with great curiosity on the bit of dried and blackened leather that is
preserved in the Museum in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, knowing it to have
presented the primal freshness of life within the present century. I
cannot help thinking that both the rhinoceros and this elephant roamed
over the plains of Siberia, not only since the creation of man, but even
since the Deluge. The freshness of their state shews that the freezing
up of their carcases must have been sudden, and immediate upon death.
What supposition so natural as that, perhaps in a blinding snowstorm,
they slipped into a crevice in the ice-cliff, were snowed up instantly,
and thus preserved by the antiseptic power of frost to this age? The
glaciers of the north may hold multitudes more of these and kindred
creatures, some of which may yet be disinterred, or thawed out, and may
lift yet more the curtain which so tantalisingly covers the conditions
of their life-history. These two huge Pachyderms are certainly extinct
now; yet their remains, scattered over so vast an area, are everywhere
associated with those of other animals which were indubitably
contemporary with them, and whose species-life is continued to our own
times. Some of these, as the great bear and the musk-ox of the sub-polar
regions, we know to be in the habit of migrating northward in spring,
and southward in autumn. That no lack of suitable food would be found,
even in such high latitudes, for browsing quadrupeds, appears from the
fact that, even beyond the parallel of 75 deg. north, large birch-trees are
found embedded in the cliffs, in abundance sufficient to be largely used
as common fuel, and still retaining their woody fibre, their bark,
branches, and roots. The climate then was not _greatly_ different from
what it is now, when the birch, as a tree, reaches to about 70 deg..
It is interesting to observe that both this elephant and this rhinoceros
were inhabitants of England also; and that at the same period as the
cavern bear, the hyena, the lion, and the machairode, the baboon, the
bison, and the urus, the Irish elk, and the extinct horse; at the same
time too, as the reindeer, the stag, the black bear, the wolf and fox,
the beaver, the wild cat, the hare, and rabbit, the otter and badger,
the wild hog, the rat and mouse, all our present shrews, the mole, the
stoat and polecat, the noctule and the horse-shoe bats. And curious it
is to note, as we go over this list, how some of the creatures
enumerated are long extinct everywhere, some have been long extinct in
England, but are still found elsewhere, some have more recently become
extinct here, but at different eras, some are nearly extinguished, and
some are yet abundant in different degrees.
I do not attach much importance to the traditions of the Siberians, that
the tusks and skeletons which they find belonged to a large
subterraneous animal, which could not bear the light; nor to those of
the Chinese, respecting a similar burrowing quadruped of prodigious
bulk, which they call, by a sort of irony, _tyn-schu_, or the mouse that
hides himself. The fables may have easily been formed from the
observation of the fossil bones, and do not necessarily imply any memory
of the living original.
The two examples of the exhumation of _Pachydermata_ in a fresh state,
which I have given in detail, are by no means the only cases that have
occurred. It is the universally-received belief throughout Siberia, that
Mammoths have been found with the flesh quite fresh and filled with
blood; probably meaning that the animal juices flowed when thawed.
Isbrand Ides mentions a head on which the flesh, in a decaying state,
was present; and a frozen leg, as large as the body of a man; and Jean
Bernhard Mueller speaks of a tusk, the cavity of which was filled with a
substance which resembled coagulated blood.
Again, in the voyage of Sarytschew, particulars are given of the
discovery of a Mammoth on the banks of the Alaseia, a river which flows
into the Arctic Ocean, beyond the Indigirska. It had been dislodged by a
flood, and somewhat injured; but the carcase was still almost entire,
and was covered with the skin, to which in some places long hair
remained attached.
These statements might reasonably have been esteemed either fables or
gross exaggerations, but for the subsequent discovery of the rhinoceros
and elephant whose remains have been brought to Europe. Read in the
light of these accounts, the earlier stories take the dignity of
authentic history; and it is interesting to note how well these details
agree with those observed by the accurate Adams;--the long hair, for
example, with which the Alaseia carcase was clothed being the very
counterpart of that upon the Lena elephant; though _a priori_ we should
have looked for a very different condition in the integument of these
huge Pachyderms.
