Chapter VII: Part 7

A little above the limestone slates is found the nearly homogeneous limestone of the Jura ridges. It also contains bones, but always of reptiles, crocodiles, and fresh-water tortoises, of which a vast quantity is found in particular in the neighbourhood of Soleure. They have been very carefully searched for by M. Hugi; and, from the fragments which he has already collected, it is easy to recognise a considerable number of Fresh-water Tortoises, or Emydes, which further discoveries can alone determine, but of which several are already distinguished by their size and peculiar forms, from all the species hitherto known[260].

It is among these innumerable oviparous quadrupeds, of all sizes and forms; in the midst of these crocodiles, tortoises, flying reptiles, huge megalosauri, and monstrous plesiosauri, that some small Mammifera are said to make their appearance for the first time; and the assertion is so far authenticated by the occurrence of jaws, and some other bones discovered in England, which undoubtedly belong to this class of animals, and particularly to the family of Didelphides, or to that of the Insectivora.

It may, however, be supposed, that the stoney matters which encrust these bones, owe their origin to some local recomposition, posterior to the original formation of the strata. However this may be, it is still found for a long time that the class of Reptiles predominates.

The ferruginous sands, placed in England above the chalk, contain abundance of crocodiles, tortoises, megalosauri, and especially a reptile which presents a character quite peculiar, in as much as its teeth appear worn, like those of our herbivorous mammifera.

To Mr Mantell of Lewes, in Sussex, we are indebted for the discovery of this latter animal, as well as of other large reptiles belonging to the sands lying beneath the chalk. He has named it _Iguanodon_[261].

In the chalk itself there are only reptiles to be seen: there are found in it remains of tortoises and crocodiles. The famous tufaceous quarries of the mountain of St Peter, near Maestricht, which belong to the chalk formation, along with very large sea tortoises, and a multitude of marine shells and zoophytes, have afforded a genus of lizards not less gigantic than the megalosaurus, which has become celebrated by the researches of Camper, and the figures which Faujas has given of its bones, in his history of that mountain.

It was upwards of five and twenty feet long; its large jaws were armed with very strong conical teeth, a little arcuate, and marked with a ridge, and it had also some of these teeth in the palate. Upwards of a hundred and thirty vertebræ were counted in its spine; they were convex before, and concave behind. Its tail was deep and flat, and formed a large vertical oar (or organ of swimming).[262] Mr Conybeare has recently proposed to name it _Mosasaurus_.

The clays and lignites which cover the upper part of the chalk, I have only found to contain crocodiles[263]; and I have every reason to think that the lignites which in Switzerland have afforded beaver and mastodon bones, belong to a later epoch. Nor has it been at an earlier period than that of the coarse limestone which rests upon these clays that I have begun to find bones of mammifera; and still do they all belong to marine mammifera, to dolphins of unknown species, lamantins and morses.

Among the dolphins, there is one, the muzzle of which, more elongated than that of any known species, has the lower jaw united in a considerable part of its length, nearly as in a gavial. It was found near Dax by the late president of Borda[264].

Another species, from the cliffs of the Department de l’Orne, has the muzzle also long, but somewhat differently shaped[265].

The entire genus of lamantins is at the present day confined to the seas of the torrid zone; and that of the morses, of which only a single living species is known to exist, is limited to the frozen ocean. Yet we find skeletons of these two genera side by side in the coarse limestone strata of the middle of France; and this association of species, the nearest allied to which are, at the present day, found in opposite zones, will again make its appearance more than once as we proceed.

Our fossil lamantins differ from those known to exist at present, in having the head more elongated, and of a different form[266]. Their ribs, which are easily recognised by their being of a thick and rounded form, and of dense texture, are not of rare occurrence in our different provinces.

With regard to the fossil morse, small fragments only have as yet been found of it, which are insufficient for characterising the species[267].

