In the days of Cuvier the Tertiary formations were considered as a mere
chaos of superficial deposits, having no distinct relations to each
other. It was reserved for the English geologists, with Sir Charles
Lyell at their head, to throw light upon this obscure page of the
earth’s history; from the study of fossils, science has not only
re-animated the animals, it has re-constructed the theatre of their
existence. We see the British Islands now a straggling archipelago, and
then the mouth of a vast river, of which the continent is lost; for,
says Professor Ramsay, “We are not of necessity to consider Great
Britain as having always been an island; it is an accident that it is an
island now, and it has been an island many times before.” In the
Tertiary epoch we see it surrounded, then, by shallow seas swarming with
numerous forms of animal life; islands covered with bushy Palms; banks
on which Turtles basked in the sun; vast basins of fresh or brackish
water, in which the tide made itself felt, and which abounded with
various species of sharks; rivers in which Crocodiles increased and
multiplied; woods which sheltered numerous Mammals and some Serpents of
large size; fresh-water lakes which received the spoils of numerous
shells. Dry land had increased immensely. Groups of ancient isles we
have seen united and become continents, with lakes, bays, and perhaps
inland seas. Gigantic Elephants, vastly larger than any now existing,
close the epoch, and probably usher in the succeeding one; for we are
not to suppose any sudden break to distinguish one period from another
in Nature, although it is convenient to arrange them so for the purposes
of description. If we may judge from their remains, these animals must
have existed in great numbers, for it is stated that on the coast of
Norfolk alone the fishermen, in trawling for oysters, dredged up between
1820 and 1833, no less than 2,000 molar teeth of Elephants. If we
consider how slowly these animals multiply, these quarries of ivory, as
we may call them, must have required many centuries for their production
and accumulation.
The same lakes and rivers were at this time occupied, also, by the
Hippopotamus, as large and as formidably armed as that now inhabiting
the African solitudes; also the two-horned Rhinoceros; and three species
of Bos, one of which was hairy and bore a mane. Some Deer of gigantic
size, as compared with living species, bounded over the plains. In the
same savannahs lived the Reindeer, the Stag, a Horse of small size, the
Ass, the Bear, and the Roe, for Mammals had succeeded the Ichthyosauri
of a former age. Nevertheless, the epoch had its tyrants also. A Lion,
as large as the largest of the Lions of Africa, hunted its prey in the
British jungles. Another animal of the feline race, the _Machairodus_
(Fig. 179), was probably the most ferocious and destructive of
Carnivora; bands of Hyænas and a terrible Bear, surpassing in size that
of the Rocky Mountains, had established themselves in the caverns; two
species of Beaver made their appearance on the scene.
[Illustration: Fig. 179.--_a_, Tooth of Machairodus, imperfect below,
natural size; _b_, outline of cast of tooth, perfect, half natural size;
_c_, tooth of Megalosaurus, natural size.]
The finding of the remains of most of these animals in caverns was
perhaps among the most interesting discoveries of geology. The discovery
was first made in the celebrated Kirkdale Cave in Yorkshire, which has
been described by Dr. Buckland; and afterwards at Kent’s Hole, near
Torquay. This latter pleasant Devonshire town is built in a creek, shut
out from exposure on all sides except the south. In this creek, hollowed
out of the rocks, is the great fissure or cavern known as Kent’s Hole;
like that of Kirkdale, it has been under water, from whence, after a
longer or shorter interval, it emerged, but remained entirely closed
till the moment when chance led to its discovery. The principal cavern
is 600 feet in length, with many crevices or fissures of smaller extent
traversing the rock in various directions. A bed of hard stalagmite of
very ancient formation, which has been again covered with a thin layer
of soil, forms the floor of the cavern, which is a red sandy clay. From
this bed of red loam or clay was disinterred a mass of fossil bones
belonging to extinct species of Bear, Lion, Rhinoceros, Reindeer,
Beaver, and Hyæna.
Such an assemblage gave rise to all sorts of conjectures. It was
generally thought that the dwelling of some beasts of prey had been
discovered, which had dragged the carcases of elephants, deer, and
others into these caves, to devour them at leisure. Others asked if, in
some cases, instinct did not impel sick animals, or animals broken down
by old age, to seek such places for the purpose of dying in quiet; while
others, again, suggested that these bones might have been engulfed
pell-mell in the hole during some ancient inundation. However that may
be, the remains discovered in these caves show that all these Mammals
existed at the close of the Tertiary epoch, and that they all lived in
England. What were the causes which led to their extinction?
It was the opinion of Cuvier and the early geologists that the ancient
species were destroyed in some great and sudden catastrophe, from which
none made their escape. But recent geologists trace their extinction to
slow, successive, and determinative action due to local causes, the
chief one being the gradual lowering of the temperature. We have seen
that at the beginning of the Tertiary epoch, in the older Eocene age,
palms, cocoa-nuts, and acacias, resembling those now met with in
countries more favoured by the sun, grew in our island. The Miocene
flora presents indications of a climate still warm, but less tropical;
and the Pliocene period, which follows, contains remains which announce
an approach to our present climate. In following the vegetable
productions of the Tertiary epoch, the botanist meets with the floras of
Africa, South America, and Australia, and finally settles in the flora
of temperate Europe. Many circumstances demonstrate this decreasing
temperature, until we arrive at what geologists call the _glacial
period_--one of the winters of the ancient world.
But before entering on the evidences which exist of the glacial era we
shall glance at the picture presented by the animals of the period; the
vegetable products we need not dwell on--it is, in fact, that of our own
era, the flora of temperate regions in our own epoch. The same remark
would apply to the animals, but for some signal exceptions. In this
epoch Man appears, and some of the Mammals of the last epoch, but of
larger dimensions, have long disappeared. The more remarkable of these
extinct animals we shall describe, as we have those belonging to
anterior ages. They are not numerous; those of our hemisphere being the
Mammoth, _Elephas primigenius_; the Bear, _Ursus spelæus_; gigantic
Lion, _Felis spelæa_; Hyæna, _Hyæna spelæa_; Ox, _Bison priscus_, _Bos
primigenius_; the gigantic Stag, _Cervus megaceros_; to which we may add
the _Dinornis_ and _Epiornis_, among birds. In America there existed in
the Quaternary epoch some Edentates of colossal dimensions and of very
peculiar structure, these were _Megatherium_, _Megalonyx_, and
_Mylodon_; we shall pass these animals in review, beginning with those
of our own hemisphere.
The Mammoth, the skeleton of which is represented in Fig. 180, surpassed
the largest existing Elephants of the tropics in size, for it was from
sixteen to eighteen feet in height. The teeth, and the size of the
monstrous tusks, much curved, and with a spiral turn outwards, and which
were from ten to fifteen feet in length, serve to distinguish the
Mammoth from the two Elephants living at the present day, the African
and the Indian. The form of its teeth permits of its being distinguished
from its ally, the Mastodon; for while the teeth of the latter have
rough mammillations on their surface, those of the Mammoth, like those
of the living Indian Elephant, have a broad united surface, with regular
furrowed lines of large curvature. The teeth of the Mammoth are four in
number, like the Elephants, two in each jaw when the animal is adult,
its head is elongated, its forehead concave, its jaws curved and
truncated in front. It has been an easy task, as we shall see, to
recognise the general form and structure of the Mammoth, even to its
skin. We know beyond a doubt that it was thickly covered with long
shaggy hair, and that a copious mane floated upon its neck and along its
back; its trunk resembled that of the Indian Elephant; its body was
heavy, with a tail naked to the end, which was covered with thick tufty
hair, and its legs were comparatively shorter than those of the latter
animal, many of the habits of which it nevertheless possessed.
Blumenbach gave it the specific name of _Elephas primigenius_.
