several quarries of marly stones, and the molasse sandstones,
at least those of the south of France. I am of opinion that we
should also refer to it the portions of the molasse sandstones of
Switzerland, and of the lignites of Liguria and Alsace, in which
quadrupeds are found of the families enumerated above; but I do
not find that any of these animals have been also found in other
countries. The fossil bones of Germany, England, and Italy, are all
either older or newer than those of which we have been speaking, and
belong either to those ancient races of reptiles of the juraic and
copper-slate formations, or to the deposits of the last universal
inundation, the diluvial formations.
We are, therefore, authorised to believe, until the contrary be
proved, that at the period when these numerous pachydermata lived,
the globe had only presented for their habitation a small number of
plains sufficiently fertile for them to multiply there, and that
perhaps these plains were insulated regions, separated by pretty
large spaces of elevated chains, in which we do not find that our
animals have left any traces of their existence.
The researches of M. Adolphe Brongniart have also made known to us
the nature of the vegetables which covered those countries. In the
same strata with our palæotheria, there have been found trunks of
palms, and many others of those beautiful plants whose genera now
only grow in warm climates. Palms, crocodiles, and trionyces always
occur in greater or less abundance wherever our ancient pachydermata
are found[294].
The sea which had covered these lands and destroyed their animals,
left large deposits, which still form at the present day, at no great
depth, the basis of our great plains: it had then retired anew, and
left immense surfaces to a new population, whose remains are found in
the sandy and muddy deposits of all countries known.
It is to this deposition from the sea, made in a state of quiet,
that certain fossil cetacea, very much resembling those of our own
days, should, in my opinion, be referred;--a dolphin, allied to
our epaulard[295], and a whale very like our rorquals[296], both
discovered in Lombardy by M. Cortesi; a large head of a whale found
within the very precincts of Paris[297], and described by Lamanon
and Daubenton; and an entirely new genus, which I have discovered
and named _Ziphius_, and which already contains three species. It is
allied to the cachalots and hyperoodons[298].
In the extinct population which fills our alluvial and superficial
strata, and which has lived upon the deposit just alluded to,
there are no longer either palæotheria or anaplotheria, or, in in
fact, any of those singular genera. The pachydermata, however,
still predominate; and these are of a gigantic size, elephants,
rhinoceroses, and hippopotami, accompanied with innumerable horses
and several large ruminantia. Carnivorous animals of the size of
the lion, tiger, and hyena, had desolated this new animal kingdom.
In general, its character, even in the extreme north, and on the
edges of the present frozen ocean, was similar to that which the
torrid zone alone now presents, and yet there was no species in it
absolutely the same as any of those which are found alive at the
present day.
The most remarkable of these animals is the species of elephant named
_mammoth_ by the Russians (the _Elephas primigenius_ of Blumenbach),
which was fifteen or eighteen feet high, and was covered with coarse
red wool, and long, stiff, black hairs, which formed a mane along
its back. Its enormous tusks were implanted in alveolæ longer than
those of the elephants of the present day; but in other respects it
was pretty similar to the Indian elephant[299]. It has left thousands
of its carcases from Spain to the shores of Siberia, and it has been
found in the whole of North America; so that it had been distributed
on both sides of the Atlantic, if, indeed, that ocean had existed
in its time, in the place which it occupies at present. It is well
known that its tusks are still so well preserved in cold countries,
as to be applied to the same uses as fresh ivory; and, as we have
already remarked, individuals of it have been found with their flesh,
skin, and hair, which had remained frozen since the last general
catastrophe. The Tartars and Chinese have imagined it to be an animal
which lives under ground, and perishes whenever it perceives the
light.
After the mammoth, and almost its equal in size, came also in the
countries which form the two presently existing continents, the
_narrow toothed mastodon_, which resembled the elephant, and was
armed like it with enormous tusks, but with tusks covered with
enamel, shorter legs, and whose mamillated grinders, invested with a
thick and shining enamel, have long furnished what has been called
occidental turquoise[300].
