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Agassiz Museum.

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

A new exhibition room at the Agassiz Museum, showing the life of the Mesozoic or Secondary period will today be thrown open to the public. In popular parlance this period is known as the "Age of Reptiles," and accordingly in this room are placed a number of typical representatives of the huge Dinosaurs and other strange reptilian forms that populated the earth at that period. The central attraction is a magnificent cast of an Iguanodon (the only one in this country) after the original in the Brussels Museum. This was a creature of gigantic dimensions, measuring at least thirty-five feet in length. It walked on its hind legs and used its fore feet for grasping prey, while its tail served as a support. The history of these most remarkable creatures shows that they developed from a diminutive type, gradually attained their maximum proportions, and dwindled again to an insignificant size. Their nearest living allies are to be found among the horned toads.

Another uncouth monster is represented by a cast of the so-called Pareiasaurus, from the only specimen ever discovered, and now preserved in the British Museum.

Beside these more notable additions many other interesting specimens-both casts and originals-are on exhibition. It was the late Professor Louis Agassiz's plan to arrange the exhibits in the Museum so as to show the succession of life from the earliest periods to our own time. For this purpose a room has been set apart for each great period. Although the collections are not yet complete, it is the intention to make them so, when it will be possible to study the manifold changes and developments in the life of the globe.

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