Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/149

 Rh ships by their sails, and to steam-boats by their paddles, is similarly placed. The great organ of motion in fishes, the tail, is indeed posteriorly placed, but this by its mode of action generates a vis a tergo, which impels the animal straight forwards, and does not therefore operate under the same conditions with organs laterally applied." G. T. V. 5, p. 579.

I shall conclude this detailed review of the peculiarities of one of the most curious, as well as the most ancient, among the many genera of extinct reptiles presented to us by Geology, with a few remarks on the final causes of those deviations from the normal structure of its proper type, the Lizard; under which the Ichthyosaurus combines in itself the additional characters of the fish, the Whale, and Ornithorhynchus. As the form of vertebræ by which it is associated with the class of fishes, seems to have been introduced for the purpose of giving rapid motion in the water to a Lizard inhabiting the element of fishes; so the further adoption of a structure in the legs, resembling the paddles of a Whale, was superadded in order to convert these extremities into powerful fins. The still further addition of a furcula and clavicles, like those of the Ornithorhynchus, offers a third and not less striking example of selection of contrivances, to enable animals of one class to live in the element of another class.

If the laws of co-existence are less rigidly maintained in the Ichthyosaurus, than in other extinct creatures which we discover amid the wreck of former creations, still these deviations are so far from being fortuitous, or evidencing imperfection, that they present examples of perfect appointment and judicious choice, pervading and regulating even the most apparently anomalous aberrations.

Having the vertebræ of a fish, as instruments of rapid progression; and the paddles of a Whale, and sternum of an Ornithorhynchus, as instruments of elevation and depression; the reptile Ichthyosaurus united in itself a combination