212 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND . 
[CH. VIII. 
“ The Mosasaurus (the river Meuse and saunts, a lizard) 
has been long known by the name of the great animal 
of Maestricht, occurring near that city in the calcareous 
freestone. , . . A nearly perfect head of this animal was 
discovered (1780) in the quarries under the hill of St. 
Pierre, by Dr. Hofmann, Surgeon to the Forces quartered 
in the town of Maestricht. 1 This celebrated head during 
many years baffled all the skill of Naturalists : some 
considered it to be that of a whale, others of a crocodile ; 
but its true place in the animal kingdom was first suggested 
by Adrian Camper, and at length confirmed by Cuvier. 
By their investigations it is proved to have been a gigantic 
marine reptile, most nearly allied to the Monitor. 2 The 
geological epoch at which the Mosasaurus first appeared 
seems to have been the last of the long series during which 
the oolitic and cretaceous groups were in process of 
formation. In these periods the inhabitants of our planet 
seem to have been principally marine, and some of the 
largest creatures were saurians of gigantic stature, many 
of them living in the sea, and controlling the excessive 
1 It is recorded of this fossil that one of the canons of the cathedral 
church of Maestricht brought an action at law against the discoverer, 
Dr. Hofmann, and obtained possession from him ; but he was not 
allowed to hold his prize long, for, when the French Revolution broke 
out, and the armies of the Republic advanced to the gates of Maestricht, 
1795, the town was bombarded, and at the suggestion of the committee 
of savants who accompanied the French troops to select their share 
of the plunder, the artillery was not allowed to play on that part of the 
town in which the celebrated fossil was known to be preserved. After 
the capitulation of the town, it was seized and carried off in triumph. 
The specimen has since remained in the museum of the Jardin des 
Plantes in Paris, and a cast of it is now in the British Museum. 
2 The monitors form a genus of lizards, frequenting marshes and 
the banks of rivers in hot climates; they have received this name from 
the prevailing but absurd notion that they give warning by a whistling 
noise of the approach of Crocodiles and Caymans. One species the 
Lacerta Nilotica, or lizard of the Nile, which devours the eggs of 
Crocodiles, has been sculptured on the monuments of ancient Egypt. 