It is only in the strata that have succeeded the coarse limestone, or, at most, those which may have been of contemporaneous formation with it, but deposited in fresh-water lakes, that the class of land mammifera begins to shew itself in any quantity.

I consider as belonging to the same period, and as having lived together, but perhaps in different spots, the animals whose bones are deposited in the molasse and old gravel beds of the south of France; in the gypsums mixed with limestone, such as those of Paris and Aix; and in the fresh-water marly deposits covered with marine beds, of Alsace, the country of Orleans and of Berry.

This animal population possesses a very remarkable character in the abundance and variety of certain genera of pachydermata, which are entirely awanting among the quadrupeds of our days, and whose characters have more or less resemblance to those of the tapirs, the rhinoceroses, and camels.

These genera, the entire discovery of which is my own, are the _palæotheria_, _lophiodonta_, _anaplotheria_, _anthracotheria_, _cheropotami_, and _adapis_.

The _Palæotheria_ have resembled the tapirs in their general form, and in that of the head, particularly in the shortness of the bones of the nose, which announces that they have had a small proboscis like the tapirs, and, lastly, in their having six incisors and two canine teeth in each jaw; but they have resembled the rhinoceros in their grinders, of which those of the upper jaw have been square, with prominent ridges of various configuration, and those of the lower jaw in the form of double crescents, as well as in their feet, all of which have been divided into three toes, while in the tapirs the fore feet have four.

It is one of the most extensively diffused genera and most numerous in species that occur in the deposits of this period.

Our gypsum quarries in the neighbourhood of Paris are full of them. Bones of seven distinct species are found there. The first (_P. magnum_) is as large as a horse. The three next are of the size of a hog, but one of them (_P. medium_) has narrow and long feet, another (_P. crassum_) has the feet broader, and a third (_P. latum_) has them still broader, and especially shorter. The fifth species (_P. curtum_), which is of the size of a sheep, is much lower, and has the feet still broader and shorter in proportion than the last. The sixth (_P. minus_) is of the size of a small sheep, and has long and slender feet, the lateral toes of which are shorter than the rest. The seventh (_P. minimum_), which is not larger than a hare, has also the feet slender[268].

Palæotheria have also been found in other districts of France: at Puy in Valey, in strata of gypseous marl, a species (_P. velaunum_)[269], much resembling (_P. medium_), but differing from it in the form of its lower jaw; in the neighbourhood of Orleans, in strata of marly rock, a species (_P. aurelianense_)[270], which is distinguished from the others by having the re-entering angle of the crescent of its lower grinders split into a double point, and by some differences in the necks of the upper grinders; near Issel, in a bed of gravel or molasse, along the declivities of the Black Mountain, a species (_P. isselanum_)[271], which has the same characters as the Orleans species, but is of smaller size. It is more particularly, however, in the molasse of the Department of the Dordogne, that the palæotherium occurs not less abundantly than in our gypsum deposits in the neighbourhood of Paris.

The Duke Decaze has discovered in the quarries of a single field, bones of three species which appear different from all those of our neighbourhood[272].

The _Lophiodons_ approach still somewhat nearer to the tapirs than the palæotheria do, inasmuch as their lower false grinders have transverse necks like those of the tapirs.

They differ, however, from these latter, in having the fore ones more simple, the backmost of all with three necks, and the upper ones rhomboidal, and marked with ridges very much resembling those of the rhinoceros.

We are still ignorant what the form of their snout, and the number of their toes, may have been. I have discovered not less than twelve species of this genus, all in France, deposited in marly rocks of fresh-water formation, and filled with lymneæ and planorbes, which are shells peculiar to pools and marshes.

The largest species is found near Orleans, in the same quarry as the palæotheria; it approaches the rhinoceros.

There is a smaller species in the same place; a third occurs at Montpellier; a fourth near Laon; two near Buchsweiler in Alsace; five near Argenton in Berry; and one of the three occurs again near Issel, where there are also two others. There is also a large one near Gannat[273].

