ing. Like birds they could
also perch on trees, and could crawl like bats and lizards along the
rocks and cliffs.

"Some think that they were covered with scales, but I am of the
opinion that they had a horny hide, with a ridge of hair running down
their backs--in which opinion I am sustained by More's account. The
smaller kinds were undoubtedly insectivorous, but the larger ones must
have been carnivorous, and probably fed largely on fish."

"Well, at any rate," said Melick, gravely, "this athaleb solves the
difficult question as to how the Troglodytes emigrated to the South
Pole."

"How?" asked the doctor.

"Why, they must have gone there on athalebs! Your friends the
pterodactyls probably lingered longest among the Troglodytes, who,
seeing that they were rapidly dying out, concluded to depart to
another and a better world. One beauty of this theory is that it
cannot possibly be disproved; another is that it satisfies all the
requirements of the case; a third is that it accounts for the
disappearance of the pterodactyls in our world, and their appearance
at the South Pole; and there are forty or fifty other facts, all
included in this theory, which I have not time just now to enumerate,
but will try to do so after we have finished reading the manuscript. I
will only add that the athaleb must be regarded as another link which
binds the Kosekin to the Semitic race."

"Another link?" said Oxenden. "That I already have; and it is one that
carries conviction with it."

"All your arguments invariably do, my dear fellow."

"What is it?" asked the doctor.

"The Kosekin alphabet," said Oxenden.

"I can't see how you can make anything out of that," said the doctor.

"Very well, I can easily explain," replied Oxenden. "In the first
place we must take the old Hebrew alphabet. I will write down the
letters in their order first."

Saying this he hastily jotted down some letters on a piece of paper,
and showed to the doctor the following:

Labials. Palatals. Linguals.
A B C (or G) D
E F Ch (or H) Dh (or Th)
I Liquids, L M N
O P K T

"That," said he, "is substantially the order of the old Hebrew
alphabet."

"But," said the doctor, "the Kosekin alphabet differs in its order
altogether from that."

"That very difference can be shown to be all the stronger proof of a
connection bet