our ancestors, but by ourselves. The blessings of civilization, whether physical or moral, or intimately blended the one with the other, should penetrate to the very base of our national system, and buoy up each class, in its proportion and degree, to a higher level. In these days, though the ignorance of the people is largely discussed, and the necessity of extended education pretty generally admitted, it seems to be a prevalent dream that a few more schools, well-trained teachers, and an appropriate system, are to prove sufficient safeguards for the morals of the nation. Doubtless they are good, nay indispensable; but there are other things needful. The outside and the inside of the school are now in direct antagonism. The The child may drink in, with reverent docility, the language and spirit of the Ten Commandments, but will see them broken hourly in every street and alley, and most of all perhaps in the very dwelling of its parents. The beer-house, the gin-palace, the dark and pestilential court, the narrow and numerous tenements where all ages and both sexes are pressed together like a drum of Turkey figs, are skilful devices of the great enemy of mankind to suck out the marrow from education. Here indeed to little purpose is the schoolmaster abroad-it is a work of Sisyphus, the labour of a month is undone in an hour. But should the stone be rolled to the summit of the hill, there are then new hazards to topple it over on the other side. Our present remarks shall be confined to one form of evil that assails the child when starting in his earliest search of employment; an evil mainly the result of social neglect, and remediable by the expenditure of moderate trouble and still less money. All our great cities and most towns contain regular receptacles for the accommodation of poor travellers or temporary sojourners; caravansaries, generally speaking, of misery and sin on their road to sustain old, or create new mischief. The country is daily sending up the inexperienced offspring of its hives to seek a livelihood in the mighty capitals; the capitals, in return, send back their multiform gangs of practitioners, skilled in every device by which mankind may be deceived or plundered. These streams meet together in their course; but the feeble rill of simplicity is speedily lost in that Serbonian bog' of corruption where armies whole have sunk.' More of rustic innocence and honest purpose, both in males and females, has suffered shipwreck in these lodginghooses than from any other perils that try the skill and courage of young adventurers. London is the city of the plague; for though evils of a similar character abound in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, and every other place of like dimensions, yet the metropolis surpasses them all, not only in the number of these mantraps, but in the business-like employment of them. No one but a mere print-fancier can have perused Hogarth's exquisite delineation of the active and insinuating procuress waiting at the waggonoffice for the arrival of any chance victim come up to town, ignorant and friendless, in search of employment, without pausing to reflect how many snares must beset the path of the helpless female. Such a minute commissariat, however, is now superseded by the larger storehouses of advanced practice-of an age that has got far before the waggon. In these indeed 'Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis.' It may be true that all these receptacles are not equally abominable. abominable. Physically there may be some difference here and there; but morally the distinction is very fine-drawn. Mischief presides over them all; and the keeper of the establishment takes very good care to ask no questions, and impose no restraints that may check the flow of his nightly receipts. But putting aside the Corinthian specimens, which are, at best, few and far between,' we will keep to the mass of those hospitable mansions which hold out to every humble stranger in London the promise of good entertainment.' The astonishment and perplexities of a young person on his arrival here, full of good intentions to live honestly, would be almost ludicrous, were they not the prelude to such mournful results. He alights-and is instantly directed, for the best accommodation, to Duck Lane, St. Giles's, Saffron Hill, Spitalfields, or Whitechapel. He reaches the indicated region through tight avenues of glittering fish and rotten vegetables, with doorways or alleys gaping on either side-which, if they be not choked with squalid garments or sickly children, lead the eye through an almost interminable vista of filth and distress-and begins his search for the good entertainment.' The pavement, where there is any, rugged and broken, is bespattered with dirt of every hue, ancient enough to rank with the fossils, but offensive as the most recent deposits. The houses, small, low, and mournful, present no one part, in windows, door-posts, or brickwork, that seems fitted to stand for another week-rags and hurdles stuff up the panes, and defend the passages blackened with use and by the damps arising from the undrained and ill-ventilated recesses. Yet each one affects to smile with promise, and invites the countrybumpkin to the comfort and repose of Lodgings for single men.' He enters the first, perhaps the largest, and finds it to consist of seven apartments of very moderate dimensions. Here are stowed-besides children-sixty adults, a goodly company of males and females, of every profession of fraud and violence, with a very few poor and industrious labourers. He turns to another hostel-the reader will not, we know, proceed without misgivings -but we assure him our picture is drawn from real life. The parlour measures 18 feet by 10. Beds are arranged on each side of it, composed of straw, rags, and shavings, all in order, but not decently, according to the apostolic precept. Here he sees twenty-seven male and female adults, and thirty-one children with several dogs (for dogs, the friends of man, do not forsake him in his most abandoned condition),-in all fifty-eight human beings, in a contracted den, from which light and air are systematically excluded. He seeks the upper room, as more likely to remind him of his native hills: it measures 12 feet by 10, and contains 6 |