These species differ from each other in size, the smallest being scarcely so large as a lamb of three months, and in various circumstances connected with the form of their teeth, which it would be too tedious and minute to detail here.

The _Anoplotheria_ have hitherto been discovered nowhere but in the gypsum quarries of the neighbourhood of Paris. They have two characters which are observed in no other animal; feet with two toes, the metacarpal and metatarsal bones of which are separate in their whole length, and do not unite into a single piece, as in the ruminantia; and teeth placed in a continuous series without any interruption. Man alone has the teeth so placed in mutual contiguity, without any interval. Those of the anaplotheria consist of six incisors in each jaw, a canine tooth and six grinders on each side, both above and below; their canine teeth are short and similar to the outer incisors. The three first grinders are compressed; the four others are, in the upper jaw, square, with transverse ridges, and a small cone between them; and, in the lower jaw, in the form of a double crescent, but without neck at the base. The last has three crescents. Their head is of an oblong form, and does not indicate that the muzzle has terminated either in a proboscis or a snout.

This extraordinary genus, which can be compared to nothing in living nature, is subdivided into three subgenera: the _Anaplotheria_, properly so called, the anterior molares of which are still pretty thick, and the posterior ones of the lower jaw have their crescents with a simple ridge; the _Xiphodons_, of which the anterior molares are thin and sharp on the edges, and the under posterior, have, directly opposite the concavity of each of their crescents, a point, which, on being worn, also assumes the form of a crescent, so that then the crescents are double as in the ruminantia; lastly, the _Dichobunes_, the outer crescents of which are also pointed at the beginning, and which have thus points disposed in pairs upon their lower posterior grinders.

The most common species in our gypsum quarries (_An. commune_), is an animal of the height of a boar, but much more elongated, and furnished with a very long and very thick tail, so that altogether it has nearly the proportion of the otter, but larger. It is probable that it was well fitted for swimming, and frequented the lakes in the bottom of which its bones have been incrusted by the gypsum which was deposited there. We have one a little smaller, but in other respects pretty similar (_An. secundarium_.)

We are as yet acquainted with only one _xiphodon_, which, however, is a very remarkable animal: it is that which I have named _An. gracile_. It is slender, and delicately formed, like the prettiest gazelle.

There is one _dichobune_, nearly of the size of a hare, to which I have given the name of _An. leporinum_. Besides its subgeneric characters, it differs from the anaplotheria and xiphodons, in having two small and slender toes on each foot, at the sides of the two large toes.

We do not know if these lateral toes exist in the two other dichobunes, which are small, and scarcely exceed in size the common Guinea pig[274].

The genus of _Anthracotheria_ is in some degree intermediate between the palæotheria, anaplotheria, and hogs. I have named it so, because two of its species have been found in the lignites of Cadibona, near Savone. The first approached the rhinoceros in size; the second was much smaller. They have also been found in Alsace, and in the Vélay. Their grinders are similar to those of the anaplotheria; but they have projecting canine teeth[275].

The genus _Cheropotamus_ is found in our gypsum deposits, where it accompanies the palæotheria and anaplotheria, but where it is of much rarer occurrence. Its posterior grinders are square above, rectangular below, and have four large conical eminences surrounded with smaller ones. The anterior molares are short cones, slightly compressed, and with two roots. Its canine teeth are small. Neither its incisors nor its feet are yet known. I possess only one species, which is of the size of a Siam hog[276].

The genus _Adapis_ has also but one species, which is at most of the size of a rabbit: it is also from our gypsum quarries, and must have been nearly allied to the anaplotheria[277].

We have thus nearly forty species of pachydermata belonging to genera now entirely extinct, and presenting forms and proportions to which there is nothing that can be compared in the present animal kingdom, excepting two tapirs and a daman.

This large number of pachydermata is so much the more remarkable, that the ruminantia, which are at present so numerous in the genera of deer and antelopes, and which attain so great a size in those of the oxen, giraffes, and camels, scarcely make their appearance in the deposits of which we are speaking.

