The probable size of the Iguanodon was thirty feet in length, though probably some exceeded these enormous proportions. Seventy species have been discovered in the quarries opened at Tilgate forest; and this gives us some idea of the conspicuous part these mighty creatures once played in the eras happily before man was an inhabitant of this planet. Why these remains should generally be found in the same locality we cannot certainly tell, though the previous extract from Alison may shed some light on this curious fact; but it appears beyond doubt that particular spots were selected by these beasts as hospitals and dying places, where, undisturbed by their enemies, they retired to die unseen. The drawing on page 195, representing the restored fauna of this period, that is, inclusive of the Lias, Oolite, and Wealden formations, will not only illustrate our previous remarks, but enable our readers thoroughly to appreciate the following vivid description of the life of that remote era, which we do not like to abridge. Should any feel sceptical as to whether there were ever such “goings on” in this globe of ours, especially in our eastern counties, now the resort of tourists and invalids having no dread of such creatures before their eyes, we ask them not to reject all this as fable until they have gone to the British Museum, and in Room 3, and in Wall-case C, they will there see some of the magnificent specimens, obtained by Dr. Mantell, of these extinct deinosaurians.[102] On reading this description, it seems quite justifiable to congratulate ourselves upon the era in which we live. Strange forms and monsters vast have been in the old time before us, and their disinterred remains teach us again and again the good and wholesome lesson of the king of Israel, prefixed as a motto to this chapter. “Two of these saurians have more especially attracted attention, in consequence of their great abundance in a fossil state in our own country, but they are by no means the only ones known. Of these two, one was more exclusively a tenant of the deep, while the other was probably more frequently met with on the mud banks or on the shore. Both were truly marine in their habits, and both seem to have served as the representatives of the great Cetacean tribe—the whales, the porpoises, and other similar animals now existing. “It is not easy to imagine the conditions of existence of such animals. We know their form, their proportions, their strange contrivances of structure, their very skin, and the nature of the food which they devoured; and yet, knowing with absolute certainty these points, we hardly dare draw the conclusions which are suggested. I will, however, venture to offer a sketch of the appearance of the sea and its inhabitants during this portion of the Reptilian epoch.