the facial nerves and muscles, analogous to Tic; and great irritation
from inflamed membranes of some cavity in the upper jaw has also
occasioned them. I knew a person who suffered six months from such an
attack, and for whom a physician prescribed, in the course of that
period, some pounds of carbonate of iron. Symptoms then ensued, for
which a course of sarsaparilla was ordered, but it was of no avail.
Mercurials were then given, with manifest mischief. The extraction
of the second grinder effected a permanent cure; its roots were
connected with a cavity of fetid discharge, which had no sooner vent,
than all the symptoms disappeared.
Without exceeding the limits which I have set myself, I cannot
proceed farther in these remarks; but I hope enough has been said to
quiet the apprehensions of some invalids who suffer themselves to
be exceedingly alarmed at the name given to their complaint, and to
be dosed with large quantities of useless medicines, which rather
aggravate than relieve it. In many of these cases, the less that is
done the better; in all of them, careful reference must be had to
the real exciting cause; and, in addition to the other circumstances
adverted to, a strict attention to diet must be enforced, and more
than ordinary watchfulness exerted over the state of the stomach
and bowels: plain roast and boiled, and no grease or piecrust in
the former; and for the latter, an occasional blue pill and a tea
spoonful of Epsom salt.
MEDICUS.
_Remarks on some Quadrupeds supposed by Naturalists to be extinct_.
By John Ranking, Esq.
There is not any part of the creation more interesting to mankind
than the gigantic classes of quadrupeds. In them, we are able to
contemplate the power of the Creator of all things, in one of the
most magnificent exercises of his will. Such, however, is the limit
to this kind of knowledge, that there is probably not any one class,
even of the largest quadrupeds, all the _species_ of which are, or
possibly ever can be, known to the student of natural history. More
than half of [p351] the surface of the earth is still undiscovered
by the civilised portion of its inhabitants: regions as extensive
as Europe, in Asia, Africa, and America, are, at this time, either
wholly unknown or undescribed.
The imperfection of history is such, that the most civilised ancient
states of the world have left little behind but what may be called
fragments of their annals. If we include the Gothic age, as it is
called, from the fifth to the fifteenth century, there are not less,
out of the fifty-eight centuries which the earth is said to have
existed, than forty of them which may be termed a blank, as far as
regards profane and natural knowledge.
The period assigned to the Deluge is seventeen centuries after the
creation, or upwards of four thousand years past. There are not any
known real historical annals that can contest this event, and the
natural state of the earth offers abundant proofs of its reality.
Under all these considerations, the fossil remains of elephants and
other large quadrupeds, known to have been employed or slain by
the Romans and Moguls, may justly be considered as independent of
any relation to that catastrophe, and in no wise concerned in the
discussion. Established truths are rather disturbed and weakened by
arguments which are open to refutation.
The time is not distant when it will be generally acknowledged that
all those kinds of quadrupeds, the remains of which have been found
at the very places mentioned in history, are still in existence; a
fact which, when proved, will be of infinitely greater interest as
it regards so grand a portion of nature, than the single supposition
that they are all extinct, because we are not acquainted with the
exact species which corresponds with many of the fossil kinds
frequently discovered: this being the foundation on which such a
conclusion is principally built.
Naturalists have endeavoured to prove that such bones are found where
they could only have been placed by the Deluge: but the changes in
the surface from deposits by rivers, earthquakes, and imperceptible
alterations from the accretion of vegetable matter, and from dust,
volcanoes, digging of mines, wells, canals, foundations, and other
disturbances of the soil, [p352] are such as cannot be observed or
registered; and a few lines will prove how difficult and uncertain
this part of the question remains to this day.
“In quarrying limestone at Aix, in Provence, A.D. 1788, under eleven
strata, separated from each other by a bed of sand and clay, at the
depth of forty-five feet, the surface was covered with shells. The
stones of this bed being removed, under a stratum of argillaceous
sand, stumps of columns and fragments of stones, like the quarry,
half wrought, were found; and also coins, handles of hammers, and
a board, one inch thick and seven feet long, broken, but all the
pieces there, and could be joined; it was like the boards used by
quarry-men, and worn in the same manner. The pieces of wood were
changed into _agate_[53].”
“On sinking a well on a hill near Tobolsk, sixty-four _fathoms_ deep
in the earth, an oaken beam was found; it was quite black, and not
round but shaped[54].”
