Curiosities of Science. 129 



ENGLAND IN THE EOCENE PERIOD. 



Eocene is Sir Charles Lyell's term for the lowest group of 

 the Tertiary system in which the dawn of recent life appears ; 

 and any one who wishes to realise what was the aspect pre- 

 sented by this country during the Eocene period, need only go 

 to Sheerness. If, leaving that place behind him, he walks 

 down the Thames, keeping close to the edge of the water, he 

 will find whole bushels of pyritised pieces of twigs and fruits. 

 These fruits and twigs belong to plants nearly allied to the 

 screw-pine and custard-apple, and to various species of palms 

 and spice-trees which now flourish in the Eastern Archipelago. 

 At the time they were washed down from some neighbouring 

 land, not only crocodilian reptiles, but sharks and innumerable 

 turtles, inhabited a sea or estuary which now forms part of the 

 London district ; and huge boa-constrictors glided amongst the 

 trees which fringed the adjoining shores. 



Countless as are the ages which intervened between the 

 Eocene period and the time when the little jawbones of Stones- 

 field were washed down to the place where they were to await 

 the day when science should bring them again to light, not one 

 mammalian genus which now lives upon our plane has been 

 discovered amongst Eocene strata. We have existing families, 

 but nothing more. Professor Owen. 



FOOD OF THE IGUANODON. 



Dr. Mantell, from the examination of the anterior part of 

 the right side of the lower jaw of an Iguanodon discovered in a 

 quarry in Tilgate Forest, Sussex, has detected an extraordinary 

 deviation from all known types of reptilian organisation, and 

 which could not have been predicated ; namely, that this colos- 

 sal reptile, which equalled in bulk the gigantic Edentata of 

 South America, and like them was destined to obtain support 

 from comminuted vegetable substances, was also furnished with a 

 large prehensile tongue and fleshy lips, to serve as instruments 

 for seizing and cropping the foliage and branches of trees ; 

 while the arrangement of the teeth as in the ruminants, and 

 their internal structure, which resembles that of the molars of 

 the sloth tribe in the vascularity of the dentine, indicate adap- 

 tations for the same purpose. 



Among the physiological phenomena revealed by paleonto- 

 logy, there is not a more remarkable one than this modification 

 of the type of organisation peculiar to the class of reptiles to 

 meet the conditions required by the economy of a lizard placed 

 under similar physical relations; and destined to effect the 

 same general purpose in the scheme of nature as the colossal 



