Reclaiming Authority: Henry Neville Hutchinson, Popular Science, and the Construction of the Dinosaur

A GEOLOGICAL PARODY. All the world’s a stage And all the men and beasties merely players; They have their exits and their entrances. And in former ages played they many parts, Their acts being seven ages. First Eozoon, Lapped in the bosom of primæval seas. And then the happy Trilobite, with “compound eyes,” And “swimming feet” that crept in mud now turned To schoolboy’s slate! And then the Fishes, “Ganoids” with bony scales, and “placoids” like to sharks, In old red sandstone lakes. Then Amphibians, Found in the coal and Cheshire sandstone rocks, Strange fellows they, not bearded like the pard, Some thought them like to toads, more like the newts, ‘Seeking the bubble reputation’ Of footprints on the sand. Then Deinosaurs, In fair round belly, with food well lined, Their eyes severe, erect on great hind legs, The Lords of Mesozoic times. And so they played their part. The sixth age shifts Into the Bird, a diver, six feet high, Hesperornis it is called, with teeth in jaws, Large skull and reptile-like affinities, And yet a Bird! And his big wingless form Was known to haunt the shores of all cretaceous seas; Many fishes did he eat! Last scene of all That ends this strange eventful history Is Man, || – his early childhood’s mere oblivion, With teeth, with eyes, with taste – with everything.