If we look now at the great Mastodon, that elephantine beast, which with
a stature equal to that of the tallest African elephant combined a much
greater length of body and bulk of limb, we shall see some reason for
concluding that the period of its decease is not indefinitely removed
from our own era. Its remains occur in greatest abundance in North
America; and it is interesting to observe that among several of the
aboriginal tribes of Red men there were extant traditions of the
Mastodon as a living creature. Dim, vague, and distorted these
traditions are; but so far from our rejecting them _in toto_ on that
account, we ought rather to consider these characters as evidence of
their antiquity. When semi-savage nations present us with
orally-preserved accounts of very remote objects or actions, we look, as
a matter of course, for a considerable element of the wild, and
extravagant, and absurd in them. If we found nothing but what was
reasonable, and consistent, and intelligible, we should say in a moment,
this account cannot have been transmitted very far. The question, in the
case before us, is not, we must remember, the precise habits and
instincts of the Mastodon, but whether the Indians knew anything at all
of the Mastodon having ever been a living animal. Now, as I have
observed, they had. M. Fabri, a French officer who had served in Canada,
informed Buffon that the Red men spoke of the great bones which lay
scattered in various parts of that region as having belonged to an
animal which, after their oriental style, they named _Le Pere aux
B{oe}ufs_. The Shawnee Indians believed that with these enormous animals
there existed men of proportionate development, and that the Great Being
destroyed both with thunderbolts. Those of Virginia stated that, as a
troop of these terrible quadrupeds were destroying the deer, the bisons,
and the other animals created for the use of the Indians, the Great Man
slew them all with His thunder, except the big bull, who, nothing
daunted, presented his enormous forehead to the bolts, and shook them
off as they fell, till, being at last wounded in the side, he fled
towards the great lakes, where he is to this day.
Evidence of the comparatively-recent entombment of these remains exists,
however, of another character. They do not in general appear to have
been rolled, but to have lived where they are now found; in some
instances, as along the Great Osage River, being imbedded in a vertical
position, as if the animals had been suddenly bogged in the swampy soil.
Nor is there any great accumulation of earth upon them generally. All
along the edges of that great saline morass called, from the abundance
of these animal relics, Big Bone Lick, and on the borders, the skeletons
are found sunk in the soft earth, many of them not more than a yard or
two below the surface, and some even scarcely covered. With them are
found in large numbers the bones of the existing bison, the wapiti-stag,
and other herbivores, which still throng to the same place, for the same
reasons, and meet the same fate.
Comparative anatomy determines, from the structure of the bones of the
head in the Mastodon, that it must have carried a proboscis like that of
the elephant. This, though wholly fleshy, has left traces of its
existence. Barton reports that, in 1762, out of five skeletons which
were seen by the natives, one skull still possessed what they described
as a "long nose" with the mouth under it. And Kalm, in speaking of a
skeleton, discovered by the Indians in what is now the State of
Illinois, says that the form of the trunk was still apparent, though
half decomposed. The preservation of these perishable tissues in this
case must doubtless be attributed to the salt with which the bog-earth
is saturated. Still more recently a skeleton was found in Virginia,
which contained a very interesting proof of the food of the animal: a
mass of twigs, grass, and leaves, in a half-bruised state, enclosed in a
sort of sac, lay within the cavity of the body, doubtless the contents
of the stomach. Some of the twigs could be identified as those of
existing species of trees and shrubs, among them a species of _rose_,
still common in the region.
All this is very strong evidence that the deposition of these remains
cannot have taken place in a _very_ remote era,--that, in fact, it must
have been since the general deluge recorded in the Word of God.