I have not seen the slightest trace of them in our gypsum quarries; and all that has come to my hands consists of some fragments of a deer, of the size of the roe, but of a different species, collected among the palæotheria of Orleans[278]; and of one or two other small fragments, from Switzerland, which, however, are perhaps of doubtful origin.

But our pachydermata have not for all this been the only inhabitants of the countries in which they lived. In our gypsum deposits, at least, we find along with them carnivora, glires, several sorts of birds, crocodiles, and tortoises; and these two latter genera also accompany them in the molasse sandstones and marly deposits of the middle and south of France.

At the head of the carnivora, I place a Bat, very recently discovered at Montmartre, and which belongs to the proper genus Vespertilio[279]. The existence of this genus, at an epoch so remote, is so much the more surprising, that, neither in this formation, nor in those which have succeeded it, have I seen any other trace, either of cheiroptera or of quadrumana: no bone or tooth of either monkey or maki has ever presented itself to me, in the course of my long researches.

Montmartre has also furnished the bones of a fox different from ours, and which also differs from the jackals, isatises, and the various species of foxes peculiar to America[280]; those of a carnivorous animal allied to the raccoons and coaties, but larger than any known species[281]; those of a particular species of civet[282]; and of two or three other carnivora, which it has not been possible to determine, from the want of tolerably complete portions.

What is still more remarkable, is, that there are skeletons of a small sarigue, allied to the marmose, but different, and consequently of an animal belonging to a genus which is at the present day confined to the New World[283]. Skeletons of two small glires, of the genus myoxus[284], and a skull belonging to the genus sciurus[285], have also been collected.

Our gypsum deposits are more fertile in bones of birds than any of the other strata either anterior or posterior to it. Entire skeletons, and parts of at least ten species belonging to all the orders, are found there[286].

The crocodiles of the period in question approach our common crocodiles in the form of the head, while, in the deposits of the Jura period, we find only species allied to the gavial.

A species has been found at Argenton, which is remarkable for its compressed, sharp teeth, having their edges dentated like those of certain monitors[287]. Some remains of it also occur in our gypsum quarries[288].

The tortoises of this period are all fresh-water ones: some of them belong to the subgenus _Emys_; and there are species, both at Montmartre[289], and still more especially in the molasse sandstones of the Dordogne[290], which are larger than any living species known; the others are Trionyces or soft tortoises[291]. This genus, which is easily distinguished by the vermiculate surface of the bones of its shell, and which at present exists only in the rivers of warm countries, such as the Nile, the Ganges, and the Orinoko, has been very abundant in the places where the palæotheria lived. Vast quantities of its remains are found at Montmartre[292], and in the molasse sandstones of the Dordogne, and the other gravel deposits of the south of France.

The fresh-water lakes, around which these various animals have lived, and which had received their bones, nourished, besides the tortoises and crocodiles, some fishes and testaceous mollusca. All that have been collected of these two classes of animals, are as foreign to our climate, and even as much unknown in our present waters, as the palæotheria, and other quadrupeds which were coeval with them[293].

The fishes have even in part belonged to unknown genera.

Hence, it cannot be doubted that this race of inhabitants, which might be termed the population of the middle age, this first great production of mammifera, has been entirely destroyed; and, in fact, in all places where remains of them have been discovered, there are great deposits of marine formation above them, so that the sea has overwhelmed the countries which these races inhabited, and has rested upon them during a long period of time.

Have the countries inundated by it at this period been of great extent? This is a question which the examination of those ancient deposits formed in their lakes do not enable us to answer.

To this period I refer the gypsum beds of Paris and those of Aix, several quarries of marly stones, and the molasse sandstones, at least those of the south of France. I am of opinion that we should also refer to it the portions of the molasse sandstones of Switzerland, and of the lignites of Liguria and Alsace, in which quadrupeds are found of the families enumerated above; but I do not find that any of these animals have been also found in other countries. The fossil bones of Germany, England, and Italy, are all either older or newer than those of which we have been speaking, and belong either to those ancient races of reptiles of the juraic and copper-slate formations, or to the deposits of the last universal inundation, the diluvial formations.