[Illustration: Fig. 180.--Skeleton of the Mammoth, Elephas primigenius.]
In all ages, and in almost all countries, chance discoveries have been
made of fossil bones of elephants in the soil. Pliny has transmitted to
us a tradition, recorded by the historian Theophrastus, who wrote 320
years before Jesus Christ, of the existence of bones of fossil ivory in
the soil of Greece, that the bones were sometimes transformed into
stones. “These bones,” the historian gravely tells us, “were both black
and white, and born of the earth.” Some of the elephant’s bones having a
slight resemblance to those of man, they have often been mistaken for
human bones. In the earlier historic times these great bones,
accidentally disinterred, have passed as having belonged to some hero or
demigod; at a later period they were thought to be the bones of giants.
We have already spoken of the mistake made by the Greeks in taking the
patella of a fossil elephant for the knee-bone of Ajax; in the same
manner the bones revealed by an earthquake, and attributed by Pliny to a
giant, belonged, no doubt, to a fossil elephant. To a similar origin we
may assign the pretended body of Orestes, thirteen feet in length, which
was discovered at Tegea by the Spartans; those of Asterius, the son of
Ajax, discovered in the Isle of Ladea, of ten cubits in length (about
eighteen feet), according to Pausanius; finally, such were the great
bones found in the Isle of Rhodes, of which Phlegon of Tralles speaks in
his “Mundus Subterraneus.”
[Illustration: Fig. 181.--Tooth of the Mammoth.]
We might fill volumes with the history of the remains of pretended
giants found in ancient tombs. The books, in fact, which exist, formed a
voluminous literature in the middle ages--entitled _Gigantology_. All
the facts, more or less real, true or imaginative, may be explained by
the accidental discovery of the bones of some of these gigantic animals.
We find in works on Gigantology, the history of a pretended giant,
discovered in the 4th century, at Trapani in Sicily, of which Boccaccio
speaks, and which may be taken for Polyphemus; of another, found in the
16th century, according to Fasellus, near Palermo; others, according to
the same author, at Melilli between Leontium and Syracuse, Calatrasi and
Petralia, at each of which places the bones of supposed giants were
disinterred. P. Kircher speaks of three other giants being found in
Sicily, of which only the teeth remained perfect.
In 1577, a storm having uprooted an oak near the cloisters of Reyden, in
the Canton of Lucerne, in Switzerland, some large bones were exposed to
view. Seven years after, the celebrated physician and Professor at
Basle, Felix Pläten, being at Lucerne, examined these bones, and
declared they could only be those of a giant. The Council of Lucerne
consented to send the bones to Basle for more minute examination, and
Pläten thought himself justified in attributing to the giant a height of
nineteen feet. He designed a human skeleton on this scale, and returned
the bones with the drawing to Lucerne. In 1706 there only remained of
these bones a portion of the scapula and a fragment of the wrist bone;
the anatomist Blumenbach, who saw them at the beginning of the century,
easily recognised in them the bones of an Elephant. Let us not omit to
add, as a complement to this story, that since the sixteenth century,
the inhabitants of Lucerne have adopted the image of this fabulous giant
as the supporter of the city arms.
Spanish history preserves many stories of giants. The supposed tooth of
St. Christopher, shown at Valence, in the church dedicated to the saint,
was certainly the molar tooth of a fossil Elephant; and in 1789, the
canons of St. Vincent carried through the streets in public procession,
to procure rain, the pretended arm of a saint, which was nothing more
than the femur of an Elephant.
In France, in the reign of Charles VII. (1456), some of these bones of
imaginary giants appeared in the bed of the Rhône. A repetition of the
phenomenon occurred near Saint-Peirat, opposite Valence, when the
Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI., then residing at the latter place, caused
the bones to be gathered together and sent to Bourges, where they long
remained objects of public curiosity in the interior of the
Sainte-Chapelle. In 1564 a similar discovery took place in the same
neighbourhood. Two peasants observed on the banks of the Rhône, along a
slope, some great bones sticking out of the ground. They carried them to
the neighbouring village, where they were examined by Cassanion, who
lived at Valence. It was no doubt apropos to this that Cassanion wrote
his treatise “De Gigantibus.” The description given by the author of a
tooth sufficed, according to Cuvier, to prove that it belonged to an
Elephant; it was a foot in length, and weighed eight pounds. It was also
on the banks of the Rhône, but in Dauphiny, as we have seen, that the
skeleton of the famous Teutobocchus, of which we have spoken in a
previous chapter, was found.
In 1663 Otto de Guericke, the illustrious inventor of the air-pump,
witnessed the discovery of the bones of an Elephant, buried in the
shelly limestone, or Muschelkalk. Along with it were found its enormous
tusks, which should have sufficed to establish its zoological origin.
Nevertheless they were taken for horns, and the illustrious Leibnitz
composed, out of the remains, a strange animal, carrying a horn in the
middle of its forehead, and in each jaw a dozen molar teeth a foot long.
Having fabricated this fantastic animal, Leibnitz named it also--he
called it the _fossil unicorn_. In his “Protogæa,” a work remarkable
besides as the first attempt at a theory of the earth, Leibnitz gave the
description and a drawing of this imaginary animal. During more than
thirty years the unicorn of Leibnitz was universally accepted throughout
Germany; and nothing less than the discovery of the entire skeleton of
the Mammoth in the valley of the Unstrut was required to produce a
change of opinion. This skeleton was at once recognised by Tinzel,
librarian to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, as that of an Elephant, and was
established as such; not, however, without a keen controversy with
adversaries of all kinds.
In 1700 a soldier of Würtemberg accidentally observed some bones showing
themselves projecting out of the earth, in an argillaceous soil, near
the city of Canstadt, not far from the banks of the Necker. Having
addressed a report to the reigning Duke, the latter caused the place to
be excavated, which occupied nearly six months. A veritable cemetery of
elephants was discovered, in which were not less than sixty tusks. Those
which were entire were preserved; the fragments were abandoned to the
court physician, and they became a mere vulgar medicine. In the last
century the fossil bones of bears, which were abundant in Germany, were
administered in that country medicinally, as an absorbent, astringent,
and sudorific. It was then called by the German doctors the _Ebur
fossile_, or _Unicornu fossile_, _Licorn fossil_. The magnificent tusks
of the Mammoth found at Canstadt helped to combat fever and colic. What
an intelligent man this court physician of Würtemberg must have been!
Numerous discoveries like those we have quoted distinguished the 18th
century; but the progress of science has now rendered such mistakes as
we have had to relate impossible. These bones were at length universally
recognised as belonging to an Elephant, but erudition now intervened,
and helped to obscure a subject which was otherwise perfectly clear.
Some learned pedant declared that the bones found in Italy and France
were the remains of the Elephants which Hannibal brought from Carthage
with the army in his expedition against the Romans. The part of France
where the most ancient bones of these Elephants were found is in the
environs of the Rhône, and consequently on the route of the Carthaginian
general, and this consideration appeared to these terrible savants to be
a particularly triumphant answer to the naturalist’s reasoning. Again,
at a later period, Domitius Ænobarbus conducted the Carthaginian armies,
which were followed by a number of Elephants, armed for war. Cuvier
scarcely took the trouble to refute this insignificant objection. It is
merely necessary to read, in his learned dissertation, of the number of
elephants which could remain to Hannibal when he had entered Gaul.