Hugh Miller has an interesting observation concerning the actual date of
geologic phenomena in North America, compared with that of their
counterparts in the Old World. He says, "The much greater remoteness of
the mastodontic period in Europe than in America is a circumstance
worthy of notice, as it is one of many facts that seem to indicate a
general transposition of at least the later geologic ages on the
opposite sides of the Atlantic. Groups of corresponding character on the
eastern and western shores of this great ocean were not contemporaneous
in time. It has been repeatedly remarked that the existing plants and
trees of the United States, with not a few of its fishes and reptiles,
bear in their forms and constructions the marks of a much greater
antiquity than those of Europe. The geologist who set himself to
discover similar types on the eastern side of the Atlantic, would have
to seek for them among the deposits of the later tertiaries. North
America seems to be still passing through its later tertiary ages; and
it appears to be a consequence of this curious transposition, that while
in Europe the mastodontic period is removed by two great geologic eras,
from the present time, it is removed from it in America by only
one."[11]
Professor Agassiz has expressed opinions of the same character, adducing
the present existence in America of several forms of animals, which are
known in this hemisphere only in a fossil state.[12]
I cannot refrain from adding the following combination of fact and
speculation, from the pen of an accomplished traveller in Mexico. It
opens up a new train of ideas:--
"Some time before our visit, a number of workmen were employed on the
neighbouring estate of Chapingo, to excavate a canal over that part of
the plain from which the waters have gradually retired during the last
three centuries. At four feet below the surface, they reached an ancient
causeway, of the existence of which there was of course not the most
remote suspicion. The cedar piles, by which the sides were supported,
were still sound at heart. Three feet below the edge of this ancient
work, in what may have been the very ditch, they struck upon the entire
skeleton of a Mastodon, embedded in the blue clay. Many of the most
valuable bones were lost by the careless manner in which they were
extricated; others were ground to powder on their conveyance to the
capital, but sufficient remained to prove that the animal had been of
great size. My informant measured the diameter [_qu._ circumference?]
of the tusk, and found it to be eighteen inches.
"Though I should be very glad to take shelter under the convenient
_Quien sabe_? the use of which I have suggested to you, I could not
avoid, at the time I was in Mexico, putting my isolated facts together,
and feeling inclined to believe that this country had not only been
inhabited in extremely remote times, when the valley bore a very
different aspect from that which it now exhibits, or which tradition
gives it, but that the extinct race of enormous animals, whose remains
would seem, in the instance I have cited, to be coeval with the undated
works of man, may have been subjected to his will, and made
instrumental, by the application of their gigantic force, to the
transport of those vast masses of sculptured and chiselled rock which we
marvel to see lying in positions so far removed from their natural site.
"The existence of these ancient paved causeways also, not only from
their solid construction over the flat and low plains of the valley, but
as they may be traced running for miles over the dry table-land and the
mountains, appears to me to lend plausibility to the supposition; as one
might inquire, to what end the labour of such works, in a country where
beasts of burden were unknown?
"But I leave this subject to wiser heads and bolder theorists. Had the
Mammoth of Chapingo been discovered with a ring in his nose, or a bit in
his mouth, a yoke on his head, or a crupper under his tail, the
question would have been set at rest. As it is, there is plenty of room
for conjecture and dispute."[13]
With respect to the great extinct Mammalia of South America, we find Mr
Darwin, to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of so many of them,
continually expressing his wonder at the comparatively modern era of
their existence. After having enumerated nine vast beasts, which he
found imbedded in the beach at Bahia Blanca, within the space of 200
yards square, and remarked how numerous in kinds the ancient inhabitants
of the country must have been, he observes that "this enumeration
belongs to a very late tertiary period. From the bones of the
_Scelidotherium_, including even the kneecap, being entombed in their
proper relative positions, and from the osseous armour of the great
armadillo-like animal being so well preserved, together with the bones
of one of its legs, we may feel assured that these remains were fresh
and united by their ligaments when deposited in the gravel with the
shells. Hence we have good evidence that the above-enumerated gigantic
quadrupeds, more different from those of the present day than the oldest
of the tertiary quadrupeds of Europe, lived whilst the sea was peopled
with most of its present inhabitants."[14]
Of the remains of the Mylodon, and of that strange semi-aquatic creature
the Toxodon, he says, they appeared so fresh that it was difficult to
believe they had lain buried for ages under ground. The bones were so
fresh, that they yielded, on careful analysis, seven per cent. of
animal matter, and when heated in the flame of a spirit-lamp, they not
only exhaled a very strong animal odour, but actually burned with a
small flame.
