Before entering upon a description of the restorations of the Extinct
Animals, placed on the Geological Islands in the great Lake, a brief
account may be premised of the principles and procedures adopted in
carrying out this attempt to present a view of part of the animal
creation of former periods in the earth’s history.
Those extinct animals were first selected of which the entire, or nearly
entire, skeleton had been exhumed in a fossil state. To accurate
drawings of these skeletons an outline of the form of the entire animal
was added, according to the proportions and relations of the skin and
adjacent soft parts to the superficial parts of the skeleton, as yielded
by those parts in the nearest allied living animals. From such an
outline of the exterior, Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins prepared at once a
miniature model form in clay.
This model was rigorously tested in regard to all its proportions with
those exhibited by the bones and joints of the skeleton of the fossil
animal, and the required alterations and modifications were successively
made, after repeated examinations and comparisons, until the result
proved satisfactory.
The next step was to make a copy in clay of the proof model, of the
natural size of the extinct animal: the largest known fossil bone, or
part, of such animal being taken as the standard according to which the
proportions of the rest of the body were calculated agreeably with those
of the best preserved and most perfect skeleton. The model of the full
size of the extinct animal having been thus prepared, and corrected by
renewed comparisons with the original fossil remains, a mould of it was
prepared, and a cast taken from this mould, in the material of which the
restorations, now exposed to view, are composed.
There are some very rare and remarkable extinct animals of which only
the fossil skull and a few detached bones of the skeleton have been
discovered: in most of these the restoration has been limited to the
head, as, for example, in the case of the Mosasaurus; and only in two
instances—those, viz., of the Labyrinthodon and Dicynodon—has Mr.
Hawkins taken upon himself the responsibility of adding the trunk to the
known characters of the head, such addition having been made to
illustrate the general affinities and nature of the fossil, and the kind
of limbs required to produce the impressions of the footprints, where
these have been detected and preserved in the petrified sands of the
ancient sea-shores trodden by these strange forms of the Reptilian
class.
With regard to the hair, the scales, the scutes, and other modifications
of the skin, in some instances the analogy of the nearest allied living
forms of animals has been the only guide; in a few instances, as in that
of the Ichthyosaurus, portions of the petrified integument have been
fortunately preserved, and have guided the artist most satisfactorily in
the restoration of the skin and soft parts of the fins; in the case of
other reptiles, the bony plates, spines, and scutes have been discovered
in a fossil state, and have been scrupulously copied in the attempt to
restore the peculiar tegumentary features of the extinct reptiles, as
_e.g._ in the Hylæosaurus.
In every stage of this difficult, and by some it may be thought,
perhaps, too bold, attempt to reproduce and present to human gaze and
contemplation the forms of animal life that have successively flourished
during former geological phases of time, and have passed away long ages
prior to the creation of man, the writer of the following brief notice
of the nature and affinities of the animals so restored feels it a duty,
as it is a high gratification to him, to testify to the intelligence,
zeal, and peculiar artistic skill by which his ideas and suggestions
have been realised and carried out by the talented director of the
fossil department, Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins. Without the combination of
science, art, and manual skill, happily combined in that gentleman, the
present department of the Instructive Illustrations at the Crystal
Palace could not have been realised.
The Secondary Island.
The most cursory observation of the surface of the earth shows that it
is composed of distinct substances, such as clay, chalk, lias,
limestone, coal, slate, sandstone, &c.; and a study of such substances,
their relative position and contents, has led to the conviction that
these external parts of the earth have acquired their present condition
gradually, under a variety of circumstances, and at successive periods,
during which many races of animated beings, distinct both from those of
other periods and from those now living, have successively peopled the
land and the waters; the remains of these creatures being found buried
in many of the layers or masses of mineral substances, forming the crust
of the earth.
The object of the Islands in the Geological Lake is to demonstrate the
order of succession, or superposition, of these layers or strata, and to
exhibit, restored in form and bulk, as when they lived, the most
remarkable and characteristic of the extinct animals and plants of each
stratum.
The series of mineral substances and strata represented in the smaller
island have been called by geologists “secondary formations,” because
they lie between an older series termed “primary,” and a newer series
termed “tertiary:” the term “formation” meaning any assemblage of rocks
or layers which have some character in common, whether of origin, age,
or composition.[1]
Following the secondary formations as they descend in the earth, or
succeed each other from above downwards, and as they are shown,
obliquely tilted up out of their original level position from left to
right, in the Secondary Island, they consist: 1st, of the Chalk or
Cretaceous group; 2nd, the Wealden; 3rd, the Oolite; 4th, the Lias; and
5th, the New Red Sandstone.