But the best reply that can be made to this strange objection raised by
the learned, is to show how extensively these fossil bones of Elephants
are scattered, not in Europe only, but over the world--there are few
regions of the globe in which their remains are not found. In the north
of Europe, in Scandinavia, in Ireland, in Belgium, in Germany, in
Central Europe, in Poland, in Middle Russia, in South Russia, in Greece,
in Italy, in Africa, in Asia, and, as we have seen, in England. In the
New World remains of the Mammoth are also met with. What is most
singular is that these remains exist more especially in great numbers in
the north of Europe, in the frozen regions of Siberia--regions
altogether uninhabitable for the Elephant in our days. “There is not,”
says Pallas, “in all Asiatic Russia, from the Don to the extremity of
the promontory of Tchutchis, a stream or river, especially of those
which flow in the plains, on the banks of which some bones of Elephants
and other animals foreign to the climate have not been found. But in the
more elevated regions, the primitive and schistose chains, they are
wanting, as are marine petrifactions. But in the lower slopes and in the
great muddy and sandy plains, above all, in places which are swept by
rivers and brooks, they are always found, which proves that we should
not the less find them throughout the whole extent of the country if we
had the same means of searching for them.”
Every year in the season when thaw takes place, the vast rivers which
descend to the Frozen Ocean in the north of Siberia sweep down with
their waters numerous portions of the banks, and expose to view bones
buried in the soil and in the excavations left by the rushing waters.
Cuvier gives a long list of places in Russia in which interesting
discoveries have been made of Elephants’ bones; and it is certainly
curious that the more we advance towards the north in Russia the more
numerous and extensive do the bone depositories become. In spite of the
oft-repeated and undoubted testimony of numerous travellers, we can
scarcely credit the statements made respecting some of the islands of
the glacial sea near the poles, situated opposite the mouth of the Lena
and of the Indighirka. Here, for example, is an extract from “Billing’s
Voyage” concerning these isles: “The whole island (which is about
thirty-three leagues in length), except three or four small rocky
mountains, is a mixture of ice and sand; and as the shores fall, from
the heat of the sun’s thawing them, the tusks and bones of the mammont
are found in great abundance. To use Chvoinoff’s own expression, the
island is formed of the bones of this extraordinary animal, mixed with
the horns and heads of the buffalo, or something like it, and some horns
of the rhinoceros.”
New Siberia and the Lächow Islands off the mouth of the river Lena, are,
for the most part, only an agglomeration of sand, ice, and Elephants’
teeth. At every tempest the sea casts ashore new quantities of mammoths’
tusks, and the inhabitants of Siberia carry on a profitable commerce in
this fossil ivory. Every year, during the summer, innumerable
fishermen’s barks direct their course towards this _isle of bones_; and,
during winter, immense caravans take the same route, all the convoys
drawn by dogs, returning charged with the tusks of the Mammoth, each
weighing from 150 to 200 pounds. The fossil ivory thus withdrawn from
the frozen north is imported into China and Europe, where it is employed
for the same purposes as ordinary ivory, which is furnished, as we know,
by the existing Elephant and Hippopotamus of Africa and Asia.
The _Isle of Bones_ has served as a quarry of this valuable material,
for export to China, for 500 years; and it has been exported to Europe
for upwards of 100. But the supply from these strange diggings
apparently remains practically undiminished. What a number of
accumulated generations of these bones and tusks does not this profusion
imply!
It was in Siberia that the fossil Elephant received the name of the
_Mammoth_, and its tusks that of _mammoth horns_. The celebrated Russian
savant, Pallas, who gave the first systematic description of the
Mammoth, asserts that the name is derived from the word _mama_, which in
the Tartar idiom signifies the _earth_. According to others, the name is
derived from _behemoth_, mentioned in the Book of Job; or from the
epithet _mahemoth_, which the Arabs add to the word “elephant,” to
designate one of unusual size. A curious circumstance enough is, that
this same legend of an animal living exclusively under ground, exists
amongst the Chinese. They call it _tien-schu_, and we read, in the
great Chinese work on natural history, which was written in the
sixteenth century: “The animal named _tien-schu_, of which we have
already spoken in the ancient work upon the ceremonial entitled “Lyki”
(a work of the fifth century before Jesus Christ), is called also
_tyn-schu_ or _yn-schu_, that is to say, _the mouse which hides itself_.
It always lives in subterranean caverns; it resembles a mouse, but is of
the size of a buffalo or ox. It has no tail; its colour is dark; it is
very strong, and excavates caverns in places full of rocks, and
forests.” Another writer, quoting the same passage, thus expresses
himself: “The _tyn-schu_ haunts obscure and unfrequented places. It dies
as soon as it is exposed to the rays of the sun or moon; its feet are
short in proportion to its size, which causes it to walk badly. Its tail
is a Chinese ell in length. Its eyes are small, and its neck short. It
is very stupid and sluggish. When the inundations of the river
_Tamschuann-tuy_ took place (in 1571), a great many tyn-schu appeared in
the plain; it fed on the roots of the plant _fu-kia_.”
The existence in Russia of the bones and tusks of the Mammoth is
sufficiently confirmed by the following extract from an old Russian
traveller, Ysbrants Ides, who, in 1692, was sent by Peter the Great as
ambassador to the Emperor of China. In the extract which follows, we
remark the very surprising fact of the discovery of a head and foot of
the Mammoth which had been preserved in ice with all the flesh. “Amongst
the hills which are situate north-east of the river Kata,” says the
traveller, “the Mammuts’ tongues and legs are found, as they are also
particularly on the shores of the river Jenize, Trugan, Mongamsea, Lena,
and near Jakutskoi, even as far as the Frozen Ocean. In the spring, when
the ice of this river breaks, it is driven in such vast quantities and
with such force by the high swollen waters, that it frequently carries
very high banks before it, and breaks off the tops of hills, which,
falling down, discover these animals whole, or their teeth only, almost
frozen to the earth, which thaw by degrees. I had a person with me who
had annually gone out in search of these bones; he told it to me as a
real truth, that he and his companions found the head of one of these
animals, which was discovered by the fall of such a frozen piece of
earth. As soon as he opened it, he found the greatest part of the flesh
rotten, but it was not without difficulty that they broke out his teeth,
which were placed in the fore-part of his mouth, as those of the
Elephants are; they also took some bones out of his head, and afterwards
came to his fore-foot, which they cut off, and carried part of it to the
city of Trugan, the circumference of it being as large as that of the
waist of an ordinary man. The bones of the head appeared somewhat red,
as though they were tinctured with blood.
“Concerning this animal there are very different reports. The heathens
of Jakuti, Tungusi, and Ostiacki, say that they continually, or at
least, by reason of the very hard frosts, mostly live under ground,
where they go backwards and forwards; to confirm which they tell us,
that they have often seen the earth heaved up when one of these beasts
was upon the march, and after he was passed, the place sink in, and
thereby make a deep pit. They further believe, that if this animal comes
so near to the surface of the frozen earth as to smell the air, he
immediately dies, which they say is the reason that several of them are
found dead on the high banks of the river, where they unawares came out
of the ground.
“This is the opinion of the Infidels concerning these beasts, which are
never seen.
“But the old Siberian Russians affirm, that the Mammuth is very like the
Elephant, with this difference only, that the teeth of the former are
firmer, and not so straight as those of the latter. They also are of
opinion that there were Elephants in this country before the Deluge,
when this climate was warmer, and that their drowned bodies, floating on
the surface of the water of that flood, were at last washed and forced
into subterranean cavities; but that after this universal deluge, the
air, which before was warm, was changed to cold, and that these bones
have lain frozen in the earth ever since, and so are preserved from
putrefaction till they thaw, and come to light, which is no very
unreasonable conjecture, though it is not absolutely necessary that this
climate should have been warmer before the Flood, since the carcases of
the drowned elephants were very likely to float from other places
several hundred miles distant to this country in the great deluge which
covered the surface of the whole earth. Some of these teeth, which
doubtless have lain the whole summer on the shore, are entirely black
and broken, and can never be restored to their former condition. But
those which are found in good case, are as good as ivory, and are
accordingly transported to all parts of Muscovy, where they are used to
make combs, and all other such-like things, instead of ivory.