Mr Darwin's interest was excited by the evidences everywhere present of
the immensity of this extinct population. "The number of the remains
imbedded in the great estuary-deposit which forms the Pampas, and covers
the gigantic rocks of Banda Oriental, must be extraordinarily great. I
believe a straight line drawn in any direction through the Pampas would
cut through some skeleton or bones.... We may suppose that the whole
area of the Pampas is one wide sepulchre of these extinct gigantic
quadrupeds."[15]
The whole plain of South America from the Rio Plata to the Straits of
Magellan has been raised from the sea within the species-life of the
existing sea-shells, the old and weathered specimens of which, left on
the surface of the plain, still partially retain their colours! Darwin
infers, as certain, from data which he has adduced, that the Macrauchen,
that strange giraffe-necked pachyderm, lived _long after_ the sea was
inhabited by its present shells, and when the vegetation of the land
could not have been other than it is now. And if the Macrauchen, then
the Toxodon, the Scelidothere, the Megathere, the Mylodon, the
Glyptodon, the Glossothere, and all the rest of the quaint but mighty
host of gone giants, that once thronged these austral plains.
Evidence for the recent existence of the colossal ostrich-like birds of
New Zealand is stronger still. It is about twenty-one years since the
first intimation was given to scientific Europe of the remains of such
animals, through some bones sent by the Rev. W. Williams to Dr Buckland.
From these, and a collection soon afterwards sent home, Professor Owen
established the genus _Dinornis_, identifying five species, the largest
of which, _D. giganteus_, he concluded to have stood about ten feet in
height. The remains have since been obtained in great profusion, and the
result of further investigations by the Professor has been the
establishment of three other genera, viz., _Palapteryx_, _Nestor_, and
_Notornis_,--the latter a large bird allied to the Rails and Coots.
A very interesting communication from Mr Williams accompanied one of the
consignments, extracts of which I will quote. It bears date "Poverty
Bay, New Zealand, 17th May 1842." "It is about three years ago, on
paying a visit to this coast, south of the East Cape, that the natives
told me of some extraordinary monster, which they said was in existence
in an inaccessible cavern on the side of a hill near the river Wairoa;
and they shewed me at the same time some fragments of bone taken out of
the beds of rivers, which they said belonged to this creature, to which
they gave the name of _Moa_. When I came to reside in this neighbourhood
I heard the same story a little enlarged; for it was said that this
creature _was still existing_ at the said hill, of which the name is
Wakapunake, and that it is guarded by a reptile of the Lizard species,
but I could not learn that any of the present generation had seen it. I
still considered the whole as an idle fable, but offered a large reward
to any who would catch me either the bird or its protector." These
offers procured the collection of a considerable number of fossil bones,
on which Mr Williams makes the following observations:--
"1. None of these bones have been found on the dry land, but are all of
them from the banks and beds of fresh-water rivers, buried only a little
distance in the mud.... All the streams are in immediate connexion with
hills of some altitude.
"2. This bird was in existence here at no very distant time, though not
in the memory of any of the inhabitants: for the bones are found in the
beds of the present streams, and do not appear to have been brought into
their present situation by the action of any violent rush of waters.
"3. They existed in considerable numbers,--(an observation which has
since been abundantly confirmed.)
"4. It may be inferred that this bird was long-lived, and that it was
many years before it attained its full size. (The writer grounds this
inference on the disparity in dimensions of the corresponding bones,
supposing that they all belonged to one and the same species; which,
however, was an erroneous assumption.)
"5. The greatest height of the bird was probably not less than fourteen
or sixteen feet. The leg-bones now sent give the height of six feet to
the root of the tail.
"Within the last few days I have obtained a piece of information worthy
of notice. Happening to speak to an American about these bones, he told
me that the bird is still in existence in the neighbourhood of Cloudy
Bay, in Cook's Straits. He said that the natives there had mentioned to
an Englishman belonging to a whaling party, that there was a bird of
extraordinary size to be seen only at night, on the side of a hill near
the place, and that he, with a native and a second Englishman, went to
the spot; that, after waiting some time, they saw the creature at a
little distance, which they describe as being about fourteen or sixteen
feet high. One of the men proposed to go nearer and shoot, but his
companion was so exceedingly terrified, or perhaps both of them, that
they were satisfied with looking at the bird, when, after a little time,
it took the alarm, and strode off up the side of the mountain.
