Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/183

 Rh of the whole body, we may infer that the Pterodactyles did not suspend themselves after the manner of the Bats. The size and form of the foot, and also of the leg and thigh, show that they had the power of standing firmly on the ground, where, with their wings folded, they possibly moved after the manner of birds; they could also perch on trees, and climb on rocks and cliffs, with their hind and fore feet conjointly, like Bats and Lizards.

With regard to their food, it has been conjectured by Cuvier, that they fed on insects, and from the magnitude of their eyes that they may also have been noctivagous. The presence of large fossil Libellulæ, or Dragon-flies, and many other insects, in the same lithographic quarries with the Pterodactyles at Solenhofen, and of the wings of coleopterous insects, mixed with bones of Pterodactyles, in the oolitic slate of Stonesfield, near Oxford, proves that large insects existed at the same time with them, and may have contributed to their supply of food. We know that many of the smaller Lizards of existing species are insectivorous; some are also carnivorous, and others omnivorous, but the head and teeth of two species of Pterodactyle, are so much larger and stronger than is necessary for the capture of insects, that the larger species of them may possibly have fed on fishes, darting upon them from the air after the manner of Sea Swallows and Solan Geese. The enormous size and strength of the head and teeth of the P. Crassirostris, would not only have enabled it to catch fish, but also to kill and devour the few small marsupial mammalia which then existed upon the land.

The entire range of ancient anatomy, affords few more striking examples of the uniformity of the laws, which connect the extinct animal of the fossil creation with existing organized beings, than those we have been examining in the case of the Pterodactyle. We find the details of parts which, from their minuteness should seem insignificant, acquiring great importance in such an investigation as we