Its remains, which are pretty common in the temperate parts of
Europe, are not so much so towards the north; but it has also been
found in the mountains of South America, along with two allied
species.
In North America immense quantities of the remains of the _great
mastodon_ have been found, a species larger than the preceding, as
high in proportion as the elephant, with equally huge tusks, and
whose grinders, which are covered over with bristling points, made it
long be considered as a carnivorous animal[301].
Its bones were of a large size, and very solid. Even its hoofs
and stomach are said to have been found in a sufficient state of
preservation to be recognisable; and it is asserted that the stomach
was filled with bruised branches of trees. The Indians imagine that
the whole race was destroyed by the gods, to prevent them from
destroying the human species.
Along with these enormous pachydermata, lived the two somewhat
inferior genera of the rhinoceroses and hippopotami.
The Hippopotamus of this period was pretty common in the countries
which now form France, Germany and England, and was particularly so
in Italy. It so closely resembled the present African species, that
it is only by an attentive comparison that it can be distinguished
from it[302].
There was also at this time a small species of hippopotamus of the
size of the wild boar, to which there is nothing similar at present
existing.
There were at least three species of Rhinoceros of large size, all of
them two-horned.
The most common species in Germany and England (my _Rh.
tichorhinus_), and which, like the elephant, is found even to the
shores of the frozen sea, where it has also left entire individuals,
had the head elongated, the bones of the nose very robust and
supported by an osseous and not merely cartilaginous septum narium,
and, lastly, wanted incisors[303].
Another species, of rarer occurrence, and peculiar to more temperate
climates (_Rh. incisivus_)[304], had incisors like our present
rhinoceroses of the East Indies, and, in particular, resembled that
of Sumatra[305]; its distinctive characters are derived from some
differences in the form of the head.
The third species (_Rh. leptorhinus_) had no incisors, like the first
and like the present rhinoceros of the Cape; but it was distinguished
by a more pointed muzzle and more slender limbs[306]. The bones of
this species have been found more especially in Italy, in the same
strata with those of elephants, mastodons, and hippopotami.
There is a fourth species still (_Rh. minutus_), furnished, like
the second, with incisors, but of a much smaller size, and scarcely
larger than a hog[307]. It was undoubtedly rare, for the remains of
it have only as yet been found in some places in France.
To those four genera of large pachydermata, is added a Tapir, which
equalled them in size, and was consequently twice, perhaps three
times, as large in its linear dimensions as the American Tapir[308].
Its teeth have been found in several parts of France and Germany;
and almost always accompanying those of rhinoceroses, mastodons, or
elephants.
Along with these there is still associated, but as it would seem in a
very small number of places, a large pachydermatous animal, of which
the lower jaw alone has been found, and whose teeth are of the form
of double crescents, and undulated. M. Fischer, who discovered it
among bones from Siberia, has named it _Elasmotherium_[309].
The Horse genus also existed in those times[310]. Its teeth accompany
in thousands the remains of the animals which we have just mentioned,
in almost all their localities; but it is not possible to say
whether it was one of the species now existing or not, because the
skeletons of these species are so like each other, that they cannot
be distinguished by the mere comparison of isolated fragments.
The Ruminantia were now greatly more numerous than at the epoch of
the Palæotheria; their numerical proportion must even have differed
very little from what it is at present; but we are certain of several
species which were different.
This may, in particular, be said with much certainty of a deer
exceeding even the elk in size, which is common in the marl deposits
and peat-bogs of Ireland and England, and of which remains have also
been dug up in France, Germany, and Italy, where they were found in
the same strata with bones of elephants. Its wide, palmated, and
branched horns, measure so much as twelve or fourteen feet from one
point to the other, following the curvatures[311].
