OF CREATION. 



213 



of the iguanodon is not likely to have exceeded thirty 

 feet. Even then, however, allowing about three feet 

 for the head, and assuming that the neck was short, 

 and that the tail was about thirteen feet long, which it 

 is calculated would be the extreme size, we still have 

 a length of twelve feet for the body, and this is much 

 more than is seen in the trunk of any living animal. 

 The body being of this length, and perhaps of more 

 than corresponding bulk, and lifted many feet from 

 the ground, reaching perhaps to the height of twelve 

 or fifteen feet,"* must indeed have been sufficiently 

 monstrous, and departed widely enough from any 

 known animal to justify the accounts that have been 

 given of its strange and marvellous proportions. 



The Hyl&osaurus^ was another land reptile sup- 

 ported on long legs, and of massive proportions ; but 

 it differed in some important characters from the 

 Iguanodon, and by no means attained such large 

 dimensions. A considerable part of the skeleton of 

 this animal has been found, and is preserved in the 

 British Museum, but, unfortunately, these fragments 

 do not include either the skull or teeth, or, indeed, 

 anything that can indicate the manner of arrange- 

 ment of the teeth in the jaw, although it is probable, 

 from other parts of the body, that they approximated 

 in this point to the lizard type. The animal was 

 probably about fifteen feet long, and of a height pro- 

 portioned to that of the megalosaur. It was covered 



* The tallest living elephant rarely if ever attains the height of eleven 

 feet. Out of eleven hundred, from which the tallest were selected and 

 measured with care on one occasion in India, there was not one that 

 equalled eleven feet. 



+ 'YXaicc (hyloeos), a wood ; aavpog (sawros), a reptile. The reptile 

 of the woods or wolds of Kent and Sussex,. 