We are, therefore, authorised to believe, until the contrary be proved, that at the period when these numerous pachydermata lived, the globe had only presented for their habitation a small number of plains sufficiently fertile for them to multiply there, and that perhaps these plains were insulated regions, separated by pretty large spaces of elevated chains, in which we do not find that our animals have left any traces of their existence.

The researches of M. Adolphe Brongniart have also made known to us the nature of the vegetables which covered those countries. In the same strata with our palæotheria, there have been found trunks of palms, and many others of those beautiful plants whose genera now only grow in warm climates. Palms, crocodiles, and trionyces always occur in greater or less abundance wherever our ancient pachydermata are found[294].

The sea which had covered these lands and destroyed their animals, left large deposits, which still form at the present day, at no great depth, the basis of our great plains: it had then retired anew, and left immense surfaces to a new population, whose remains are found in the sandy and muddy deposits of all countries known.

It is to this deposition from the sea, made in a state of quiet, that certain fossil cetacea, very much resembling those of our own days, should, in my opinion, be referred;--a dolphin, allied to our epaulard[295], and a whale very like our rorquals[296], both discovered in Lombardy by M. Cortesi; a large head of a whale found within the very precincts of Paris[297], and described by Lamanon and Daubenton; and an entirely new genus, which I have discovered and named _Ziphius_, and which already contains three species. It is allied to the cachalots and hyperoodons[298].

In the extinct population which fills our alluvial and superficial strata, and which has lived upon the deposit just alluded to, there are no longer either palæotheria or anaplotheria, or, in in fact, any of those singular genera. The pachydermata, however, still predominate; and these are of a gigantic size, elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami, accompanied with innumerable horses and several large ruminantia. Carnivorous animals of the size of the lion, tiger, and hyena, had desolated this new animal kingdom. In general, its character, even in the extreme north, and on the edges of the present frozen ocean, was similar to that which the torrid zone alone now presents, and yet there was no species in it absolutely the same as any of those which are found alive at the present day.

The most remarkable of these animals is the species of elephant named _mammoth_ by the Russians (the _Elephas primigenius_ of Blumenbach), which was fifteen or eighteen feet high, and was covered with coarse red wool, and long, stiff, black hairs, which formed a mane along its back. Its enormous tusks were implanted in alveolæ longer than those of the elephants of the present day; but in other respects it was pretty similar to the Indian elephant[299]. It has left thousands of its carcases from Spain to the shores of Siberia, and it has been found in the whole of North America; so that it had been distributed on both sides of the Atlantic, if, indeed, that ocean had existed in its time, in the place which it occupies at present. It is well known that its tusks are still so well preserved in cold countries, as to be applied to the same uses as fresh ivory; and, as we have already remarked, individuals of it have been found with their flesh, skin, and hair, which had remained frozen since the last general catastrophe. The Tartars and Chinese have imagined it to be an animal which lives under ground, and perishes whenever it perceives the light.

After the mammoth, and almost its equal in size, came also in the countries which form the two presently existing continents, the _narrow toothed mastodon_, which resembled the elephant, and was armed like it with enormous tusks, but with tusks covered with enamel, shorter legs, and whose mamillated grinders, invested with a thick and shining enamel, have long furnished what has been called occidental turquoise[300].

Its remains, which are pretty common in the temperate parts of Europe, are not so much so towards the north; but it has also been found in the mountains of South America, along with two allied species.

In North America immense quantities of the remains of the _great mastodon_ have been found, a species larger than the preceding, as high in proportion as the elephant, with equally huge tusks, and whose grinders, which are covered over with bristling points, made it long be considered as a carnivorous animal[301].