“The above-mentioned person also told me that he once found two teeth in
one head that weighed above twelve Russian pounds, which amount to four
hundred German pounds; so that these animals must of necessity be very
large, though a great many lesser teeth are found. By all that I could
gather from the heathens, no person ever saw one of these beasts alive,
or can give any account of its shape; so that all we heard said on this
subject arises from bare conjecture only.”
It is possible this recital may seem suspicious to some readers. We have
ourselves felt some difficulty in believing that this head and foot were
taken from the ice, with the flesh and skin, when we consider that the
animal to which they belonged has been extinct probably more than ten
thousand years. But the assertion of Ysbrants Ides is confirmed by
respectable testimony of more recent date. In 1800, a Russian
naturalist, Gabriel Sarytschew, travelled in northern Siberia. Having
arrived in the neighbourhood of the Frozen Ocean, he found upon the
banks of the Alasœia, which discharges itself into this sea, the entire
body of a Mammoth enveloped in a mass of ice. The body was in a complete
state of preservation, for the permanent contact of the ice had kept out
the air and prevented decomposition. It is well known that at zero and
below it, animal substances will not putrefy, so that in our households
we can preserve all kinds of animal food as long as we can surround them
with ice; and this is precisely what happened to the Mammoth found by
Gabriel Sarytschew in the ice of the Alasœia. The rolling waters had
disengaged the mass of ice which had imprisoned the monstrous pachyderm
for thousands of years. The body, in a complete state of preservation
and covered with its flesh as well as its entire hide, to which long
hairs adhered in certain places, found itself, again, nearly erect on
its four feet.
The Russian naturalist Adams, in 1806, made a discovery quite as
extraordinary as the preceding. We borrow his account from a paper by
Dr. Tilesius in the “Memoirs of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St.
Petersburg” (vol. v.). In 1799, a Tungusian chief, Ossip Schumachoff,
while seeking for mammoth-horns on the banks of the lake Oncoul,
perceived among the blocks of ice a shapeless mass, not at all
resembling the large pieces of floating wood which are commonly found
there. The following year he noticed that this mass was more disengaged
from the blocks of ice, and had two projecting parts, but he was still
unable to make out what it could be. Towards the end of the following
summer one entire side of the animal and one of his tusks were quite
free from the ice. But the succeeding summer of 1802, which was less
warm and more windy than common, caused the Mammoth to remain buried in
the ice, which had scarcely melted at all. At length, towards the end of
the fifth year (1803), the ice between the earth and the Mammoth having
melted faster than the rest, the plane of its support became inclined;
and this enormous mass fell by its own weight on a bank of sand. In the
month of March, 1804, Schumachoff cut off the horns (the tusks), which
he exchanged with the merchant Bultenof for goods of the value of fifty
roubles (not quite eight pounds sterling). It was not till two years
after this that Mr. Adams, of the St. Petersburg Academy, who was
travelling with Count Golovkin, sent by the Czar of Russia on an embassy
to China, having been told at Jakutsk of the discovery of an animal of
extraordinary magnitude on the shores of the Frozen Ocean, near the
mouth of the river Lena, betook himself to the place. He found the
Mammoth still in the same place, but altogether mutilated. The
Jakoutskis of the neighbourhood had cut off the flesh, with which they
fed their dogs; wild beasts, such as white bears, wolves, wolverines,
and foxes, had also fed upon it, and traces of their footsteps were seen
around. The skeleton, almost entirely cleared of its flesh, remained
whole, with the exception of one fore-leg. The spine of the back, one
scapula, the pelvis, and the other three limbs were still held together
by the ligaments and by parts of the skin; the other scapula was found
not far off. The head was covered with a dry skin; one of the ears was
furnished with a tuft of hairs; the balls of the eyes were still
distinguishable; the brain still occupied the cranium, but seemed dried
up; the point of the lower lip had been gnawed and the upper lip had
been destroyed so as to expose the teeth; the neck was furnished with a
long flowing mane; the skin, of a dark-grey colour, covered with black
hairs and a reddish wool, was so heavy that ten persons found great
difficulty in transporting it to the shore. There was collected,
according to Mr. Adams, more than thirty-six pounds’ weight of hair and
wool which the white bears had trod into the ground, while devouring the
flesh. This Mammoth was a male so fat and well fed, according to the
assertion of the Tungusian chief, that its belly hung down below the
joints of its knees. Its tusks were nine feet six inches in length,
measured along the curve, and its head without the tusks weighed 414
pounds avoirdupois.
Mr. Adams took every care to collect all that remained of this unique
specimen of an ancient creation, and forwarded the parts to St.
Petersburg, a distance of 11,000 versts (7,330 miles). He succeeded in
re-purchasing what he believed to be the tusks at Jakutsk, and the
Emperor of Russia, who became the owner of this precious relic, paid him
8,000 roubles. The skeleton is deposited in the Museum of the Academy of
St. Petersburg, and the skin still remains attached to the head and the
feet. “We have yet to find,” says Cuvier, “any individual equal to
it.”
[Illustration: XXVI.--Skeleton of the Mammoth in the St. Petersburg
Museum.]
Beside the skeleton of this famous Mammoth there is placed that of an
Indian Elephant, and another Elephant with skin and hair, in order that
the visitor may have a proper appreciation of the vast proportions of
the Mammoth, as compared with them. PLATE XXVI., on the opposite page,
represents the saloon of the Museum of St. Petersburg, which contains
these three interesting remains.
[Illustration: Fig. 182.--Mammoth restored.]
In 1860 a great number of bones of the Mammoth, with remains of Hyæna,
Horse, Reindeer, Rhinoceros-megarhinus, and Bison, were found in Belgium
in digging a canal at Lierre, in the province of Antwerp. An entire
skeleton of a young Mammoth, eleven feet six inches high (to the
shoulder), has been reconstructed from these remains by M. Dupont, and
is now placed in the Royal Museum of Natural History in Brussels.[98]
[98] H. Woodward, _Geological Magazine_, vol. viii., p. 193.
We cannot doubt, after such testimony, of the existence in the frozen
north, of the almost entire remains of the Mammoth. The animals seem to
have perished suddenly; enveloped in ice at the moment of their death,
their bodies have been preserved from decomposition by the continued
action of the cold. If we suppose that one of those animals had sunk
into a marsh which froze soon afterwards, or had fallen accidentally
into the crevasse of some glacier, it would be easy for us to understand
how its body, buried immediately under eternal ice, had remained there
for thousands of years without undergoing decomposition.
In Cuvier’s great work on _fossil bones_, he gives a long and minute
enumeration of the various regions of Germany, France, Italy, and other
countries, which have furnished in our days bones or tusks of the
Mammoth. We venture to quote two of these descriptions:--“In October,
1816,” he says, “there was discovered at Seilberg, near Canstadt, in
Würtemberg, near which some remarkable discoveries were made in 1700, a
very remarkable deposit, which the king, Frederick I., caused to be
excavated, and its contents collected with the greatest care. We are
even assured that the visit which the prince, in his ardour for all that
was great, paid to this spot, aggravated the malady of which he died a
few days after. An officer, Herr Natter, commenced some excavations, and
in four-and-twenty hours discovered twenty-one teeth or fragments of
teeth of elephant, mixed with a great number of bones. The king having
ordered him to continue the excavations, on the second day they came
upon a group of thirteen tusks heaped close upon each other, and along
with them some molar teeth, lying as if they had been packed
artificially. It was on this discovery that the king caused himself to
be transported thither, and ordered all the surrounding soil to be dug
up, and every object to be carefully preserved in its original position.
