not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and
down the world? People call them Pterodactyles: but that is only
because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying
so long that flying dragons could exist.

The truth is, that folks' fancy that such and such things cannot
be, simply because they have not seen them, is worth no more than a
savage's fancy that there cannot be such a thing as a locomotive,
because he never saw one running wild in the forest. Wise men know
that their business is to examine what is, and not to settle what
is not. They know that there are elephants; they know that there
have been flying dragons; and the wiser they are, the less inclined
they will be to say positively that there are no water-babies.

No water-babies, indeed? Why, wise men of old said that everything
on earth had its double in the water; and you may see that that is,
if not quite true, still quite as true as most other theories which
you are likely to hear for many a day. There are land-babies--then
why not water-babies? Are there not water-rats, water-flies,
water-crickets, water-crabs, water-tortoises, water-scorpions,
water-tigers and water-hogs, water-cats and water-dogs, sea-lions
and sea-bears, sea-horses and sea-elephants, sea-mice and sea-
urchins, sea-razors and sea-pens, sea-combs and sea-fans; and of
plants, are there not water-grass, and water-crowfoot, water-
milfoil, and so on, without end?

"But all these things are only nicknames; the water things are not
really akin to the land things."

That's not always true. They are, in millions of cases, not only