“Betrübtes Beingerüst von einem altem Sünder
Erweiche, Stein, das Herz der neuen Bosheitskinder!”
“O deplorable skeleton of an accursed ancient,
Mayst thou soften the hearts of the late children of wickedness!”
The reader has before him the fossil of the Œningen schist (Fig. 177).
It is obviously impossible to see in this skeleton what the enthusiastic
savant wished to perceive. And we can form an idea from this instance,
of the errors to which a preconceived idea, blindly followed, may
sometimes lead. How a naturalist of such eminence as Scheuchzer could
have perceived in this enormous head, and in these upper members, the
least resemblance to the osseous parts of a man is incomprehensible!
[Illustration: Fig. 177.--Andrias Scheuchzeri.]
The Pre-Adamite “witness of the deluge” made a great noise in Germany,
and no one there dared to dispute the opinion of the Swiss naturalist,
under his double authority of theologian and savant. This, probably, is
the reason why Gesner in his “Traité des Pétrifactions,” published in
1758, describes with admiration the fossil of Œningen, which he
attributes, with Scheuchzer, to the _antediluvian man_.
Pierre Camper alone dared to oppose this opinion, which was then
universally professed throughout Germany. He went to Œningen in 1787 to
examine the celebrated fossil animal; he had no difficulty in detecting
the error into which Scheuchzer had fallen. He recognised at once that
it was a Reptile; but he deceived himself, nevertheless, as to the
family to which it belonged; he took it for a Saurian. “A petrified
lizard,” Camper wrote; “could it possibly pass for a man?” It was left
to Cuvier to place in its true family the fossil of Œningen; in a memoir
on the subject he demonstrated that this skeleton belonged to one of the
amphibious batrachians called Salamanders. “Take,” he says in his
memoir, “a skeleton of a Salamander and place it alongside the fossil,
without allowing yourself to be misled by the difference of size, just
as you could easily do in comparing a drawing of the salamander of the
natural size with one of the fossil reduced to a sixteenth part of its
dimensions, and everything will be explained in the clearest manner.”
“I am even persuaded,” adds the great naturalist, in a subsequent
edition of this memoir, “that, if we could re-arrange the fossil and
look closer into the details, we should find still more numerous proofs
in the articular faces of the vertebræ, in those of the jaws, in the
vestiges of very small teeth, and even in the labyrinth of the ear.” And
he invited the proprietors or depositaries of the precious fossil to
proceed to such an examination. Cuvier had the gratification of making,
personally, the investigation he suggested. Finding himself at Haarlem,
he asked permission of the Director of the Museum to examine the stone
which contained the supposed fossil man. The operation was carried on in
the presence of the director and another naturalist. A drawing of the
skeleton of a Salamander was placed near the fossil by Cuvier, who had
the satisfaction of recognising, as the stone was chipped away under the
chisel, each of the bones, announced by the drawing, as they made their
appearance. In the natural sciences there are few instances of such
triumphant results--few demonstrations so satisfactory as this, of the
certitude of the methods of observation and induction on which
palæontology is based.
* * * * *
During the Pliocene period Birds of very numerous species, and which
still exist, gave animation to the vast solitudes which man had not yet
occupied. Vultures and Eagles, among the rapacious birds; and among
other genera of birds, gulls, swallows, pies, parroquets, pheasants,
jungle-fowl, ducks, &c.
* * * * *
In the marine Pliocene fauna we see, for the first time, aquatic Mammals
or Cetaceans--the _Dolphin_ and _Balæna_ belonging to the period. Very
little, however, is known of the fossil species belonging to the two
genera. Some bones of Dolphins, found in different parts of France,
apprise us, however, that the ancient species differed from those of our
days. The same remark may be made respecting the Narwhal. This Cetacean,
so remarkable for its long tusk, or tooth, in the form of a horn, has
at all times been an object of curiosity.