The largest of the tusks, though it had lost its points and its roots,
was still eight feet long and one foot in diameter. Many isolated tusks
were also found, with a quantity of molar teeth, from two inches to a
foot in length, some still adhering to the jaws. All these fragments
were better preserved than those of 1700, which was attributed to the
depth of the bed, and, perhaps, to the nature of the soil. The tusks
were generally much curved. In the same deposit some bones of Horses and
Stags were found, together with a quantity of teeth of the Rhinoceros,
and others which were thought to belong to a Bear, and one specimen
which was attributed to the Tapir. The place where this discovery was
made is named Seilberg; it is about 600 paces from the city of Canstadt,
but on the opposite side of the Necker.
“All the great river basins of Germany have, like those of the Necker,
yielded fossil bones of the Elephant; those especially abutting on the
Rhine are too numerous to be mentioned, nor is Canstadt the only place
in the valley of the Necker where they are found.”
But of all parts of Europe, that in which they are found in greatest
numbers is the valley of the Upper Arno. We find there a perfect
cemetery of Elephants. These bones were at one time so common in this
valley, that the peasantry employed them, indiscriminately with stones,
in constructing walls and houses. Since they have learned their value,
however, they reserve them for sale to travellers.
The bones and tusks of the Mammoth are met with in America as well as in
the Old World, scattered through Canada, Oregon, and the Northern States
as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. Cuvier enumerates several places on
that continent where their remains are met with, mingled with those of
the Mastodon. The Russian Lieutenant Kotzebue found them on the north
coast of America, in the cliffs of frozen mud in Eschsholtz Bay, within
Behring’s Strait, and in other distant parts of the shores of the Arctic
Seas, where they were so common that the sailors burnt many pieces in
their fires.
It is very strange that the East Indies, that is, one of the only two
regions which is now the home of the Elephant, should be almost the only
country in which the fossil bones of these animals have not been
discovered. In short, from the preceding enumeration, it appears that,
during the geological period whose history we are recording the gigantic
Mammoth inhabited most regions of the globe. Now-a-days, the only
climates which are suited for the existing race of Elephants are those
of Africa and India, that is to say, tropical countries; from which we
must draw the conclusions to which so many other inferences lead, that,
at the epoch in which these animals lived, the temperature of the earth
was much higher than in our days; or, more probably, the extinct race of
Elephants must have been adapted for living in a colder climate than
that which they now require.
Among the antediluvian Carnivora, one of the most formidable seems to
have been the _Ursus spelæus_, or Cave-bear (Fig. 183). This species
must have been a fifth, if not a fourth, larger than the Brown Bear of
our days. It was also more squat: some of the skeletons we possess are
from nine to ten feet long, and only about six feet high. The _U.
spelæus_ abounded in England, France, Belgium, and Germany; and so
extensively in the latter country, that the teeth of the antediluvian
Bear, as we have already stated, formed for a long time part of its
materia medica, under the name of _fossil licorn_. Fig. 183 represents
the skull of the Cave-bear.
At the same time with the _Ursus spelæus_ another Carnivore, the _Felis
spelæus_, or Cave-lion, lived in Europe. This animal is specifically
identical with the living Lion of Asia and Africa: but since in these
early times he had not to contend with the hunter for food, he was, on
the whole, considerably larger than any Lion now existing on the earth.
[Illustration: Fig. 183.--Head of Ursus spelæus.]
The Hyænas of our age consist of two species, the striped and the
spotted Hyænas. The last presents considerable conformity in its
structure with that of the Post-pliocene period, which Cuvier designates
under the name of the fossil Spotted Hyæna. It seems to have been only a
little larger than the existing species. Fig. 184 represents the head of
the _Hyæna spelæa_, whose remains, with those of others, were found in
the caves of Kirkdale and Kent’s Hole; the remains of about 300 being
found in the former. Dr. Buckland satisfied himself, from the quantity
of their dung, that the Hyænas had lived there. In the cave were found
remains of the ox, young elephant, rhinoceros, horse, bear, wolf, hare,
water-rat, and several birds. All the bones present an appearance of
having been broken and gnawed by the teeth of the Hyænas, and they occur
confusedly mixed in loam or mud, or dispersed through the crust of
stalagmite which covered the contents of the cave.
The Horse dates from the Quaternary epoch, if not from the last period
of the Tertiary epoch. Its remains are found in the same rocks with
those of the Mammoth and the Rhinoceros. It is distinguished from our
existing Horse only by its size, which was smaller--its remains abound
in the Post-pliocene rocks, not only in Europe, but in America; so that
an aboriginal Horse existed in the New World long before it was carried
thither by the Spaniards, although we know that it was unknown at the
date of their arrival. “Certainly it is a marvellous fact in the history
of the Mammalia, that in South America, a native horse should have lived
and disappeared, to be succeeded in after ages by the countless herds
descended from the few introduced with the Spanish colonists!”[99]
[99] “Darwin’s Journal,” p. 130.
[Illustration: Fig. 184.--Head of Hyæna spelæa.]
The Oxen of the period, if not identical with, were at least very near
to our living species. There were three species: the _Bison priscus_,
_B. primigenius_, and _B. Pallasii_; the first with slender legs, with
convex frontal, broader than it was high, and differing but slightly
from the _Aurochs_, except in being taller and by having larger horns.
The remains of _Bison priscus_ are found in England, France, Italy,
Germany, Russia, and America. _Bison primigenius_ was, according to
Cuvier, the source of our domestic cattle. The _Bos Pallasii_ is found
in America and in Siberia, and resembles in many respects the Musk-ox of
Canada.
Where these great Mammals are found we generally discover the fossil
remains of several species of Deer. The palæontological question as
regards these animals is very obscure, and it is often difficult to
determine whether the remains belong to an extinct or an existing
species. This doubt does not extend, however, to the gigantic
forest-stag, _Cervus megaceros_, one of the most magnificent of the
antediluvian animals, whose remains are still frequently found in
Ireland in the neighbourhood of Dublin; more rarely in France, Germany,
Poland, and Italy. Intermediate between the Fallow-deer and the Elk, the
_Cervus megaceros_ partakes of the Elk in its general proportions and in
the form of its cranium, but it approaches the Fallow-deer in its size
and in the disposition of its horns. These magnificent appendages,
however, while they decorated the head of the animal and gave a most
imposing appearance to it, must have sadly impeded its progress through
the thick and tangled forests of the ancient world. The length of these
horns was between nine and ten feet; and they were so divergent that,
measured from one extremity to the other, they occupied a space of
between three and four yards.
The skeleton of the _Cervus megaceros_ is found in the deposits of
calcareous tufa, which underlie the immense peat moss of Ireland;
sometimes in the turf itself, as near the Curragh in Kildare; in which
position they sometimes occur in little mounds piled up in a small
space, and nearly always in the same attitude, the head aloft, the neck
stretched out, the horns reversed and thrown downwards towards the back,
as if the animal, suddenly immersed into marshy ground, had been under
the necessity of throwing up its head in search of respirable air. In
the Geological Cabinet of the Sorbonne, at Paris, there is a magnificent
skeleton of _Cervus megaceros_; another belongs to the College of
Surgeons in London; and there is a third at Vienna.
* * * * *
The most remarkable creatures of the period, however, were the great
Edentates--the Glyptodon, the gigantic Megatherium, the Mylodon and the
Megalonyx. The order of Edentates is more particularly characterised by
the absence of teeth in the fore part of the mouth. The masticating
apparatus of the Edentates consists only of molars, the incisors and
canine teeth being, with a few exceptions, absent altogether, as the
animals composing this order feed chiefly on insects or the tender
leaves of plants. The Armadillo, Anteater and Pangolin, are the living
examples of the order. We may add, as still further characteristics,
largely developed claws at the extremities of the toes. The order seems
thus to establish itself as a zoological link in the chain between the
hoofed Mammals and the ungulated animals, or those armed with claws.
