Baron Cuvier alone amongst the doctor's friends or correspondents was able to give any hint as to the character and probable relations of the animal to which the recently discovered teeth belonged. Being hampered by arduous professional duties in a provincial town, remote from museums and libraries, Dr. Mantell transmitted to the Royal Society figures and drawings of the specimens, and, at the suggestion of the Rev. W. D. Conybeare, adopted the name Iguanodon (Iguana-tooth) for the extinct reptile, a name which pointed to the resemblance of its teeth to those of the modern iguana, a land-lizard inhabiting many parts of America and the West Indies, and rarely met with north or south of the tropics. These lizards are from three to five feet in length, and perfectly harmless, feeding on insects and vegetables, and climbing trees in quest of the tender leaves and buds, which they chip off and swallow whole; they nestle in the hollows of rocks, and deposit their eggs in the sands and banks of rivers. In all living reptiles the insects or vegetables on which they feed are seized by the tongue or teeth, and swallowed whole, so that a movable covering to the jaws, similar to the lips and cheeks of the mammalia, is not necessary, either for seizing and retaining food, or for subjecting it by muscular movements to the action of the teeth. It is the power of perfect mastication possessed by the Iguanodon that is so strange, for it implies a most remarkable approach in extinct reptiles to characters possessed now only by herbivorous mammalia, such as horses, cows, deer, etc. From this and other strange characters seen in the Dinosaurs, we learn that they in their day played the part of our modern quadrupeds, whether carnivorous or herbivorous, and showed a remarkable approach to the mammalian type, which of course is a much higher one. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that Dr. Mantell's contemporaries, with the exception of Cuvier, found in the teeth we have described an awkward puzzle, and refused to believe that they belonged to a reptile. Such a notion was at variance with all previous experience, and we naturally form our conclusions to a large extent by experience. Let us, then, beware lest we allow our ideas to be limited by what after all is, as it were, only an expression of our ignorance. The Hottentot who has never seen snow would refuse to believe that rain can assume a solid form; and, in the same way, if we bind ourselves down by experience, we might refuse to believe in some of the still more wonderful dinosaurian types to be described in this chapter, such as the Triceratops, with a pair of large horns, a skull over six feet long, and limbs larger than those of the rhinoceros! (see p. 117).