ve been akin to lizards;
but the usual opinion is that he was a cousin of frogs and toads.
Looking at his hands and other remains, one pictures him to oneself
as a short, squat brute, as big as a fat hog, with a head very much
the shape of a baboon, very large hands behind and small ones in
front, waddling about on the tide flats of a sandy sea, and dragging
after him, seemingly, a short tail, which has left its mark on the
sand. What his odour was, whether he was smooth or warty, what he
ate, and in general how he got his living, we know not. But there
must have been something there for him to eat; and I dare say that he
was about as happy and about as intellectual as the toad is now.
Remember always that there is nothing alive now exactly like him, or,
indeed, like any animal found in these sandstones. The whole animal
world of this planet has changed entirely more than once since the
Labyrinthodon waddled over the Cheshire flats. A lizard, for
instance, which has been found in the Keuper, had a skull like a
bird's, and no teeth--a type which is now quite extinct. But there
is a more remarkable animal of which I must say a few words, and one
which to scientific men is most interesting and significant.

Both near Warwick, and near Elgin in Scotland, in Central India, and
in South Africa, fossil remains are found of a family of lizards
utterly unlike anything now living save one, and that one is crawling
about, plentifully I believe--of all places in the world--in New
Zealand. How it got there; how so strange a type of creature should
have died out over the rest of the world, and yet have lasted on in
that remote island for long ages, ever since the days of the New Red
sandstone, is one of those questions--quite awful questions I
consider them--with which I will not puzzle my readers. I only
mention it to show them what serious questions the scientific man has
to face, and to answer, if he can. Only the next time they go to the
Zoological Gardens in London, let them go to the reptile-house, and
ask the very clever and courteous attendant to show them the
Sphenodons, or Hatterias, as he will probably call them--and then
look, I hope with kindly interest, at the oldest Conservatives they
ever saw, or are like to see; gentlemen of most ancient pedigree, who
have remained all but unchanged, while the whole surface of the globe
has changed around them more than once or twice.

A