The Whales, whose remains are found in the Pliocene rocks, differ little
from those now living. But the observations geologists have been able to
make upon these gigantic remains of the ancient world are too few to
allow of any very precise conclusion. It is certain, however, that the
fossil differs from the existing Whale in certain characters drawn from
the bones of the cranium. The discovery of an enormous fragment of a
fossil Whale, made at Paris in 1779, in the cellar of a wine-merchant in
the Rue Dauphine, created a great sensation. Science pronounced, without
much hesitation, on the true origin of these remains; but the public had
some difficulty in comprehending the existence of a whale in the Rue
Dauphine. It was in digging some holes in his cellars that the
wine-merchant made this interesting discovery. His workmen found, under
the pick, an enormous piece of bone buried in a yellow clay. Its
complete extraction caused him a great deal of labour, and presented
many difficulties. Little interested in making further discoveries, our
wine-merchant contented himself with raising, with the help of a chisel,
a portion of the monstrous bone. The piece thus detached weighed 227
pounds. It was exhibited in the wine-shop, where large numbers of the
curious went to see it. Lamanon, a naturalist of that day, who examined
it, conjectured that the bone belonged to the head of a whale. As to the
bone itself, it was purchased for the Teyler Museum, at Haarlem, where
it still remains.
There exists in the Museum of Natural History in Paris only a copy of
the bone of the whale of the Rue Dauphine, which received the name of
_Balænodon Lamanoni_. The examination of this figure by Cuvier led him
to recognise it as a bone belonging to one of the antediluvian Balænæ,
which differed not only from the living species, but from all others
known up to this time.
Since the days of Lamanon, other bones of Balæna have been discovered in
the soil in different countries, but the study of these fossils has
always left something to be desired. In 1806 a fossil Balæna was
disinterred at Monte-Pulgnasco by M. Cortesi. Another skeleton,
seventy-two feet long, was found on the banks of the river Forth, near
Alloa, in Scotland. In 1816 many bones of this animal were discovered in
a little valley formed by a brook running into the Chiavana, one of the
affluents of the Po.
Cuvier has established, among the cetacean fossils, a particular genus,
which he designates under the name of _Ziphius_. The animals to which he
gave the name, however, are not identical either with the Whales
(_Balænæ_), the Cachelots or Sperm Whales, or with the Hyperoodons. They
hold, in the order of Cetaceans, the place that the Palæotherium and
Anoplotherium occupy among the Pachyderms, or that which the Megatherium
and Megalonyx occupy in the order of the Edentates. The _Ziphius_ still
lives in the Mediterranean.
[Illustration: Fig. 178.--Pecten Jacobæus.
(Living species.)]
* * * * *
The genera of Mollusca, which distinguish this period from all others,
are very numerous. They include the Cardium, Panopæa, Pecten (Fig.
178), Fusus, Murex, Cypræa, Voluta, Chenopus, Buccinum, Nassa, and many
others.
* * * * *
The _Pliocene_ series prevails over Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, where
it is popularly known as the Crag. In Essex it rests directly on the
London Clay. Near Norwich it rests on the Chalk.
The _Pliocene rocks_ are divided into lower and upper. The _Older
Pliocene_ comprises the White or Coralline Crag, including the Red Crag
of Suffolk, containing marine shells, of which sixty per cent. are of
extinct species. The _Newer Pliocene_ is represented by the
Fluvio-marine or Norwich Crag, which last, according to the Rev. Osmond
Fisher, is overlaid by Chillesford clay, a very variable and more arctic
deposit, often passing suddenly into sands without a trace of clay.
The Norfolk Forest Bed rests upon the Chillesford clay, when that is not
denuded.
A ferruginous bed, rich in mammalian remains, and known as the Elephant
bed, overlies the Forest Bed, of which it is considered by the Rev. John
Gunn to be an upper division.
The Crag, divided into three portions, is a local deposit of limited
extent. It consists of variable beds of sand, gravel, and marl;
sometimes it is a shelly ferruginous grit, as the Red Crag; at others a
soft calcareous rock made up of shells and bryozoa, as the Coralline
Crag.
