30 ON BONES AND TEETH OF EXTINCT LIZARD, 
Notiosaurus as nearly four times that of Hydrosaurus, or about 
18ft. 4an. 
It is not difficult to conceive the part taken in the affairs of 
its day by this great lizard as well, or better, fitted for carnage 
on land as a crocodile of equal size in the waters. The functions 
of its dwarfed successors are twofold. Part of their work is to 
check the undue increase of all living things unequal to them- 
selves in strength, agility, and courage. With limbs muscular in 
proportion to the weight of their gross bodies, and in length suffi- 
cient to obtain the necessary extent of grasp, they climb trees 
with facility and, squatting in ambush on the boughs, seize the 
birds as they alight for rest, plunder their nests of young or eggs, 
or search every hole and covert for nocturnal animals in their 
lairs. Equally at home on the ground, they are, when hungry 
(and in summer they are seldom otherwise), constantly roaming 
about seeking and devouring without waiting to kill, unless 
killing is neeessary to swallowing. Nothing comes amiss to them, 
and snakes are among their choicest morsels. In a word, if it 
were not absurd to deorate any one animal as the most efficient 
balancer of the pros and cons of nature, an Australian might 
be inclined to give the palm to the bush-wife’s horror, the 
‘“‘oohanner,’’—and this more especially when he remembers that 
the reptile’s disposition is not only to lop the exuberance of 
animal life but to clear away the dead and mortiferous 
encumbrances left in its midst. The ’guana and the eagle are 
the scavengers of the bush—the latter gorges the carcasses 
fallen afresh in the forest, the former resorts to the putrifying 
remains beside creeks and pools and battens on the garbage till 
it can scarce remove its unwieldly body out of danger. And 
such, we may believe, would be one of the chief labours of love 
committed to the great ’guana of old. Its size, the shortness 
of its limbs, and the difficulty of satisfying its appetite with the 
puny frequenters of the trees, would be sufficient to prevent it 
acquiring arboreal habits; but while size and voracity at once 