Its bones were of a large size, and very solid. Even its hoofs and stomach are said to have been found in a sufficient state of preservation to be recognisable; and it is asserted that the stomach was filled with bruised branches of trees. The Indians imagine that the whole race was destroyed by the gods, to prevent them from destroying the human species.

Along with these enormous pachydermata, lived the two somewhat inferior genera of the rhinoceroses and hippopotami.

The Hippopotamus of this period was pretty common in the countries which now form France, Germany and England, and was particularly so in Italy. It so closely resembled the present African species, that it is only by an attentive comparison that it can be distinguished from it[302].

There was also at this time a small species of hippopotamus of the size of the wild boar, to which there is nothing similar at present existing.

There were at least three species of Rhinoceros of large size, all of them two-horned.

The most common species in Germany and England (my _Rh. tichorhinus_), and which, like the elephant, is found even to the shores of the frozen sea, where it has also left entire individuals, had the head elongated, the bones of the nose very robust and supported by an osseous and not merely cartilaginous septum narium, and, lastly, wanted incisors[303].

Another species, of rarer occurrence, and peculiar to more temperate climates (_Rh. incisivus_)[304], had incisors like our present rhinoceroses of the East Indies, and, in particular, resembled that of Sumatra[305]; its distinctive characters are derived from some differences in the form of the head.

The third species (_Rh. leptorhinus_) had no incisors, like the first and like the present rhinoceros of the Cape; but it was distinguished by a more pointed muzzle and more slender limbs[306]. The bones of this species have been found more especially in Italy, in the same strata with those of elephants, mastodons, and hippopotami.

There is a fourth species still (_Rh. minutus_), furnished, like the second, with incisors, but of a much smaller size, and scarcely larger than a hog[307]. It was undoubtedly rare, for the remains of it have only as yet been found in some places in France.

To those four genera of large pachydermata, is added a Tapir, which equalled them in size, and was consequently twice, perhaps three times, as large in its linear dimensions as the American Tapir[308]. Its teeth have been found in several parts of France and Germany; and almost always accompanying those of rhinoceroses, mastodons, or elephants.

Along with these there is still associated, but as it would seem in a very small number of places, a large pachydermatous animal, of which the lower jaw alone has been found, and whose teeth are of the form of double crescents, and undulated. M. Fischer, who discovered it among bones from Siberia, has named it _Elasmotherium_[309].

The Horse genus also existed in those times[310]. Its teeth accompany in thousands the remains of the animals which we have just mentioned, in almost all their localities; but it is not possible to say whether it was one of the species now existing or not, because the skeletons of these species are so like each other, that they cannot be distinguished by the mere comparison of isolated fragments.

The Ruminantia were now greatly more numerous than at the epoch of the Palæotheria; their numerical proportion must even have differed very little from what it is at present; but we are certain of several species which were different.

This may, in particular, be said with much certainty of a deer exceeding even the elk in size, which is common in the marl deposits and peat-bogs of Ireland and England, and of which remains have also been dug up in France, Germany, and Italy, where they were found in the same strata with bones of elephants. Its wide, palmated, and branched horns, measure so much as twelve or fourteen feet from one point to the other, following the curvatures[311].

The distinction is not so clear with regard to the bones of deer and oxen, which have been collected in certain caverns, and in the fissures of certain rocks. They are sometimes, and especially in the caverns of England, accompanied with bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami, and with those of a hyena, which also occurs in several strata of transported matter, along with these same pachydermata. They are consequently of the same age; but it remains not the less difficult to say in what respect they differ from the oxen and deer of the present day.

The fissures of the rocks of Gibraltar, Cette, Nice, Uliveta near Pisa, and other places on the shores of the Mediterranean, are filled with a red and hard cement, which envelopes fragments of rock and fresh-water shells, and numerous bones of quadrupeds, the greater part fractured. These concretions are termed osseous brecciæ. The bones which they contain sometimes present characters sufficient to prove that they have belonged to unknown animals, or at least to animals foreign to Europe. There are found, for example, four species of deer, three of which have characters in their teeth, which are only observed in the deer of the Indian Archipelago.

