tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post433780553218137174..comments2024-03-28T13:10:04.655+00:00Comments on The Notion Club Papers - an Inklings blog: Tolkien's stinking Nazgul-pterodactyl in Lord of the Rings (probably) came from Charles Williams' Place of the LionBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-59798682959790196592023-02-25T05:57:23.394+00:002023-02-25T05:57:23.394+00:00@NLR "Did the idea come from this book or was...@NLR "Did the idea come from this book or was there a speculation that pterodactyls stank in the early 20th century?"<br /><br />Maybe that was it?Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-90877087722340723762023-02-25T04:23:24.860+00:002023-02-25T04:23:24.860+00:00There's an earlier reference to pterodactyls a...There's an earlier reference to pterodactyls and stinking. Here is something from "The Lost World": <br /><br />"The place into which we gazed was a pit, and may, in the early days, have been one of the smaller volcanic blow-holes of the plateau. It was bowl-shaped and at the bottom, some hundreds of yards from where we lay, were pools of green-scummed, stagnant water, fringed with bullrushes. It was a weird place in itself, but its occupants made it seem like a scene from the Seven Circles of Dante. The place was a rookery of pterodactyls. There were hundreds of them congregated within view. <br /><br />All the bottom area round the water-edge was alive with their young ones, and with hideous mothers brooding upon their leathery, yellowish eggs. From this crawling flapping mass of obscene reptilian life came the shocking clamor which filled the air and the mephitic, horrible, musty odor which turned us sick. But above, perched each upon its own stone, tall, gray, and withered, more like dead and dried specimens than actual living creatures, sat the horrible males, absolutely motionless save for the rolling of their red eyes or an occasional snap of their rat-trap beaks as a dragon-fly went past them. <br /><br />Their huge, membranous wings were closed by folding their fore-arms, so that they sat like gigantic old women, wrapped in hideous web-colored shawls, and with their ferocious heads protruding above them. Large and small, not less than a thousand of these filthy creatures lay in the hollow before us."<br /><br />Though in this case it is the swamp they live in rather than the animals themselves that stinks. <br /><br />Did the idea come from this book or was there a speculation that pterodactyls stank in the early 20th century?<br /><br />Incidentally, when the adventurers are on the prehistoric plateau, the narrator climbs a tall tree to look around. Similar to Bilbo doing the same in Mirkwood.No Longer Readinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12716199759491512542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-71936800085617486952013-11-28T18:47:00.670+00:002013-11-28T18:47:00.670+00:00I bought that Charles Williams omnibus that I was ...I bought that Charles Williams omnibus that I was asking about a while ago. Too bad, because I find his style terribly boring, nigh unreadable. I couldn't even finish Place of a Lion, though I tried.<br /><br />I love that the Fell Beast stinks; it's a great touch.Samson J.noreply@blogger.com