The fossil remains of animals not now in existence, entombed and
preserved in solid rocks, present us with durable monuments of the great
changes which our planet has undergone in former ages. We are led to a
period when the waters of the primitive ocean must have covered the
summits of our highest mountains, and are irresistibly compelled to
admit one of two conclusions: either that the sea has retired, and sunk
beneath its former level; or that some power, operating from beneath,
has lifted up the islands and continents, with all their hills and
mountains, from the watery abyss to their present elevation above its
surface.
The calcareous, or limestone mountains in Derbyshire, and at Craven, in
Yorkshire, having an elevation of about two thousand feet above the
present level of the sea, contain, in a greater or less abundance, and
throughout their whole extent, fossil remains of zoophytes, shell-fish,
and marine animals. No remains of vegetables have been found in the
calcareous mountains of England; but, in the thick beds of shale and
gritstone lying upon them, are found various vegetable impressions, and
above these regular beds of coal, with strata, containing shells of
fresh-water mussels. In the earthy limestone of the upper strata are
sometimes found fossil flat-fish, with the impression of the scales and
bones quite distinct. The mountains of the Pyrenees are covered in the
highest part, at Mont Perdu, with calcareous rocks, containing
impressions of marine animals; and, even where the impressions are not
visible in the limestone, it yields a fetid cadaverous odor, when
dissolved in acids, owing, in all probability, to the animal matters it
contains. Mont Perdu, which rises ten thousand five hundred feet, or
about two miles above the level of the sea, is the highest situation in
which any marine remains have been found in Europe. In the Andes they
have been observed by Humboldt at the hight of fourteen thousand feet,
more than two miles and a half. Lastly, in southern countries, in and
under beds of clay-covering chalk, the bones of the elephant, and of the
rhinoceros are frequently found.
These bones, as they have been brought from different parts of the
world, have been examined with the utmost attention by the sagacious
naturalist Cuvier. He has observed characteristic variations of
structure, which prove that they belong to animals not now existing on
our globe: nor have many of the various zoöphytes and shell-fish, found
in calcareous rocks, been discovered in our present seas. From these
very curious facts he makes the following deductions.
“These bones are buried, almost everywhere, in nearly similar beds: they
are often blended with some other animals resembling those of the
present day. The beds are generally loose, either sandy or marly; and
always neighboring, more or less, to the surface. It is, then, probable
that these bones have been enveloped by the last, or by one of the last,
catastrophes of this globe. In a great number of places they are
accompanied by the accumulated remains of marine animals; but in some
places, which are less numerous, there are none of these remains:
sometimes the sand or marl, which covers them, contains only fresh-water
shells. No well authenticated account proves that they have been covered
by regular beds of stone, filled with sea-shells; and, consequently,
that the sea has remained on them undisturbed, for a long period. The
catastrophe which covered them was, therefore, a great, but transient,
inundation of the sea. This inundation did not rise above the high
mountains; for we find no analogous deposits covering the bones, nor are
the bones themselves there met with, not even in the high valleys,
unless in some of the warmer parts of America. These bones are neither
rolled nor joined in a skeleton, but scattered, and in part fractured.
They have not, then, been brought from afar by inundation, but found by
it in places where it has covered them, as might be expected, if the
animals to which they belonged had dwelt in these places, and had there
successively died. Before this catastrophe, these animals lived,
therefore, in the climates in which we now dig up their bones: it was
this catastrophe which destroyed them there; and, as we no longer find
them, it is evident that it has annihilated those species. The northern
parts of the globe, therefore, nourished formerly, species belonging to
the genus _elephant_, _hippopotamus_, _rhinoceros_, and _tapir_, as well
as to that of the _mastodon_; genera of which the four first have no
longer any species existing, except in the torrid zone; and the last,
none in any part.”
The researches of Dr. Buckland, connected with the kind of relics of
which we are speaking, have given them additional interest, especially
as connected with certain points of diluvial geology, and with their
assemblage in caverns. In these caverns, the bones are usually found
mixed with mud, stones and fragments; and circumstances seem to show
that the animals resided in them for a great length of time. The
celebrated Kirkdale cavern, in Yorkshire, discovered in 1821, contains
the remains of the hyena, tiger, bear, wolf, fox, weasel, elephant,
rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, ox, deer, hare, rabbit, rat, mouse,
raven, pigeon, lark, thrush, and a species of duck. From the mode in
which these remains were strewed over the bottom of the cavern, from the
great proportion of hyenas’ teeth over those of other animals, and from
the manner in which many of the bones were gnawed and fractured, Dr.
Buckland infers that this cavern was the den of hyenas for a long
succession of years; that they brought in as their prey, the animals
whose remains are thus mixed with their own; and that this state of
things was suddenly terminated by an irruption of turbid water into the
cave, which buried the whole in the mud in which they are now
intermingled. In other cases, the bones of other animals have been
found, indicating the same general facts as to the existence of animals
now no longer known in the same latitudes.
That every part of the dry land was once covered by the ocean, is a fact
on which all geologists agree; and the discovery, noticed above, of the
fossil remains of many genera of quadrupeds, once existing, but which
have now disappeared from the earth, leads to another fact, not less
interesting, and which is at the same time coincident with the oldest
records or traditions of the human race, namely, that at the period when
these great changes took place, man was not an inhabitant of the planet.
These fossil remains, now about to be particularized, are among the most
surprising of nature’s phenomena, and irresistibly lead to most
interesting speculations respecting the past and future condition of the
terrestrial globe.