lesh-eaters; others were herbivorous. Some
lived on land; others, in the shallow waters and lagoons, fed on
succulent aquatic plants; still others frequented the deeper waters and
lived on fish.

[Illustration: _Property of the American Museum of Natural History_
The Brontosaurus (herbivorous dinosaur)]

The name dinosaur, meaning terrible lizard, represents an order of
fossil reptiles. They are allied to the crocodile, but, like the
kangaroo, their hind legs were much longer than their front ones. The
neck and tail were very long and the body short but of immense size.
These monsters were from twenty to eighty feet in length and weighed
from thirty to one hundred tons. The long, slender neck supported a
small head that contained a correspondingly small brain, from which it
is thought that the creature possessed a low order of intelligence. The
tail was much thicker than the neck and in some species was flattened.
When rising on its hind legs and resting on its tail it could look into
the window of a four-story building. Some of these strange animals had
bills like those of a duck; some possessed teeth for grinding and others
sharp teeth for tearing. These were by far the largest land animals that
ever lived. The different species often waged titanic battles with one
another for the supremacy of the earth.

It is conjectured that their disappearance was due to violent upheavals
of the earth, to the draining of the water, to changes of climate, and
to deprivation of suitable food.

The mounted brontosaur in the American Museum of Natural History, New
York, will enable one better to appreciate the size of these giants of
the ancient world. This typical specimen, though not the largest found,
is sixty-seven feet long and stands fifteen and one-half feet high. Its
neck measures thirty feet in length and its tail eighteen. The body
weighed about ninety tons. This huge fossil, enclosed in its stone
matrix, was sent from the quarry to the museum. After it had been
received two men were employed constantly for nearly two and one-half
years in removing the matrix, repairing, and mounting the fossil.

Let us turn now to the burying ground of a giant forest. Long, long
years ago, before man appeared on the earth, an inland sea occupied what
is now the northeastern part of Arizona. It was a sea bordered with
sandstone and surrounded by coniferous forests, where stately trees
nodded in the breezes.

At length there came a gre