The Age of Dinosaurs By James Scruton There are, of course, theories about the wide-eyed, drop-jawed fascination children have for them, about how, before he's learned his own phone number or address, a five-year-old can carry like a few small stones the Latin tonnage of those names, the prefixes and preferences for leaf or meat. My son recites the syllables I stumble over now, sets up figures as I did years ago in his prehistory. Here is the green ski slope of a brontosaur's back, there a triceratops in full gladiator gear. From the arm of a chair a pterodactyl surveys the dark primeval carpet. Each has disappeared from time to time, excavated finally from beneath a cabinet or the sofa cushions, only to be buried again among its kind in the deep toy chest, the closed lid snug as earth. The next time they're brought out to roam the living room another bone's been found somewhere, a tooth or fragment of an eggshell dusted off, brushing away some long-held notion about their life-span or intelligence, warm blood or cold. On the floor they face off as if debating the latest find, what part of which one of them has been discovered this time. Or else they stand abreast in one long row, side by scaly side, waiting to fall like dominoes, my son's tossed tennis ball a neon yellow asteroid, his shadow a dark cloud when he stands, his fervor for them cooling so slowly he can't feel it— the speed of glaciers, maybe, how one age slides into the next.