All these animals are peculiar to the continent of America.
The _Glyptodon_, which appears during the Quaternary period, belonged to
the family of Armadilloes, and their most remarkable feature was the
presence of a hard, scaly shell, or coat of mail six feet in length, and
composed of numerous segments, which covered the entire upper service of
the animal from the head to the tail. It was, in short, a mammiferous
animal, which appears to have been enclosed in a shell like that of a
Turtle; it resembled in many respects the _Dasypus_ or Anteater, and had
sixteen teeth in each jaw. These teeth were channelled laterally with
two broad and deep grooves, which divided the surface of the molars into
three parts, whence it was named the Glyptodon. The hind feet were broad
and massive, and evidently designed to support a vast incumbent mass; it
presented phalanges armed with short thick and depressed nails or claws.
The animal was, as we have said, enveloped in, and protected by, a
cuirass, or solid carapace, composed of plates which, seen from beneath,
appeared to be hexagonal and united by denticulated sutures: above they
represented double rosettes. The habitat of _Glyptodon clavipes_ was the
pampas of Buenos Ayres, and the banks of an affluent of the Rio Santo,
near Monte Video; specimens have been found not less than nine feet in
length.
The tesselated carapace of the Glyptodon was long thought to belong to
the Megatherium; but Professor Owen shows, from the anatomical structure
of the two animals, that the cuirass belonged to one of them only,
namely, the Glyptodon.
The _Schistopleuron_ does not differ essentially from the Glyptodon, but
is supposed to have been a different species of the same genus; the
chief difference between the two animals being in the structure of the
tail, which is massive in the first and in the other composed of half a
score of rings. In other respects the organisation and habits are
similar, both being herbivorous, and feeding on roots and vegetables.
Fig. 185 represents the _Schistopleuron typus_ restored, and as it
appeared when alive.
Some of the fossil Tortoises discovered in the sub-Himalayan beds
possessed a carapace twelve feet long by six feet in breadth, which must
have corresponded to an animal from eighteen to twenty feet in length;
and the bones of the legs were as massive as those of the Rhinoceros.
The _Megatherium_, or Animal of Paraguay, as it was called, is, at first
view, the oddest and most remarkable animal we have yet had under
consideration, where all have been, according to our notions, strange,
extraordinary, and formidable. The animal creation still goes on as if--
“Nature made them and then broke the die.”
[Illustration: Fig. 185.--Schistopleuron typus. One-twentieth natural
size.]
[Illustration: XXVII.--Skeleton of the Megatherium (Clift).]
If we cast a glance at the skeleton figured on the opposite page (PLATE
XXVII.), which was found in Paraguay, at Buenos Ayres, in 1788, and
which is now placed, in a perfect state of preservation, in the Museum
of Natural History in Madrid, it is impossible to avoid being struck
with its unusually heavy form, at once awkward as a whole, and ponderous
in most of its parts. It is allied to the existing genus of Sloths,
which Buffon tells us is “of all the animal creation that which has
received the most vicious organisation--a being to which Nature has
forbidden all enjoyment; which has only been created for hardships and
misery.” This notion of the romantic Buffon is, however, altogether
incorrect. An attentive examination of the _Animal of_ _Paraguay_
shows that its organisation cannot be considered either odd or awkward
when viewed in connection with its mode of life and individual habits.
The special organisation which renders the movements of the Sloths so
sluggish, and apparently so painful on level ground, gives them, on the
other hand, marvellous assistance when they live in trees, the leaves of
which constitute their exclusive food. In the same manner, if we
consider that the _Megatherium_ was created to burrow in the earth and
feed upon the roots of trees and shrubs, every organ of its heavy frame
would appear to be perfectly appropriate to its kind of life, and well
adapted to the special purpose which was assigned to it by the Creator.
We ought to place the Megatherium between the Sloths and the Anteaters.
Like the first, it usually fed on the branches and leaves of trees; like
the latter, it burrowed deep in the soil, finding there both food and
shelter. It was as large as an Elephant or Rhinoceros of the largest
species. Its body measured twelve or thirteen feet in length, and it was
between five and six feet high. The engraving on page 403 (PLATE XXVII.)
will convey, more accurately than any mere verbal description, an idea
of the form and proportions of the animal.
The English reader is chiefly indebted to the zeal and energy of Sir
Woodbine Parish for the materials from which our naturalists have been
enabled to re-construct the history of the Megatherium. The remains
collected by him were found in the river Salado, which runs through the
flat alluvial plains called Pampas to the south of the city of Buenos
Ayres. A succession of three unusually dry seasons had lowered the
waters to such a degree as to expose part of the pelvis to view, as the
skeleton stood upright in the mud forming the bed of the river. Further
inquiries led to the discovery of the remains of two other skeletons
near the place where the first had been found; and with them an immense
shell or carapace was met with, most of the bones associated with which
crumbled to pieces on exposure to the air. The osseous structure of this
enormous animal, as furnished by Mr. Clift, an eminent anatomist of the
day, and under whose superintendence the skeleton was drawn, must have
exceeded fourteen feet in length, and upwards of eight feet in height.
The deeply shaded parts of the figure show the portions which are
deficient in the Madrid skeleton.
Cuvier pointed out that the skull very much resembled that of the
Sloths, but that the rest of the skeleton bore relationship, partly to
the Sloths, and partly to the Anteaters.
The large bones, which descend from the zygomatic arch along the
cheek-bones, would furnish a powerful means of attaching the motor
muscles of the jaws. The anterior part of the muzzle is fully developed,
and riddled with holes for the passage of the nerves and vessels which
must have been there, not for a trunk, which would have been useless to
an animal furnished with a very long neck, but for a snout analogous to
that of the Tapir.
[Illustration: Fig. 186.--Skeleton of Megatherium foreshortened.]
The jaw and dental apparatus cannot be exactly stated, because the
number of teeth in the lower jaw is not known. The upper jaw, Professor
Owen has shown, contained five molars on each side; and from comparison
and analogy with the _Scelidotherium_ it may be conjectured that the
_Megatherium_ had four on each side of the lower jaw. Being without
incisors or canines, the structure of its eighteen molars proves that it
was not carnivorous: they each resemble the composite molars of the
Elephant.
[Illustration: Fig. 187.--Bones of the pelvis of the Megatherium.]
The vertebræ of the neck (as exhibited in the foreshortened figure (Fig.
186), taken from the work of Pander and D’Alton, and showing nearly a
front view of the head), as well as the anterior and posterior
extremities of the Madrid skeleton, although powerful, are not to be
compared in dimensions to those of the other extremity of the body; for
the head seems to have been relatively light and defenceless. The lumbar
vertebræ increase in a degree corresponding to the enormous enlargement
of the pelvis and the posterior members. The vertebræ of the tail are
enormous, as is seen in Fig. 187, which represents the bones of the
pelvis and hind foot, discovered by Sir Woodbine Parish, and now in the
Museum of the College of Surgeons. If we add to these osseous organs the
muscles, tendons, and integuments which covered them, we must admit that
the tail of the _Megatherium_ could not be less than two feet in
diameter. It is probable that, like the Armadillo, it employed the tail
to assist in supporting the enormous weight of its body; it would also
be a formidable defensive organ when employed, as is the case with the
Pangolins and Crocodiles. The fore-feet would be about three feet long
and one foot broad. They would form a powerful implement for excavating
the earth, to the greatest depths at which the roots of vegetables
penetrate. The fore-feet rested on the ground to their full length. Thus
solidly supported by the two hind-feet and the tail, and in advance by
one of the fore-feet, the animal could employ the fore-foot left at
liberty in clearing away the earth, in digging up the roots of trees, or
in tearing down the branches; the toes of the fore-feet were, for this
purpose, furnished with large and powerful claws, which lie at an
oblique angle relatively to the ground, much like the burrowing talons
of the mole.