“At Watlington-park, Oxfordshire, at fifty or sixty feet depth, many
whole oaks, hazel-nuts, a stag’s-head and antlers, were found, and on
the same spot two Roman urns[55].”
“In Oxfordshire there is a tumulus which has become a perfect mount
of stone.”
“Ralph, the brother of Earl Widdrington, showed me many _human_
bones taken from whole skeletons, with British beads, chains, iron
rings, and brass bits of bridles, dug up in a _quarry_ at Blankney,
Lincolnshire, which was probably plain mould when these old corpses
of the Britons were interred: and I Saw many _human_ bones and
armour, with Roman coins, fibluæ &c., found in a _stone_-pit in
Hunstanton-park, Norfolk, belonging to Sir Nicholas L’Estrange[56].”
Very numerous instances could be added, in order to prove that
the local circumstances, when skeletons of these quadrupeds are
found, are not of a nature to disprove the _historical_ origin of
fossil bones. From the highest authority we learn, that the “bones
of species which are apparently the same with [p353] those that
still exist alive, are never found except in the latest alluvial
depositions, or in the fissures of caverns and rocks, in places where
they may have been overwhelmed by debris, or even buried by man[57].”
Thus it appears that a comparative view of the exact _species_ now
living, with that of the fossil remains, is what we must depend on to
decide whether the fossil kinds may not be still in existence.
With respect to the very numerous theories of the earth, the
last, by Werner, has been confidently quoted in opposition to the
writer’s historical proofs[58]. But Werner himself, before his
death (in 1817), tacitly acknowledged that it is not a tenable
doctrine, and which is clearly indicated by the compilers of REES’s
_Cyclopedia_[59], although it is generally allowed to be the best
extant. This hypothesis was formed on a circumscribed view of the
strata in Saxony, but it is found to be quite inapplicable, in
America for instance[60]. To account for fossil bones of elephants,
&c., being found high in the north, the American author who
discovered this defect in the geological doctrine, conjectures that
those large quadrupeds may have migrated, like the buffalos, during
the change of seasons. This notion, however, would not apply to Asia,
the native countries of those animals being well supplied with leaves
or other food the year round.
With these prefatory remarks some historical proofs are offered, for
the probability of the following animals found in a fossil state, not
being of extinct species, beginning with the
ELEPHANT.
“On sinking the foundation for a mill, near the side of a small brook
in the Bishop of Kilmore’s lands, at Maghery, [p354] eight miles from
Belturbet, in the north of Ireland, A.D. 1715, four large teeth were
found, with a piece of the under jawbone and part of the skull of a
young elephant. The teeth were more solid and petrified than when in
a natural state.”
[Illustration: A]
Fig. A is one of the above grinders. B is a fossil grinder in the
possession of the Royal Society. C is the grinder of an elephant
between 10 and 11 feet high, the entire skull of which was then in
Westminster[61].
[Illustration: B]
[Illustration: C]
It is thus apparent that two _fossil_ elephants are of the same
species as those now in existence.
It is not improbable that the Maghery animal was conveyed to Ireland
as a present, or for exhibition. “Fiacra, son of Eacha Moymedon, was
mortally wounded at the battle of Caonry, which was fought A.D. 380,
wherein he was victorious against the army of Momonia, (Munster). On
his return to Hy-mac-uais, in _Meath_, he died of his wounds. His
funeral [p355] leacht was erected, and on his tomb was inscribed his
name in the Ogham character[62].”
We here find that the native sovereign of the northern part of
Ireland resided in Meath, the borders of which county are not
many miles from the place where the elephant was found. It was at
about the year of the battle of Caonry that Maximus, the emperor
in Britain, aspired to be master of the Roman empire. Finding the
union of the Scots and Picts prevented his peaceable possession of
Britain, which was a great obstacle to the execution of his project,
he persuaded the Picts to join their forces to his, on the promise of
giving them the lands of the Scots. The Scots were thus overpowered,
and were forced to fly to Ireland and the adjacent isles. The Scots,
being assisted by the Irish, invaded the north, and were driven
back to Ireland by Maximus, at the head of his troops. The emperor
threatened to invade Ireland, and punish the Irish; but the dread
they had of the presence of a Roman army, induced them to grant
Maximus his own terms, which, in order to conciliate all parties,
were moderate[63]. Now it is by no means impossible that the British
emperor, on this conciliating occasion, sent this very elephant to
his Irish majesty. Tacitus observes, that Agricola (three centuries
before Maximus) received an expelled petty king of Ireland into his
protection; that in manners the natives vary little from the Britons;
and that _the ports and landings of Ireland are better known, through
the frequency of commerce and merchants, than those of Britain_[64].