There is a fifth near Verona, the horns of which exceed in magnitude those of the Canadian deer[312].

There also occur, in certain places, along with bones of rhinoceroses, and other quadrupeds of this period, those of a deer so much resembling the reindeer, that it would be difficult to assign distinctive characters to it; a circumstance which is so much the more extraordinary, that the reindeer is at the present day confined to the coldest regions of the north, while the whole genus of rhinoceroses belongs to the torrid zone.[313]

There exist in the strata of which we speak, remains of a species very similar to the fallow-deer, but a third larger,[314] and prodigious quantities of horns, very much resembling those of our present stag[315], as well as bones, very like those of the aurochs[316] and domestic ox[317], two very distinct species, which had been erroneously confounded by the naturalists who preceded us. The entire heads, however, resembling those of these two animals, as well as that of the musk-ox of Canada[318], which have often been extracted from the earth, do not come from localities sufficiently well determined to enable us to assert that these species had been contemporaries of the great pachydermata, of which we have made mention above.

The osseous brecciæ of the shores of the Mediterranean have also afforded two species of _Lagomys_,[319] animals, the genus of which exists at the present day only in Siberia; two species of rabbits[320], lemmings, and rats of the size of the water-rat and domestic mouse[321]. In the caves of England two species are also found[322].

The osseous brecciæ even contain bones of shrew-mice and lizards[323].

In certain sandy strata of Tuscany, there are teeth of a porcupine[324], and in those of Russia heads of a species of beaver, larger than ours, which M. Fischer has named _Trogontherium_[325].

But it is more particularly in the class Edentata that these races of animals belonging to the period before the last assume a size much superior to that of their present congeners, and even rise to a magnitude altogether gigantic.

The _Megatherium_ unites a part of the generic characters of the armadilloes, with some of those of the sloths, and is in size equal to the largest rhinoceros. Its claws must have been of a monstrous length, and prodigious strength; its whole skeleton possesses an excessive solidity. It has only as yet been found in the sandy strata of North America[326].

The _Megalonyx_ has been very similar to it in its characters, but has been somewhat less; its claws much longer and sharper in the edges. Some bones and entire toes of it have been found in certain caves in Virginia, and in an island on the coast of Georgia[327].

These two enormous edentata have only hitherto presented their remains in America; but Europe possesses one of the same class which does not yield to them in magnitude. It is only known by a single terminal joint of a toe, but this fragment is sufficient to assure us that it was very similar to a pangolin or manis, but to a pangolin of nearly twenty-four feet in length. It lived in the same districts as the elephants, rhinoceroses, and gigantic tapirs; for its bones have been found along with theirs in a sandy deposit in the county of Darmstadt, not far from the Rhine[328].

The osseous brecciæ also contain, but very rarely, bones of carnivora[329], which are much more numerous in caverns, that is to say, in cavities wider and more complicated than the fissures or veins containing osseous brecciæ. The Jura chain in particular, is celebrated for them in the part of it which extends into Germany, where, for ages past, incredible quantities have been removed and destroyed, on account of certain medical virtues which had been attributed to them, and yet there still remains enough to fill the mind with astonishment. The principal part of these remains consists of bones of a very large species of bear (_Ursus spelæus_), which is characterised by a more prominent forehead than that of any of our living bears[330]. Along with these bones are found those of two other species of bear (_U. arctoideus_ and _U. priscus_)[331]; those of a hyena (_H. fossilis_), allied to the spotted hyena of the Cape, but differing from it in the form of its teeth and head[332]; those of two tigers or panthers[333], of a wolf[334], a fox[335], a glutton[336], as well as of weasels, viverræ, and other small carnivora[337].