The solidity and size of the pelvis must have been enormous; its immense
iliac bones are nearly at right angles with the vertebral column; their
external edges are distant more than a yard and a half from each other
when the animal is standing. The femur is three times the thickness of
the thigh-bone of the Elephant, and the many peculiarities of structure
in this bone appear to have been intended to give solidity to the whole
frame, by means of its short and massive proportions. The two bones of
the leg are, like the femur, short, thick, and solid; presenting
proportions which we only meet with in the Armadilloes and Anteaters;
burrowing animals with which, as we have said, its two extremities seem
to connect it.
The anatomical organisation of these members denotes heavy, slow, and
powerful locomotion, but solid and admirable combinations for supporting
the weight of an enormous sedentary creature; a sort of excavating
machine, slow of motion but of incalculable power for its own purposes.
In short, the _Megatherium_ exceeded in dimensions all existing
Edentates. It had the head and shoulders of the Sloth, the feet and legs
combined the characteristics of the Anteaters and Sloths, of enormous
size, since it was at least twelve feet long when full grown, its feet
armed with gigantic claws, and its tail at once a means of supporting
its huge body and an instrument of defence. An animal built with such
massive proportions could evidently neither creep nor run; its walk
would be excessively slow. But what necessity was there for rapid
movement in a being only occupied in burrowing under the earth, seeking
for roots, and which would consequently rarely change its place? What
need had it of agility to fly from its enemies, when it could overthrow
the Crocodile with a sweep of its tail? Secure from the attacks of other
animals, this robust herbivorous creature, of which Figure 188 is a
restoration, must have lived peacefully and respected in the solitary
pampas of America.
[Illustration: Fig. 188.--Megatherium restored.]
The immediate cause of the extinction of the Megatherium is, probably,
to be found in causes which are still in operation in South America. The
period between the years 1827 and 1830 is called the “gran seco,” or
the great drought, in South America; and according to Darwin, the loss
of cattle in the province of Buenos Ayres alone was calculated at
1,000,000 head. One proprietor at San Pedro, in the middle of the finest
pasture-country, had lost 20,000 cattle previously to those years. “I
was informed by an eyewitness,” he adds, “that the cattle, in herds of
thousands, rushed into the Parana, and, being exhausted by hunger, they
were unable to crawl up the muddy banks, and thus were drowned. The arm
of the river which runs by San Pedro was so full of putrid carcases,
that the master of a vessel told me that the smell rendered it quite
impassable. All the small rivers became highly saline, and this caused
the death of vast numbers in particular spots; for when an animal drinks
of such water it does not recover. Azara describes the fury of the wild
horses on a similar occasion: rushing into the marshes, those which
arrived first being overwhelmed and crushed by those which
followed.”[100] The upright position in which the various specimens of
Megatheria were found indicates some such cause of death; as if the
ponderous animal, approaching the banks of the river, when shrunk within
its banks, had been bogged in soft mud, sufficiently adhesive to hold it
there till it perished.
[100] “Journal of Researches,” &c., 2nd ed., p. 133. Charles Darwin.
Like the Megatherium, the _Mylodon_ closely resembled the Sloth, and it
belonged exclusively to the New World. Smaller than the Megatherium, it
differed from it chiefly in the form of the teeth. These organs
presented only molars with smooth surfaces, indicating that the animal
fed on vegetables, probably the leaves and tender buds of trees. As the
Mylodon presents at once hoofs and claws on each foot, it has been
thought that it formed the link between the hoofed, or ungulated animals
and the Edentates. Three species are known, which lived in the pampas of
Buenos Ayres.
In consequence of some hints given by the illustrious Washington, Mr.
Jefferson, one of his successors as President of the United States,
discovered, in a cavern of Western Virginia, the bones of a species of
gigantic Sloth, which he pronounced to be the remains of some
carnivorous animal. They consisted of a femur, a humerus, an ulna, and
three claws, with half a dozen other bones of the foot. These bones Mr.
Jefferson believed to be analogous to those of the lion. Cuvier saw at
once the true analogies of the animal. The bones were the remains of a
species of gigantic Sloth; the complete skeleton of which was
subsequently discovered in the Mississippi, in such a perfect state of
preservation that the cartilages, still adhering to the bones, were not
decomposed. Jefferson called this species the _Megalonyx_. It resembled
in many respects the Sloth. Its size was that of the largest ox; the
muzzle was pointed; the jaws were armed with cylindrical teeth; the
anterior limbs much longer than the posterior; the articulation of the
foot oblique to the leg; two great toes, short, and armed with long and
very powerful claws; the index finger more slender, and armed also with
a less powerful claw; the tail strong and solid: such were the salient
points of the organisation of the _Megalonyx_, whose form was a little
slighter than that of the _Megatherium_.
[Illustration: Fig. 189.--Mylodon robustus.]
The country in which the Megatherium has been found is described by Mr.
Darwin as belonging to the great Pampean formation, which consists
partly of a reddish clay and in part of a highly calcareous marly rock.
Near the coast there are some plains formed from the wreck of the upper
plain, and from mud, gravel, and sand thrown up by the sea during the
slow elevation of the land, as shown by the raised beds of recent
shells. At Punta Alta there is a highly-interesting section of one of
the later-formed little plains, in which many remains of these gigantic
land-animals have been found. These were, says Mr. Darwin:--“First,
parts of three heads and other bones of the Megatherium, the huge
dimensions of which are expressed by its name. Secondly, the
_Megalonyx_, a great allied animal. Thirdly, the _Scelidotherium_, also
an allied animal, of which I obtained a nearly perfect skeleton: it must
have been as large as a rhinoceros; in the structure of its head it
comes, according to Professor Owen, nearest to the Cape Anteater, but in
some other respects it approaches to the Armadilloes. Fourthly, the
_Mylodon Darwinii_, a closely related genus, of little inferior size.
Fifthly, another gigantic edental quadruped. Sixthly, a large animal
with an osseous coat, in compartments, very like that of an armadillo.
Seventhly, an extinct kind of horse. Eighthly, a tooth of a
pachydermatous animal, probably the same with the Macrauchenia, a huge
beast with a long neck like a camel. Lastly, the Toxodon, perhaps one of
the strangest animals ever discovered; in size it equalled an Elephant
or Megatherium, but the structure of its teeth, as Professor Owen
states, proves indisputably that it was intimately related to the
Gnawers, the order which, at the present day, includes most of the
smallest quadrupeds; in many details it is allied to the pachydermata;
judging from the position of its eyes, ears, and nostrils, it was
probably aquatic, like the Dugong and Manatee, to which it is allied.
How wonderfully are the different orders--at the present time so well
separated--blended together in different points in the structure of the
Toxodon!”[101]
[101] “Journal of Researches,” &c., by Charles Darwin, p. 81.
[Illustration: Fig. 190.--Lower jaw of the Mylodon.]
The remains on which our knowledge of the _Scelidotherium_ is founded
include the cranium, which is nearly entire, with the teeth and part of
the os hyoides, seven cervical, eight dorsal, and five sacral vertebræ,
both the scapulæ, and some other bones. The remains of the cranium
indicate that its general form was an elongated slender compressed cone,
beginning behind by a flattened vertical base, expanding slightly to the
cheek-bone, and thence contracting to the anterior extremity. All these
parts were discovered in their natural relative positions, indicating,
as Mr. Darwin observes, that the gravelly formation in which they were
discovered had not been disturbed since its deposition.
