ROOM III. PELVIS OF THE IGUANODON. 271 



come under my observation ; it was found imbedded in the 

 friable sandstone of Tilgate Forest, from which it has been 

 successfully extricated. 



The ilium of the Iguanodon resembles that of the monitors 

 in its hatchet-like form, and in the prolonged extremity ; in 

 the Maidstone specimen one of the iliac bones shows the 

 inner or sacral surface, and the other the outer aspect. The 

 slender prolonged extremity described by Professor Owen as 

 the posterior part, is regarded by Professor Melville as the 

 anterior, and " only an exaggerated condition of the short 

 spine projecting forwards from the ilium in the smaller lacertae." 

 The discovery of perfect specimens of the bone, or character- 

 istic portions in connexion with the sacrum, will determine this 

 question : that the anterior part of the sacrum is that so 

 described by Dr. Melville in the " Philosophical Transactions," 

 is confirmed by the specimens subsequently obtained. 



Os PUBIS. Wall-case C, uppermost shelf. (Diagram, ante, 

 p. 227.) A fragment of a very broad and curved plate of bone, 

 (labelled 2132), 16 inches long, and 9| wide, and but 3 inches 

 in its greatest thickness, and which required many hours of 

 labour to extricate from the stone in which it was imbedded, is 

 evidently a portion of the pubis of a gigantic saurian ; it is, 

 with great probability, ascribed to the Iguanodon by Professor 

 Owen, who thus describes it. "The Pubis/which presents a 

 simple spatulate form in the Crocodiles, already begins to in- 

 crease in breadth at its symphysial extremity in the extinct 

 family with concave vertebrae ; and in the larger existing 

 species of Lizards is expanded at both extremities, and has a 

 very marked and recognisable character superadded, in being 

 bent outwards with a considerable curvature. 



" A massive fragment of a broad osseous plate, bearing 

 a segment of a large articular cavity at its thickest margin, 

 and theDce extended as a thinner plate, bent with a bold 

 curvature, and terminated by a thick rounded labrum, offers 

 characters of the Lacertian type of the pubis too obvious to 

 be mistaken ; and since the modifications of the ilium of the 

 Tguanodon in the Maidstone skeleton approximate to the 

 Lacertian type of the bone, and especially as manifested by 

 the great Varani, in which the recurved character of the 

 pubic plate is most strongly marked, we may with much 