THE MASTODON.
This quadruped is now known not to differ from the elephant, except
in the form of the grinders, and has probably been called by the name
of elephant by the Romans. Remains of the mastodon have been found
mixed with those of the elephant, in Europe, Siberia, and America;
and for the following [p356] reasons there is every probability of
this animal being in existence.
Captain C. S. Cochrane, in his _Journal in Colombia_, vol. ii., p.
390, relates that numbers of the _carnivorous_ elephants have been
seen feeding on the plains at the foot of a ridge of mountains, at
Choco, in New Granada. “Part of the foot of a mastodon, with five
nails attached, was found in a cave, with a tooth, by a savage west
of the Missouri: it was very fresh, and perfectly resembling that of
an elephant: it was obtained of a Mexican, who had purchased it of a
native[65].”
“The native Americans describe the elephant as still existing in the
northern parts of their country (the Missouri).”—Mr. Jefferson’s
_Notes on Virginia_, p. 57.
Many bones of the mastodon were found in the county of Wythe,
Virginia, with a mass of half-ground branches, roots, and leaves,
enclosed in a kind of sack, supposed to be the stomach, in the midst
of them; so as to leave no doubt that they were substances which the
animal had devoured, and among them were distinguishable the remains
of some plants known in Virginia[66]. Teeth of the mastodon have
been found in Little Tartary, (for five centuries possessed by the
Moguls,) in Siberia, near the Oural mountains, and one at Harwich, in
England[67].
There, have been brought from Ava, found on the left bank of the
Irawaddy, in N. lat. 20° to 21°, near the wells of petroleum, in
narrow ravines, sand-hills, beds of gravel, ironstone, and calcareous
breccia, evidently a _diluvial_ formation,—fossil bones, shells, and
wood. Bones of the mastodon, equal in size to those of the Ohio,
a grinder 16-1/2 inches in circumference, a humerus, measuring 25
inches round the condyles, with several [p357] grinders and bones
of younger individuals, and fragments of tusks: fossil molares of
the rhinoceros, resembling two species of a genus named by Cuvier
Anthracotherium: bones like an animal of the horse kind: remains of
crocodiles, supposed to be the gavial, or long-nosed alligator of the
Ganges, (not now known in the rivers of Ava.) The fossil bones were
upon or near the surface, more or less exposed, not decomposed or
rolled, and are of animals that died there. The bones are petrified,
and deeply coloured with iron, the substance siliceous and very
hard. The blocks of wood are larger than the trees growing there,
but it is not known if they are of the same kind. “An idle notion is
entertained by many, that these fossil remains have been generated by
a petrifying quality in the water of the Irawaddy[68], but I think
they are the result, as elsewhere, of one of the last catastrophes;
in fact, the remains of a former world, before man was called into
existence.”—_Morning Herald_, Sept. 14, 1827.
Bones of the mastodon have been found in Europe, mixed with menagerie
collections, which cannot possibly be attributed to any other origin
than that of sports of the amphitheatre. They are found in western
Siberia, which was conquered by Sheibani, Genghis Khan’s grandson,
A.D. 1242, and held 300 years, and whose first capital was at
Tiumin[69], on the river Tura, near the Ural mountains, where the
remains of the mastodon were found. Ava was conquered by the Grand
Khan Kublai in 1272, in a battle with the king of eastern Bengal,
in which there were a thousand elephants[70]. The places where they
have been found in America correspond with history and tradition so
faithfully, as to assist the other numerous proofs of Mexico and
Peru having been conquered by the Moguls, in the year 1283, and
the bones of the mastodon are there found, as well as remains of
_elephants, precisely like those of Siberia_[71]. With regard to the
tooth found at Harwich, the [p358] British kings Cuneboline[72] and
Arviragus had representations of elephants on their coins. The bones
of elephants, rhinoceroses, and crocodiles found in Ava are not,
as those found in Europe and Siberia, what are termed _extraneous_
fossils; the same kinds of animals being natives of the spot in Ava.