The distinction is not so clear with regard to the bones of deer
and oxen, which have been collected in certain caverns, and in
the fissures of certain rocks. They are sometimes, and especially
in the caverns of England, accompanied with bones of elephants,
rhinoceroses, and hippopotami, and with those of a hyena, which also
occurs in several strata of transported matter, along with these same
pachydermata. They are consequently of the same age; but it remains
not the less difficult to say in what respect they differ from the
oxen and deer of the present day.
The fissures of the rocks of Gibraltar, Cette, Nice, Uliveta near
Pisa, and other places on the shores of the Mediterranean, are
filled with a red and hard cement, which envelopes fragments of rock
and fresh-water shells, and numerous bones of quadrupeds, the greater
part fractured. These concretions are termed osseous brecciæ. The
bones which they contain sometimes present characters sufficient to
prove that they have belonged to unknown animals, or at least to
animals foreign to Europe. There are found, for example, four species
of deer, three of which have characters in their teeth, which are
only observed in the deer of the Indian Archipelago.
There is a fifth near Verona, the horns of which exceed in magnitude
those of the Canadian deer[312].
There also occur, in certain places, along with bones of
rhinoceroses, and other quadrupeds of this period, those of a deer so
much resembling the reindeer, that it would be difficult to assign
distinctive characters to it; a circumstance which is so much the
more extraordinary, that the reindeer is at the present day confined
to the coldest regions of the north, while the whole genus of
rhinoceroses belongs to the torrid zone.[313]
There exist in the strata of which we speak, remains of a species
very similar to the fallow-deer, but a third larger,[314] and
prodigious quantities of horns, very much resembling those of
our present stag[315], as well as bones, very like those of the
aurochs[316] and domestic ox[317], two very distinct species, which
had been erroneously confounded by the naturalists who preceded us.
The entire heads, however, resembling those of these two animals, as
well as that of the musk-ox of Canada[318], which have often been
extracted from the earth, do not come from localities sufficiently
well determined to enable us to assert that these species had been
contemporaries of the great pachydermata, of which we have made
mention above.
The osseous brecciæ of the shores of the Mediterranean have also
afforded two species of _Lagomys_,[319] animals, the genus of
which exists at the present day only in Siberia; two species of
rabbits[320], lemmings, and rats of the size of the water-rat and
domestic mouse[321]. In the caves of England two species are also
found[322].
The osseous brecciæ even contain bones of shrew-mice and lizards[323].
In certain sandy strata of Tuscany, there are teeth of a
porcupine[324], and in those of Russia heads of a species of beaver,
larger than ours, which M. Fischer has named _Trogontherium_[325].
But it is more particularly in the class Edentata that these races
of animals belonging to the period before the last assume a size
much superior to that of their present congeners, and even rise to a
magnitude altogether gigantic.
The _Megatherium_ unites a part of the generic characters of the
armadilloes, with some of those of the sloths, and is in size equal
to the largest rhinoceros. Its claws must have been of a monstrous
length, and prodigious strength; its whole skeleton possesses an
excessive solidity. It has only as yet been found in the sandy strata
of North America[326].
The _Megalonyx_ has been very similar to it in its characters, but
has been somewhat less; its claws much longer and sharper in the
edges. Some bones and entire toes of it have been found in certain
caves in Virginia, and in an island on the coast of Georgia[327].
These two enormous edentata have only hitherto presented their
remains in America; but Europe possesses one of the same class which
does not yield to them in magnitude. It is only known by a single
terminal joint of a toe, but this fragment is sufficient to assure us
that it was very similar to a pangolin or manis, but to a pangolin
of nearly twenty-four feet in length. It lived in the same districts
as the elephants, rhinoceroses, and gigantic tapirs; for its bones
have been found along with theirs in a sandy deposit in the county of
Darmstadt, not far from the Rhine[328].