The _Coralline Crag_, of very limited extent in this country, ranges
over about twenty miles between the rivers Stour and Alde, with a
breadth of three or four. It consists of two divisions--an upper one,
formed chiefly of the remains of Bryozoa, and a lower one of
light-coloured sands, with a profusion of shells. The upper division is
about thirty-six feet thick at Sudbourne in Suffolk, where it consists
of a series of beds almost entirely composed of comminuted shells and
remains of Bryozoa, forming a soft building-stone. The lower division is
about forty-seven feet thick at Sutton; making the total thickness of
the Coralline Crag about eighty-three feet.
Many of the Coralline Crag Mollusca belong to living species; they are
supposed to indicate an equable climate free from intense cold--an
inference rendered more probable by the prevalence of northern forms of
shells, such as _Glycimeris_, _Cyprina_, and _Astarte_. The late
Professor Edward Forbes, to whom science is indebted for so many
philosophical deductions, points out some remarkable inferences drawn
from the fauna of the Pliocene seas.[95] It appears that in the glacial
period, which we shall shortly have under consideration, many shells,
previously established in the temperate zone, retreated southwards, to
avoid an uncongenial climate. The Professor gives a list of fifty which
inhabited the British seas while the Coralline and Red Crag were
forming, but which are all wanting in the glacial deposits;[96] from
which he infers that they migrated at the approach of the glacial
period, and returned again northwards, when the temperate climate was
restored.[97]
[95] Edward Forbes in “Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great
Britain,” vol. i., p. 336.
[96] For full information on these deposits the reader is referred to
the “Memoirs on the Structure of the Crag-beds of Norfolk and
Suffolk,” by J. Prestwich, F.R.S., in the _Quart. Jour. Geol.
Soc._, vol. xxvii., pp. 115, 325, and 452 (1871). Also to the
many Papers by the Messrs. Searles Wood published in the _Quar.
Jour. Geol. Soc._, the _Ann. Nat. Hist._, the _Phil. Mag._, &c.
[97] Lyell’s “Elements of Geology,” p. 203.
In the Upper or Mammaliferous (or Norwich) Crag, of which there is a
good exposure in a pit near the asylum at Thorpe, bones of Mammalia are
found with existing species of shells. The greater number of the
Mammalian remains have been supposed, until lately, to be extraneous
fossils; but they are now considered by Mr. Prestwich as truly
contemporaneous. The peculiar mixture of southern forms of life with
others of a more northern type lead to the inference that, at this early
period, a lowering of temperature began gradually to set in from the
period of the Coralline Crag to that of the Forest Bed, which marks the
commencement of the Glacial Period.
The distinction between the Mammaliferous Crag of Norwich and the Red
Crag of Suffolk is purely palæontological, no case of superposition
having yet been discovered, and they are now generally considered as
contemporaneous. Two Proboscidians abundant during the Crag period were
the _Mastodon Arvernensis_ and the _Elephas meridionalis_. In the Red
Crag the Mastodon is stated by the Rev. John Gunn to be more abundant
than the Elephant, while in the Norwich beds their proportions are
nearly equal.
At or near the base of the Red Crag there is a remarkable accumulation,
varying in thickness from a few inches to two feet, of bones, teeth, and
phosphatic nodules (called coprolites), which are worked for making
superphosphate of lime for agricultural manure.
The foreign equivalents of the older Pliocene are found in the
_sub-Apennine strata_. These rocks are sufficiently remarkable in the
county of Suffolk, where they consist of a series of marine beds of
quartzose sand, coloured red by ferruginous matter.
At the foot of the Apennine chain, which forms the backbone, as it
were, of Italy, throwing out many spurs, the formations on either side,
and on both sides of the Adriatic, are Tertiary strata; they form in
many cases, low hills lying between the Apennines of Secondary formation
and the sea, the strata generally being a light-brown or bluish marl
covered with yellow calcareous sand and gravel, with some fossil shells,
which, according to Brocchi, are found all over Italy. But this wide
range includes some older Tertiary formations, as in the strata of the
Superga near Turin, which are Miocene.
