Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/190

 similar, in the principles of their construction, to the teeth of the modern Iguana, as to leave no doubt of the near connexion of this most gigantic extinct reptile with the Iguanas of our own time. When we consider that the largest living Iguana rarely exceeds five feet in length, whilst the congenerous fossil animal must have been nearly twelve times as long, we cannot but be impressed by the discovery of a resemblance, amounting almost to identity, between such characteristic organs as the teeth, in one of the most enormous among the extinct reptiles of the fossil world, and those of a genus whose largest species is comparatively so diminutive. According to Cuvier, the common Iguana inhabits all the warm regions of America: it lives chiefly upon trees, eating fruits, and seeds, and leaves. The female occasionally visits the water, for the purpose of laying in the sand its eggs, which are about the size of those of a pigeon.

As the modern Iguana is found only in the warmest regions of the present earth, we may reasonably infer that a