[Illustration: Fig. 191.--Skull of Scelidotherium.]
The lower jaw-bone of _Mylodon_, which Mr. Darwin discovered at the base
of the cliff called Punta Alta, in Northern Patagonia, had the teeth
entire on both sides; they are implanted in deep sockets, and only about
one-sixth of the last molar projects above the alveolus, but the
proportion of the exposed part increases gradually in the inner teeth
(Fig. 191).
[Illustration: Fig. 192.--Dinornis, and Bos.]
“The habits of life of these Megatheroid animals were a complete puzzle
to naturalists, until Professor Owen solved the problem with remarkable
ingenuity. The teeth indicate, by their simple structure, that these
Megatheroid animals lived on vegetable food, and probably on the leaves
and small twigs of trees; their ponderous forms and great strong curved
claws seem so little adapted for locomotion, that some eminent
naturalists have actually believed that, like the Sloths, to which they
are intimately related, they subsisted by climbing back downwards, on
trees, and feeding on the leaves. It was a bold, not to say preposterous
idea to conceive even antediluvian trees with branches strong enough to
bear animals as large as elephants. Professor Owen, with far more
probability, believes that, instead of climbing on the trees, they
pulled the branches down to them, and tore up the smaller ones by the
roots, and so fed on the leaves. The colossal breadth and weight of
their hinder quarters, which can hardly be imagined without having been
seen, become, on this view, of obvious service instead of being an
encumbrance; their apparent clumsiness disappears. With their great
tails and their huge heels firmly fixed like a tripod in the ground,
they could freely exert the full force of their most powerful arms and
great claws. The _Mylodon_, moreover, was furnished with a long
extensile tongue, like that of the giraffe, which by one of those
beautiful provisions of Nature, thus reaches, with the aid of its long
neck, its leafy food.”[102]
[102] “Journal of Researches,” &c., by Charles Darwin, 2nd ed., p. 81.
[Illustration: XXVIII.--Ideal European Landscape in the Quaternary
Epoch.]
* * * * *
Two gigantic birds seem to have lived in New Zealand during the
Quaternary epoch. The _Dinornis_, which, if we may judge from the
_tibia_, which is upwards of three feet long, and from its eggs, which
are much larger than those of the Ostrich, must have been of most
extraordinary size for a bird. In Fig. 192 an attempt is made to restore
this fearfully great bird, the _Dinornis_. As to the _Epiornis_, its
eggs only have been found.
On the opposite page (PLATE XXVIII.) an attempt is made to represent the
appearance of Europe during the epoch we have under consideration. The
Bear is seated at the mouth of its den--the cave (thus reminding us of
the origin of its name of _Ursus spelæus_), where it gnaws the bones of
the Elephant. Above the cavern the _Hyæna spelæa_ looks out, with savage
eye, for the moment when it will be prudent to dispute possession of
these remains with its formidable rival. The great Wood-stag, with other
great animals of the epoch, occupies the farthest shore of a small lake,
where some small hills rise out of a valley crowned with the trees and
shrubs of the period. Mountains, recently upheaved, rise on the distant
horizon, covered with a mantle of frozen snow, reminding us that the
glacial period is approaching, and has already begun to manifest itself.
All these fossil bones, belonging to the great Mammalia which we have
been describing, are found in the Quaternary formation; but the most
abundant of all are those of the Elephant and the Horse. The extreme
profusion of the bones of the Mammoth, crowded into the more recently
formed deposits of the globe, is only surpassed by the prodigious
quantity of the bones of the Horse which are buried in the same beds.
The singular abundance of the remains of these two animals proves that,
during the Quaternary epoch, the earth gave nourishment to immense herds
of the Horse and the Elephant. It is probable that from one pole to the
other, from the equator to the two extremities of the axis of the globe,
the earth must have formed a vast and boundless prairie, while an
immense carpet of verdure covered its whole surface; and such abundant
pastures would be absolutely necessary to sustain these prodigious
numbers of herbivorous animals of great size.
The mind can scarcely realise the immense and verdant plains of this
earlier world, animated by the presence of an infinity of such
inhabitants. In its burning temperature, Pachyderms of monstrous forms,
but of peaceful habits, traversed the tall vegetation, composed of
grasses of all sorts. Deer of gigantic size, their heads ornamented with
enormous horns, escorted the heavy herds of the Mammoth; while the
Horse, small in size and compact of form, galloped and frisked round
these magnificent horizons of verdure which no human eye had yet
contemplated.
Nevertheless, all was not quiet and tranquil in the landscapes of the
ancient world. Voracious and formidable carnivorous animals waged a
bloody war on the inoffensive herds. The Tiger, the Lion, and the
ferocious Hyæna; the Bear, and the Jackal, there selected their prey. On
the opposite page an endeavour is made to represent the great animals
among the Edentates which inhabited the American plains during the
Quaternary epoch (PLATE XXIX). We observe there the Glyptodon, the
Megatherium, the Mylodon, and, along with them, the Mastodon. A small
Ape (the Orthopithecus), which first appeared in the Miocene period,
occupies the branch of a tree in the landscape. The vegetation is that
of tropical America at the present time.
* * * * *
The deposits of this age, which are of later date than the Crag, and of
earlier date than the Boulder Clay, with its fragments of rocks
frequently transported from great distances, are classed under the term
“pre-glacial.”
After the deposition of the Forest Bed, which is seen overlying the Crag
for miles between high and low-water mark, on the shore west of Cromer,
in Norfolk, there was a general reduction of temperature, and a period
of intense cold, known as the “glacial period,” seems to have set in,
during which a great part of what is now the British Islands was covered
with a thick coating of ice, and probably united with the Continent.
At this time England south of the Bristol Channel (the estuary of the
Severn), and the Thames, appears to have been above water. The northern
part of the country, and the high-ground generally of Britain and
Ireland were covered with gliding glaciers, by whose grinding action the
whole surface became moulded and worn into its present shape, while the
floating icebergs which broke off at the sea-side from these glaciers,
conveyed away and dropped on the bed of the sea those fragments of rocks
and the gravel and other earthy materials which are now generally
recognised as glacial accumulations.
In all directions, however, proofs are being gradually obtained that,
about this period, movements of submersion under the sea were in
progress, all north of the Thames.
[Illustration: XXIX.--Ideal American Landscape in the Quaternary
Epoch.]
Ramsay points out indications, first of an intensely cold period, when
land was much more elevated than it is now; then of submergence beneath
the sea; and, lastly, re-elevation attended by glacial action. “When we
speak of the vegetation and quadrupeds of Cromer Forest being
pre-glacial,” says Lyell, “we merely mean that their formation preceded
the era of the general submergence of the British Isles beneath the
waters of the glacial sea. The successive deposits seen in direct
superposition on the Norfolk coast,” adds Sir Charles, “imply at first
the prevalence over a wide area of the Newer Pliocene Sea. Afterwards,
the bed of the sea was converted into dry land, and underwent several
oscillations of level, so as to be, first, dry land supporting a forest;
then an estuary; then again land; and, finally, a sea near the mouth of
a river, till the downward movement became so great as to convert the
whole area into a sea of considerable depth, in which much floating ice,
carrying mud, sand, and boulders melted, letting its burthen fall to the
bottom. Finally, over the till with boulders stratified drift was
formed; after which, but not until the total subsidence amounted to more
than 400 feet, an upward movement began, which re-elevated the whole
country, so that the lowest of the terrestrial formations, or the forest
bed, was brought up to nearly its pristine level, in such a manner as to
be exposed at a low tide. Both the descending and ascending movement
seem to have been very gradual.”
[Illustration: Fig. 193.--Palæophognos Gesneri. Fossil Toad.]