The size and form of the feet, of the leg, and of the thigh prove that they could hold themselves erect with firmness, their wings folded, and move about in this way like birds, just as More describes them as doing.

Like birds they could also perch on trees, and could crawl like bats and lizards along the rocks and cliffs.
"Some think that they were covered with scales, but I am of the opinion that they had a horny hide, with a ridge of hair running down their backs--in which opinion I am sustained by More's account.

The smaller kinds were undoubtedly insectivorous, but the larger ones must have been carnivorous, and probably fed largely on fish." "Well, at any rate," said Melick, gravely, "this athaleb solves the difficult question as to how the Troglodytes emigrated to the South Pole." "How ?" asked the doctor.
"Why, they must have gone there on athalebs! Your friends the pterodactyls probably lingered longest among the Troglodytes, who, seeing that they were rapidly dying out, concluded to depart to another and a better world.

One beauty of this theory is that it cannot possibly be disproved; another is that it satisfies all the requirements of the case; a third is that it accounts for the disappearance of the pterodactyls in our world, and their appearance at the South Pole; and there are forty or fifty other facts, all included in this theory, which I have not time just now to enumerate, but will try to do so after we have finished reading the manuscript.

I will only add that the athaleb must be regarded as another link which binds the Kosekin to the Semitic race." "Another link ?" said Oxenden.