CHAPTER VI 

 THE BIGGEST BEAST 



THERE is a prevalent notion, encouraged by the 

 fanciful exaggerations of newspaper gossips, that 

 the animals of past ages, whose bones are from time 

 to time dug out of rocks and sand quarries, were many of 

 them much bigger than any at present existing, and that 

 we are living in an age of degeneracy. It is true that the 

 mammoth and the mastodon were enormous creatures, 

 but they were not bigger than their living representatives, 

 the great elephants of Africa and India. The African 

 elephant often stands 1 1 ft. high at the shoulder, and 

 occasionally attains 12 ft. 



Some eighty years ago Dr. Gideon Mantell became 

 celebrated by his discovery of the bones of huge reptiles 

 — far bigger than any existing crocodile or lizard — 

 nearly as big as elephants, in the Wealden rocks of 

 Tilgate Forest in Sussex. He and Sir Richard Owen 

 distinguished several kinds — the Iguanodon, the Megalo- 

 saurus, the Hylaeosaurus, and others. Models of these 

 creatures as they appeared when clothed in flesh and hide 

 were carefully made, and placed picturesquely among the 

 ponds and islands of the gardens of the Crystal Palace 

 at Sydenham when it was first opened to an enchanted 

 public in the fifties. As a small boy I, at that time, 

 fell under their spell. 



The passing years have brought to us more complete 



knowledge of these strange beasts — now classed as the 



84 



