And do we 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 can not be , simply because they have not seen them , is worth no more than a savage 's fancy that there can not 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 of the same family , but actually the same individual creatures . Do not even you know that a green drake , and an alder-fly , and a dragon-fly , live under water till they change their skins , just as Tom changed his ? And if a water animal can continually change into a land animal , why should not a land animal sometimes change into a water animal ? Do n't be put down by any of Cousin Cramchild 's arguments , but stand up to him like a man , and answer him -LRB- quite respectfully , of course -RRB- thus : - If Cousin Cramchild says , that if there are water-babies , they must grow into water-men , ask him how he knows that they do not ? and then , how he knows that they must , any more than the Proteus of the Adelsberg caverns grows into a perfect newt . If he says that it is too strange a transformation for a land-baby to turn into a water-baby , ask him if he ever heard of the transformation of Syllis , or the Distomas , or the common jelly - fish , of which M. Quatrefages says excellently well -- `` Who would not exclaim that a miracle had come to pass , if he saw a reptile come out of the egg dropped by the hen in his poultry-yard , and the reptile give birth at once to an indefinite number of fishes and birds ? Yet the history of the jelly-fish is quite as wonderful as that would be . '' Ask him if he knows about all this ; and if he does not , tell him to go and look for himself ; and advise him -LRB- very respectfully , of course -RRB- to settle no more what strange things can not happen , till he has seen what strange things do happen every day . If he says that things can not degrade , that is , change downwards into lower forms , ask him , who told him that water-babies were lower than land-babies ?
But even if they were , does he know about the strange degradation of the common goose-barnacles , which one finds sticking on ships ' bottoms ; or the still stranger degradation of some cousins of theirs , of which one hardly likes XXXXX talk , so shocking and ugly it is ?
about as by in into like of than that to