The osseous brecciæ also contain, but very rarely, bones of
carnivora[329], which are much more numerous in caverns, that is to
say, in cavities wider and more complicated than the fissures or
veins containing osseous brecciæ. The Jura chain in particular, is
celebrated for them in the part of it which extends into Germany,
where, for ages past, incredible quantities have been removed and
destroyed, on account of certain medical virtues which had been
attributed to them, and yet there still remains enough to fill the
mind with astonishment. The principal part of these remains consists
of bones of a very large species of bear (_Ursus spelæus_), which
is characterised by a more prominent forehead than that of any of
our living bears[330]. Along with these bones are found those of
two other species of bear (_U. arctoideus_ and _U. priscus_)[331];
those of a hyena (_H. fossilis_), allied to the spotted hyena of the
Cape, but differing from it in the form of its teeth and head[332];
those of two tigers or panthers[333], of a wolf[334], a fox[335],
a glutton[336], as well as of weasels, viverræ, and other small
carnivora[337].
Here, also, may be observed that singular association of animals,
the species resembling which live at the present day in climates so
widely separated from each other as the Cape, the country of the
spotted hyena, and Lapland, the country of our present gluttons. In
like manner we have seen in a cave in France, a rhinoceros and a
reindeer by the side of each other.
Bears are of rare occurrence in alluvial strata. Remains of the large
species of the caves (_U. spelæus_), are said, however, to have been
found in Austria and Hainaut; and in Tuscany there are bones of a
particular species, remarkable for its compressed canine teeth (_U.
cultridens_)[338]. The hyenas are more frequently met with. We have
remains of them in France, found along with bones of elephants and
rhinoceroses. A cave has lately been discovered in England, which
contained prodigious quantities of them, where they were found of
every age, and of which the soil presented even their excrements
in a sufficient state of preservation to be easily recognised. It
would appear that they had long lived there, and that it had been by
them that the bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, horses,
oxen, deer, and various animals of the class of glires, which are
found along with them, and which bear evident marks of their teeth,
had been dragged into the cave. But what must have been the soil of
England, when these enormous animals lived upon it, and constituted
the prey of ferocious beasts! These caves contain also bones of
tigers, wolves and foxes; but the remains of bears are of excessively
rare occurrence in them[339].
However this may be, we see that, at the epoch of the animal
population which we are now passing under review, the class of
carnivora was numerous and powerful. It reckoned three bears with
round canine teeth, one with compressed canini, a large tiger or
lion, another feline animal, of the size of the panther, a hyena, a
wolf, a fox, a glutton, a martin or pole-cat, and a weasel.
The class of glires, composed in general of weak and small species,
has been little observed by the collectors of fossil remains; and,
in all cases, where the bones of these animals have been found in
the strata or deposits of which we speak, they also have presented
unknown species. Such, in particular, is a species of Lagomys found
in the osseous brecciæ of Corsica and Sardinia, somewhat resembling
the Lagomys alpinus of the high mountains of Siberia: so true is it
that it is not always in the torrid zone only, that we are to seek
for the animals which resemble those of this period.
These are the principal animals, the remains of which have been
found in that mass of earth, sand, and mud,--that _Diluvium_, which
everywhere covers our large plains, fills our caverns, and chokes
up the fissures in many of our rocks. They incontestibly formed the
population of the continents, at the epoch of the great catastrophe
which has destroyed their races, and which has prepared the soil, on
which the animals of the present day subsist.
Whatever resemblance certain of these species bear to those of our
days, it cannot be disputed that the general mass of this population
had a very different character, and that the greater part of the
races which composed it have been utterly destroyed.
What astonishes us is, that, among all these mammifera, the greater
number of which have their congeners at the present day in the
warm parts of the globe, there has not been a single quadrumanous
animal,--that there has not been collected a single bone or a single
tooth of an ape or monkey, not so much even as a bone or a tooth
belonging to an extinct species of these animals.
Nor is there any trace of man. All the bones of our species that have
been found along with those of which we have been speaking, have
occurred accidentally[340], and their number besides is exceedingly
small, which assuredly would not have been the case, if men had then
been settled in the countries which these animals inhabited.
