ii 4 ANIMAL LIFE PAST AND PRESENT. 



the name of Dinosaurs (Gr. deinos, terrible, and sauros, 

 a lizard), were certainly worthy of their name, for it is 

 impossible to conceive more appalling monsters than 

 those which we propose to briefly notice. 



The labours of Dr. Mantell were mainly devoted to 

 the Wealden rocks near the village of Cuckfield, in 

 the neighbourhood of Brighton, where this enthusiastic 

 worker obtained a great number of bones and teeth, 

 which are now preserved as some of the treasures of 

 the Natural History Museum. These specimens, im- 

 perfect though many of them were, enabled their 

 discoverer to affirm that the old delta of the Weald 

 was once inhabited by several kinds of extinct reptiles, 

 totally unlike any existing forms, and some of which 

 vastly exceeded in size any land animals now living. 

 By patient research Mantell was enabled to arrive at 

 a fair approximation to the general form of the 

 skeletons of some of these strange and uncouth in- 

 habitants of a former world ; but from the fragmentary 

 condition of the remains of other species, and the 

 extreme peculiarity of their structure (as now known 

 by entire skeletons), he never even dreamt what weird 

 creatures he had been the means of first bringing to 

 the notice of the scientific world. 



One of the first, and at the same time one of the 

 strangest, of these Giant Eeptiles discovered by 

 Mantell, was definitely determined from the evidence 

 of its detached teeth, which are of not uncommon 

 occurrence in some of the Wealden beds, and one of 

 which is shown of the natural size in the accom- 



