I blushed to hear the Ganoid wail;

He sobbed, "I'm not a stoic,
And I 've lost my vertebrated tail
In the early Mesozoic"

But I scoffed and longed for a Teliost,
With the most intense of wishes;
For my sympathies had all been lost
On those queer Devonian fishes.

The Belemnite and the Polyp weird
Exceedingly did act ill,
And from the Lepidodendron jeered
The bitter Pterodactyl.

I sought to rest on the marshy shore,
Where the Labyrinthodonts amble,
But I heard the hoarse Batrachian roar
'Neath a cryptogamic bramble.

Yet the sedimentary fear I name
And my igneous indignation,
By a metamorphic move, became
A quite distinct formation.

The beast I saw was shy and small,
No elephant or camel,
'T was only a marsupial,
But oh ! it was a mammal!