DINOSA URS. 93 



length, and perfectly harmless, feeding on insects and vegetables, 

 and climbing trees in quest of the tender leaves and buds, which 

 they chip off and swallow whole ; they nestle in the hollows of 

 rocks, and deposit their eggs in the sands and banks of rivers. 



In all living reptiles the insects or vegetables on which they 

 feed are seized by the tongue or teeth, and swallowed whole, so 

 that a movable covering to the jaws, similar to the lips and 

 cheeks of the mammalia, is not necessary, either for seizing and 

 retaining food, or for subjecting it by muscular movements to the 

 action of the teeth. It is the power of perfect mastication 

 possessed by the Iguanodon that is so strange, for it implies a 

 most remarkable approach in extinct reptiles to characters pos- 

 sessed now only by herbivorous mammalia, such as horses, cows, 

 deer, etc. From this and other strange characters seen in the 

 Dinosaurs, we learn that they in their day played the part of our 

 modern quadrupeds, whether carnivorous or herbivorous, and 

 showed a remarkable approach to the mammalian type, which of 

 course is a much higher one. 



It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that Dr. Mantell's con- 

 temporaries, with the exception of Cuvier, found in the teeth we 

 have described an awkward puzzle, and refused to believe that 

 they belonged to a reptile. Such a notion was at variance with 

 all previous experience, and we naturally form our conclusions to 

 a large extent by experience. Let us, then, beware lest we allow 

 our ideas to be limited by what after all is, as it were, only an 

 expression of our ignorance. The Hottentot who has never seen 

 snow would refuse to believe that rain can assume a solid form ; 

 and, in the same way, if we bind ourselves down by experience, 

 we might refuse to believe in some of the still more wonderful 

 dinosaurian types to be described in this chapter, such as the 

 Triceratops, with a pair of large horns, a skull over six feet 

 long, and limbs larger than those of the rhinoceros ! (see p. 

 117). 



The strange vagaries of Dinosaurs have led Professor Marsh 