"This incident might not have been worth mentioning, had it not been for
the extraordinary agreement in point of the size of the bird [with my
deductions from the bones]. _Here_ are the bones which will satisfy you
that such a bird _has been_ in existence; and _there_ is said to be the
_living bird_, the supposed size of which, given by an independent
witness, precisely agrees."
[Illustration: ENCOUNTER WITH A MOA.]
The story told of the whaler appears to me to bear marks of truth. The
bold essay to explore, the terror inspired by the gigantic figure,
especially in the solemnity of night, the description of the manners of
the bird running and striding, so like those of the Apteryx, with which
its bones shew the Moa to have been closely allied, and the inglorious
return of the party without achieving any exploit, are all too
natural to permit the thought that no more than inventive power has been
at work.
And well may the colossus have inspired fear. The bones sent to London
greatly exceed in bulk those of the largest horse. The leg-bone of a
tall man is about one foot four inches in length, and the thigh of
O'Brien, the Irish giant, whose skeleton, eight feet high, is mounted in
the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, is not quite two feet. But
the leg-bone (_tibia_) of the _Dinornis_ we know measured as much as two
feet ten inches, and we have no reason to suppose, considering the
disparity that exists in the specimens examined, that we have seen by
any means the largest.
Additional reason for supposing these magnificent birds to have existed
not long ago, is found in the fact that specimens of their eggs have
been preserved. The circumstances attendant on the discovery and
identification of these possess a remarkable interest. In the volcanic
sand of New Zealand Mr Walter Mantell found a gigantic egg, which we may
reasonably infer to be that of either _Dinornis_ or _Palapteryx_, of the
magnitude of which he gives us a familiar idea by saying that his hat
would have been but just large enough to have served as an egg-cup for
it. This is the statement of a man of science, and therefore we may
assume an approximate degree of precision in the comparison.
I do not know the size of Mr Mantell's hat, but I find that the
transverse diameter of my own is six inches or a little more. If we may
take this as the shorter diameter of the ovoid, the longer would
probably be about eight and a half inches; dimensions considerably
greater than those of the Ostrich's egg (which are about six and a
quarter in length), but not what we should have expected from a bird
from twelve to fourteen feet in height. And this the rather when we
consider that the egg of the New Zealand _Apteryx_, to which these birds
manifest a very close affinity, is one of dimensions that are quite
surprising in proportion to the bulk of the bird. The Apteryx is about
as big as a turkey, standing two feet in height, but its egg measures
four inches ten lines by three inches two lines in the respective
diameters. The egg of the _Dinornis giganteus_, to bear the same ratio
to the bird as this, would be of the incredible length of two feet and a
half, by a breadth of one and three quarters! Possibly this specimen,
though indubitably the egg of one of this great family of extinct birds,
may after all be that of one of the subordinate species.
But about the same time as Mr Mantell's discovery, one of equal interest
was made in Madagascar. The master of a French ship obtained, in 1850,
from natives of the island, three eggs, of far greater size, and
fragments of the leg-bones of an immense bird. These, on their arrival
at Paris, formed the subjects of valuable investigations by M. Isidore
Geoffroy St Hilaire[16] and Professor Owen.[17]
The native statement was, that one of the eggs had been found entire in
the bed of a torrent, among the debris of a land-slip; that a second
egg, with some fragments of bone, was subsequently found in a formation
_which is stated to be alluvial_; a third egg, which the natives had
perforated at one end, and used as a vessel, was also found. This last
egg was broken in the carriage, the other two arrived in Europe entire.
These two, though nearly alike in size, differed considerably in their
relative proportions and shape, the one being shorter and thicker, with
more equal ends than the other. The following table shews the dimensions
of both compared with those of an ostrich's egg:--
Ovoid egg. Ellipsoid egg. Ostrich egg.
ft. in. li. ft. in. li. ft. in. li.
Longer circumference 2 10 9 2 9 6 1 6 0
Shorter circumference 2 4 3 2 5 6 1 4 6
Extreme length 1 0 8 1 0 5 0 6 4
M. Geoffroy St Hilaire estimates the larger of the two to contain 10-1/8
quarts, or the contents of nearly six eggs of the Ostrich, or sixteen of
the Cassowary, or a hundred and forty-eight of the Hen, or fifty
thousand of the Humming bird.[18]