1852-54 DINNER IN THE IGUANODON 399 



Those who were engaged in setting forth the 

 forms of these extinct creatures celebrated the 

 completion of their labours by dining together in 

 the inside of one of the largest of them — the 

 iguanodon. 



A morning paper of the time says in an 

 article headed ' Dinner to Professor Owen in the 

 Iguanodon : ' ' Often as we have recorded the pro- 

 ceedings of meetings and banquets convened for 

 the purpose of giving expression of the feelings of 

 respect and esteem for eminent and scientific men, 

 we have never yet been called upon to record a 

 dinner given under such circumstances as that 

 last Saturday to Professor Owen in the model of 

 the iguanodon. . . . There was something so 

 grotesque and monstrous in the illustrations which 

 accompanied the card : "Mr. B. Waterhouse 



Hawkins requests the honour of 's company 



at dinner in the Iguanodon at 4 p.m.," which 

 excited the curiosity and interest of some of the 

 leading scientific men of the country, and which 

 induced them to be present at so novel a banquet. 

 The number of gentlemen present was twenty- 

 eight, of whom twenty-one were accommodated 

 in the interior of the creature, and seven at a 

 side table on a platform raised to the same level.' 



of some eccentric person's ima- eyes of the public, as a terrible 



gination. One individual was warning, the fantastic visions 



of opinion that they were surely sometimes seen by such as are 



placed there with the pious pur- in the habit of indulging too 



pose of setting clearly before the freely in spirituous liquors. 