The one like the horse cannot be ascertained; but the kings of Pegu,
in former times, had camelopards, and, therefore, probably, zebras in
their _calichars_, or parks; they also had _unicorns_, ostriches, and
rein-deer[73]. Timur Khan, grandson of Kublai, who invaded Siberia
with such powerful armies, resided at Tali, in Yunan, N. lat. 25°
east of the Irawaddy[74].
The writer is of opinion that all those fossil bones found in Ava are
of species still in existence: they may have floated down from more
northern parts, the river in question being as long as the Ganges,
said to be navigable into China; and has its source in Thibet,—(see
RENNELL’s _Memoir_, p. 217.) According to the hypothesis of the
writer, Montezuma’s ancestor was a Mongul grandee from Assam; and
mastodontes’ remains have been found in Mexico, and those beasts are,
as above related, supposed to be found alive near the Missouri.
This is the first instance the writer has met with of similar bones
not being _extraneous_; and is, therefore, a remarkable fact, which
excites the strongest suspicion that their species are still living.
Ava is a new world on a small scale, and this collection of bones
will, very probably, at no distant date, lead to positive proof of
the existence of other quadrupeds, now conjectured by naturalists
to be extinct. With respect to the local position, it is in all
probability the old bed of the river, as [p359] the beds of those in
Asia change in a wonderful manner.—(See _Rennell_, p. 255.)
A skeleton of an elephant or mastodon, for it is not known which,
was found in a tomb in Mexico, which had evidently been built on
purpose.—(_Clavigero_, vol. i., p. 84.) No authority whatever
dates the foundation of Mexico earlier than A.D. 1324. The Aztecs
advanced from Culiacan, when they took possession of the marshes,
and founded Mexico: other Aztecs had preceded them who had arrived
by land; but the writer hazarded a theory[75] that _Montezuma’s_
ancestors had, like those of the Natchez and of the Incas, arrived
in America by _sea_ with elephants, under Mango Capac; and he has
had the satisfaction to find a confirmation of his conjectures in
a _decade_ written by Peter Martyr, the Milanese, (employed by
Ferdinand V., King of Castile and Arragon, and who died in the year
1526,) addressed to Adrian VI., who had been co-regent of Spain with
Cardinal Ximenes. “Montezuma spoke thus to Cortez:—We have heard
by our ancestors that we are strangers. A certain great prince, in
_ships_, before the memory of all men living, brought our ancestors
unto these coasts; whether voluntarily or driven by tempest it
is not manifest; who, leaving his companions, departed into his
country, and, at length returning, would have had them to have gone
back again. But they had built houses, and joining themselves with
the women of the country had begotten children, and had settled.
Wherefore our ancestors, having chosen a senate and princes to
govern the people, refused to go, and he departed with threatening
speeches. Never any appeared unto this time who denied the right of
that captain and commander. We think, therefore, that the king who
sent you derived his descent from him, and all the kingdoms which we
possess are yours[76].” It is impossible to know clearly what the
allusions to the return of the great commander may mean, but whatever
it be, it does not change the date. As the Mexicans considered
Cortez to be a child of the sun, the _great prince_ must have been a
descendant from Genghis Khan; and _thence_ the [p360] terrors and
submission of Montezuma and the Mexicans, who had always dreaded such
a visit.
The Aztecs had sojourned in Culiacan and other places, from the date
of the arrival of the ships, till they proceeded to Anahuac. The
foundation of Tenochtitlan (or Mexico) having been in 1324, and the
first king, Montezuma’s ancestor, elected in 1377; therefore, the
empire, when Montezuma died, had lasted only 144 years; and this
calculation is from the most authentic documents known, that is, the
pictures in Purchas’s collection. In Harris’s _Voyages_, vol. ii., p.
97, Montezuma is said to have told Cortez, that it was only a century
since they had been settled where they were, meaning, probably, that
it was not _two_ centuries.
Thus an elephant being found in a tomb in Mexico, and others in tombs
in Siberia, is an additional argument to the strong ones already
produced, for the Mexicans being the Moguls blown from the shores of
Japan, A.D. 1283, which appears irresistible; and also that mammoths
and mastodontes are not extinct, being found either living or fossil
in all the places in America, which agree with the traditions on that
subject, and with the histories of China and Japan[77].
THE TAPIR.