The _Antwerp_ Crag, which is of the same age with the Red and Coralline
Crag of Suffolk, forms great accumulations upon divers points of Europe:
at Antwerp in Belgium, at Carentan and Perpignan, and, we believe, in
the basin of the Rhône, in France. The thickest deposits of this rock
consist of clay and sand, alternating with marl and arenaceous
limestone. These constitute the sub-Apennine hills, alluded to above as
extending on both slopes of the Apennines. This deposit occupies the
Upper Val d’Arno, above Florence. Its presence is recognised over a
great part of Australia. Finally, the seven hills of Rome are composed,
in part, of marine Tertiary rocks belonging to the Pliocene period.
In PLATE XXV. an ideal landscape of the Pliocene period is given under
European latitudes. In the background of the picture, a mountain,
recently thrown up, reminds us that the period was one of frequent
convulsions, in which the land was disturbed and upheaved, and mountains
and mountain-ranges made their appearance. The vegetation is nearly
identical with the present. We see assembled in the foreground the more
important animals of the period--the fossil species, as well as those
which have survived to the present time.
At the close of the Pliocene period, and in consequence of the deposits
left by the seas of the Tertiary epoch, the continent of Europe was
nearly what it is now; few permanent changes have occurred since to
disturb its general outline. Although the point does not admit of actual
proof, there is strong presumptive evidence that in this period, or in
that immediately subsequent to it, the entire European area, with some
trifling exceptions, including the Alps and Apennines, emerged from the
deep. In Sicily, Newer Pliocene rocks, covering nearly half the surface
of the island, have been raised from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the level
of the sea. Fossil shells have been observed at the height of 8,000 feet
in the Pyrenees; and, as if to fix the date of upheaval, there are great
masses of granite which have penetrated the Lias and the Chalk. Fossil
shells of the period are also found at a height of 10,000 feet in the
Alps, at 13,000 feet in the Andes, and at 18,000 feet in the Himalayas.
[Illustration: XXV.--Ideal Landscape of the Pliocene Period.]
In the mountainous regions of the Alps it is always difficult to
determine the age of beds, in consequence of the disturbed state of the
strata; for instance, the lofty chain of the Swiss Jura consists of many
parallel ridges, with intervening longitudinal valleys; the ridges
formed of contorted fossiliferous strata, which are extensive in
proportion to the number and thickness of the formations which have been
exposed on upheaval. The proofs which these regions offer of
comparatively recent elevation are numerous. In the central Alps,
Cretaceous, Oolitic, Liassic, and Eocene strata are found at the
loftiest summits, passing insensibly into metamorphic rocks of granular
limestone, and into talcose and mica-schists. In the eastern parts of
the chain the older fossiliferous rocks are recognised in similar
positions, presenting signs of intense Plutonic action. Oolitic and
Cretaceous strata have been raised 12,000 feet, Eocene 10,000, and
Miocene 4,000 and 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. Equally
striking proofs of recent elevation exist in the Apennines; the
celebrated Carrara marble, once supposed--from its crystalline texture
and the absence of fossils, and from its resting--1. on talcose schists,
2. on quartz and gneiss--to be very ancient, now turns out to be an
altered limestone of the Oolitic series, and the underlying crystalline
rocks to be metamorphosed Secondary sandstones and shales. Had all these
rocks undergone complete metamorphism, another page in the earth’s
history would have been obscured. As it is, the proofs of what we state
are found in the gradual approach of the rocks to their unaltered
condition as the distance from the intrusive rock increases. This
intrusive rock, however, does not always reach the surface, but it
exists below at no great depth, and is observed piercing through the
talcose gneiss, and passing up into Secondary strata.
At the close of this epoch, therefore, there is every probability that
Europe and Asia had pretty nearly attained their present general
configuration.