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. 