The Tapir was supposed to be peculiar to the New World: two fossil
species, one of them gigantic, have been found in [p361] France,
Germany; and Italy[78]. The remains of a tapir being found at
Florence, with those of other quadrupeds usually exhibited by the
Romans, was an unaccountable fact, till it was known, through Sir
Stamford Raffles, that the tapir exists in Sumatra. We know that the
Romans carried on a commerce with India, which employed _one hundred
and twenty ships annually_, and that they had the power of being
supplied with all the animals of those regions, by means of country
ships, which traded to the ports of Musiris and Barace, those which
the Romans frequented. Moreover, the author of the _Periplus_, p.
36, describes _Sumatra_. It appears, therefore, evident that the
Romans procured tapirs from that island, if they be not inhabitants
of Africa. The British king, father of Caractacus, had a tapir on
one of his numerous coins[79]; which may be reckoned among many
other proofs that the ancient Britons were not quite so ignorant and
barbarous as is generally, but unjustly, imagined. The discovery of
this tapir shows how little is yet known even of those countries in
which Britain has, for a length of years, had establishments. The
tapir is probably what the natives have reported as a _river-horse_,
a much more appropriate name for it than for the African beast. “The
descriptions of the hippopotamus,” says Baron Cuvier, “by Herodotus
and Aristotle, are supposed to have been borrowed from Hecatæus of
Miletus, and must have been taken from two very different animals,
one of which is the true hippopotamus, and the other the _antelope
gnu_ of Gmelin[80].” Now, as it appears that the Indians described by
Herodotus by the name _Padæi_, is an exact account of the _Batta_ in
Sumatra,—(Dr. Leyden thinks them the same word, as the Indo-Chinese
pronounce B as P[81],)—it is rendered probable that that island was
known to the Greeks, long before the Romans possessed Egypt. On these
grounds, I venture a conjecture that Aristotle and Herodotus alluded
to the tapir, which is _amphibious_, but the gnu is not. The tapir
is probably the _küda-ayer_ of Sumatra, and the _conda-aijeer_, or
_river paard_, of the [p362] Javans.—(See MARSDEN’s _Sumatra_, third
edition.) With respect to the _gigantic_ tapir, it is as probable
that those regions (apparently less known to moderns, as regards
zoology, than to the Greeks and Romans) may contain gigantic tapirs
as ouranoutangs, near eight feet high, so lately discovered.
UNICORN.
Many reasons have been given, in another place[82], to prove the
probability of the existence of the unicorn, since which the
following description of two has been met with.
“On the other part of the temple of Mecca are parks or places
enclosed, where are seen two unicorns: they are shown to the people
as a miracle; and not without good reason, for their rareness and
strange nature. One of them, which is much higher than the other,
is not much unlike a colt of thirty months of age: in the forehead
groweth one horn, in manner right forth, of the length of three
cubits. The other is only one year of age, and like a young colt:
the horn of this is of the length of four handfuls. This beast is
of that colour of a horse called weasel, and hath a head like a
hart, but not a long neck, and a thin mane, hanging on one side.
Their legs are thin and slender, like a fawn or hind: the hoofs of
the fore feet are divided in two, much like the feet of a goat:
the outer part of the hinder feet is very full of hair. This beast
seemeth wild or fierce, yet tempereth that fierceness with a certain
comeliness. These unicorns were given to the Sultan of Mecca as a
most precious and rare gift. They were sent him out of Ethiopia by a
king of that country, who was desirous by such a present to gratify
the Sultan[83].”
So lately as the year 1799, a Mahomedan African prince is said to
have sent two of them to Mecca.—(REES’s _Cyclopedia_, “Monoceros.”)
Bell of Antermony describes one which was killed in Siberia, near
the _Irtish_, in 1713. Tamerlane slew unicorns and rhinoceroses on
the frontier of _Cashmere_, (_Sherefeddin_, b. 4., ch. xxx.) and
there have recently been _reports_ of unicorns in _Nepaul_, which are
rendered more probable to be [p363] the truth, by those references
of Mr. Bell and Sherefeddin to countries not very distant.
The British king Cuneboline had also the unicorn on his coins,
and the figure of the animal is very similar to the above
description[84]. The writer is, therefore, of opinion that these now
described are the real oryx mentioned by Aristotle, Pliny, and other
ancient authors[85].
HIPPOPOTAMUS.