From the portions transmitted to him Professor Owen determined that it presented in some respects a magnified resemblance of the miniature existing lizard, _Moloch horridus_, found in Western Australia,[70] of which Dr. Gray remarks, "The external appearance of this lizard is the most ferocious of any that I know." In Megalania the head was rendered horrible and menacing by horns projecting from its sides, and from the tip of the nose, which would be "as available against the attacks of Thylacoleo as the buffalo's horns are against those of the South African lion." The tail consisted of a series of annular segments armed with horny spikes, represented by the less perfectly developed ones in the existing species _Uromastix princeps_ from Zanzibar, or in the above-mentioned moloch. In regard to these the Professor says, "That the horny sheaths of the above-described supports or cores arming the end of the tail may have been applied to deliver blows upon an assailant, seems not improbable, and this part of the organization of the great extinct Australian dragon may be regarded, with the cranial horn, as parts of both an offensive and defensive apparatus." The gavial of the Ganges is reported to be a fish-eater only, and is considered harmless to man. The Indian museums, however, have large specimens, which are said to have been captured after they had destroyed several human beings; and so we may imagine that this structurally herbivorous lizard (the Megalania having a horny edentate upper jaw) may have occasionally varied his diet, and have proved an importunate neighbour to aboriginal encampments in which toothsome children abounded, and that it may, in fact, have been one of the sources from which the myth of the Bunyip, of which I shall speak hereafter, has been derived. CHAPTER III. ANTIQUITY OF MAN. I do not propose to bestow any large amount of space upon the enumeration of the palæontological evidence of the antiquity of man. The works of the various eminent authors who have devoted themselves to the special consideration of this subject exhaust all that can be said upon it with our present data, and to these I must refer the reader who is desirous of acquainting himself critically with its details, confining myself to a few general statements based on these labours.