Where, then, was the human race at this period? Did the last and most
perfect of the works of the Creator nowhere exist? Did the animals
which now accompany him upon the globe, and of which there are no
traces among these fossil remains, surround him? Were the countries
in which he lived with them swallowed up, when those which he now
inhabits, and whose former population may have been destroyed by a
great inundation, were laid dry again? These are questions which the
study of fossil remains does not enable us to solve, and in this
discourse we must not apply for information to other sources.
This much is certain, that we are now at least in the midst of a
fourth succession of land animals,--that, after the age of reptiles,
the age of palæotheria, the age of mammoths, and that of mastodons
and megatheria, has come the age in which the human species, aided
by some domestic animals, peaceably governs and fertilizes the earth,
and that it is only in the deposits formed since the commencement of
this age, in alluvial matters, peat-bogs, and recent concretions,
that bones are found in the fossil state, which belong all of them to
known and still living animals.
Such are the human skeletons of Guadaloupe, imbedded in a species
of travertine formed of land shells, slate, and fragments of shells
and madrepores of the neighbouring sea; the bones of oxen, deer,
roes, and beavers, common in peat-bogs, and all the bones of men and
domestic animals found in the mud and sand deposited by rivers, in
burying grounds, and upon ancient fields of battle.
None of these remains belong either to the great deposit formed at
the time of the last catastrophe, nor to those of preceding ages.
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
_On the birds to which the name of Ibis was given by the ancient
Egyptians._
Every body has heard of the Ibis, a bird to which the ancient
Egyptians rendered a religious homage; which they reared within the
precincts of their temples; allowed to wander unmolested through
their towns; whose murderer, even although he had involuntarily
become so, was punished with death[341]; which they embalmed with as
much care as their parents;--a bird to which they attributed a virgin
purity; an inviolable attachment to their country, of which it was
the emblem, an attachment so great that it suffered itself to die of
hunger when it was transported elsewhere;--a bird which possessed
instinct enough to know the increase and waning of the moon, and
to regulate accordingly the quantity of its daily food, and the
development of its young; which arrested at the frontiers of Egypt
the serpents which would otherwise have carried destruction into that
sacred land[342], and which inspired them with such terror that they
dreaded its very feathers[343];--a bird, in fine, whose form the gods
would have assumed, had they been forced to adopt a mortal figure,
and into which Mercury was really transformed, when he had a mind to
traverse the earth, and instruct men in the sciences and arts.
No other animal could have been so easy to recognize as this; for
there is no other of which the ancients have left us at once, as
of the ibis, excellent descriptions, accurate and even coloured
figures, and the body itself preserved with its feathers, under the
triple envelope of a preservative bitumen, thick and close folds of
linen, and solid and well varnished vases. And yet, of all the modern
authors who have spoken of the ibis, there is but one, the celebrated
Bruce, a traveller more famous for his courage than for the justness
of his opinions in natural history, who has not blundered respecting
the true species of this bird; and his ideas with regard to this
subject, however accurate they were, have not even been adopted by
naturalists[344].
After several changes of opinion respecting the ibis, it was
seemingly agreed, at the period when I published the first edition
of this work, to give the name of Ibis to a bird a native of Africa,
almost of the size of the stork, with white plumage, having the
quills black, perched upon long red legs, armed with a long arched
beak, of a pale yellow colour, sharp at its edges, rounded at its
base, and notched at its point, and whose face is covered with a red
skin destitute of feathers, which do not extend farther forward than
the eyes.
Such is the Ibis of Perrault[345], the Ibis candida of Brisson[346],
the Ibis blanc d’Egypte of Buffon[347], and the Tantalus Ibis of
Linnæus, in his twelfth edition. It was to this same bird, also, that
Blumenbach, while he avowed that it is of very rare occurrence at the
present day, at least in Lower Egypt, asserted that the Egyptians
rendered divine honours[348]; and yet this naturalist had possessed
opportunities of examining bones of the true ibis in a mummy which he
opened in London[349].