similar, in the principles of their construction, to the teeth of the modern Iguana, as to leave no doubt of the near connexion of this most gigantic extinct reptile with the Iguanas of our own time. When we consider that the largest living Iguana rarely exceeds five feet in length, whilst the congenerous fossil animal must have been nearly twelve times as long, we cannot but be impressed by the discovery of a resemblance, amounting almost to identity, between such characteristic organs as the teeth, in one of the most enormous among the extinct reptiles of the fossil world, and those of a genus whose largest species is comparatively so diminutive. According to Cuvier, the common Iguana inhabits all the warm regions of America: it lives chiefly upon trees, eating fruits, and seeds, and leaves. The female occasionally visits the water, for the purpose of laying in the sand its eggs, which are about the size of those of a pigeon.[1]
As the modern Iguana is found only in the warmest regions of the present earth, we may reasonably infer that a
- ↑ In the Appendix to a paper in the Geol. Trans. Lond. (N. S.Vol. III. Pt. 3) on the fossil bones of the iguanodon, found in the Isle of Wight and Isle of Purbeck, I have mentioned the following facts, illustrative of the herbivorous habits of the living Iguana.
In the spring of 1829, "Mr. W. J. Broderip saw a living Iguana, about two feet long, in a hothouse at Mr. Miller's nursery gardens, near Bristol. It had refused to eat insects, and other kinds of animal food, until happening to be near some kidney-bean plants that were in the house for forcing, it began to eat of their leaves, and was from that time forth supplied from these plants." in 1828, Captain Belcher found, in, the island of Isabella, swarms of Iguanas, that appeared omnivorous; they fed voraciously on the eggs of birds, and the intestines of fowls and insects.
duration of this animal did not cease with the completion of the Wealden series. The individual from which this skeleton was derived had probably been drifted to sea, as those which afforded the bones found in the freshwater deposites subjacent to this marine formation, had been drifted into an estuary. This unique skeleton is now in the museum of Mr. Mantell, and confirms nearly all his conjectures respecting the many insulated bones which he had referred to the Iguanodon.
