204 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCK LAND. 
[CH. VIII. 
and theriuTUy a beast), the first, and, at one time, the 
sole evidence of mammalian life having existed at the 
earlier period of the earth’s history ; it has found a good, 
and, we trust, a lasting home in the museum at Oxford, 
but a few miles from the place where, ages and ages ago, 
it roamed over the neighbourhood of W oodstock. Little 
did this tiny beast think that one day its under jaw would 
cause Dons to open their eyes with astonishment, and 
Professors to tax their memories and brains for appro¬ 
priate words wherewith to descant upon its beauty, and 
upon the deductions logically to be inferred from it as to 
the climate and state of animal and vegetable life at the 
time it existed.” 1 
Cuvier, 2 to whom Dr. Buckland had dedicated his 
memoir on the megalosaurus (big lizard), speaks of his 
discovery in the following terms :— 
“ L’un des hommes qui honorent la geologie par les 
observations precises et suivies, et par la resistance la plus 
constante aux hypotheses hasardees, Monsieur le professeur 
Buckland, a fait depuis plusieurs annees cette belle decou- 
verte, et j’en ai vu les pieces chez lui a Oxford en 1818 ; 
j’y en ai meme dessine quelques-unes ; mais il a eu, depuis, 
la complaisance de m’adrcsser le memoire qu’il va donner 
sur ce sujet dans le Rccueil de la Societe Geologique de 
Londres, oil il fait connaitre exactcment les os qu’il possede 
et les circonstances de leur gisement; e’est de cet ecrit 
que je tire les principaux materiaux du present article.” 
“ Although,” says Buckland, “ no skeleton has been 
found entire, so many perfect bones and teeth have been 
discovered in the same quarries, that we are nearly as well 
acquainted with the form and dimensions of its limbs, as 
if they had been found together in a single block of stone. 
From the size and proportions of these bones, as compared 
with existing lizards, Cuvier concludes the Megalosaurus to 
1 “ Curiosities of Natural History,” 2nd series, 
2 “ Ossemens Fossiles,” vol. v., p. 2. (Paris, 1825.) 