Here, also, may be observed that singular association of animals, the species resembling which live at the present day in climates so widely separated from each other as the Cape, the country of the spotted hyena, and Lapland, the country of our present gluttons. In like manner we have seen in a cave in France, a rhinoceros and a reindeer by the side of each other.

Bears are of rare occurrence in alluvial strata. Remains of the large species of the caves (_U. spelæus_), are said, however, to have been found in Austria and Hainaut; and in Tuscany there are bones of a particular species, remarkable for its compressed canine teeth (_U. cultridens_)[338]. The hyenas are more frequently met with. We have remains of them in France, found along with bones of elephants and rhinoceroses. A cave has lately been discovered in England, which contained prodigious quantities of them, where they were found of every age, and of which the soil presented even their excrements in a sufficient state of preservation to be easily recognised. It would appear that they had long lived there, and that it had been by them that the bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, horses, oxen, deer, and various animals of the class of glires, which are found along with them, and which bear evident marks of their teeth, had been dragged into the cave. But what must have been the soil of England, when these enormous animals lived upon it, and constituted the prey of ferocious beasts! These caves contain also bones of tigers, wolves and foxes; but the remains of bears are of excessively rare occurrence in them[339].

However this may be, we see that, at the epoch of the animal population which we are now passing under review, the class of carnivora was numerous and powerful. It reckoned three bears with round canine teeth, one with compressed canini, a large tiger or lion, another feline animal, of the size of the panther, a hyena, a wolf, a fox, a glutton, a martin or pole-cat, and a weasel.

The class of glires, composed in general of weak and small species, has been little observed by the collectors of fossil remains; and, in all cases, where the bones of these animals have been found in the strata or deposits of which we speak, they also have presented unknown species. Such, in particular, is a species of Lagomys found in the osseous brecciæ of Corsica and Sardinia, somewhat resembling the Lagomys alpinus of the high mountains of Siberia: so true is it that it is not always in the torrid zone only, that we are to seek for the animals which resemble those of this period.

These are the principal animals, the remains of which have been found in that mass of earth, sand, and mud,--that _Diluvium_, which everywhere covers our large plains, fills our caverns, and chokes up the fissures in many of our rocks. They incontestibly formed the population of the continents, at the epoch of the great catastrophe which has destroyed their races, and which has prepared the soil, on which the animals of the present day subsist.

Whatever resemblance certain of these species bear to those of our days, it cannot be disputed that the general mass of this population had a very different character, and that the greater part of the races which composed it have been utterly destroyed.

What astonishes us is, that, among all these mammifera, the greater number of which have their congeners at the present day in the warm parts of the globe, there has not been a single quadrumanous animal,--that there has not been collected a single bone or a single tooth of an ape or monkey, not so much even as a bone or a tooth belonging to an extinct species of these animals.

Nor is there any trace of man. All the bones of our species that have been found along with those of which we have been speaking, have occurred accidentally[340], and their number besides is exceedingly small, which assuredly would not have been the case, if men had then been settled in the countries which these animals inhabited.

Where, then, was the human race at this period? Did the last and most perfect of the works of the Creator nowhere exist? Did the animals which now accompany him upon the globe, and of which there are no traces among these fossil remains, surround him? Were the countries in which he lived with them swallowed up, when those which he now inhabits, and whose former population may have been destroyed by a great inundation, were laid dry again? These are questions which the study of fossil remains does not enable us to solve, and in this discourse we must not apply for information to other sources.

This much is certain, that we are now at least in the midst of a fourth succession of land animals,--that, after the age of reptiles, the age of palæotheria, the age of mammoths, and that of mastodons and megatheria, has come the age in which the human species, aided by some domestic animals, peaceably governs and fertilizes the earth, and that it is only in the deposits formed since the commencement of this age, in alluvial matters, peat-bogs, and recent concretions, that bones are found in the fossil state, which belong all of them to known and still living animals.

Such are the human skeletons of Guadaloupe, imbedded in a species of travertine formed of land shells, slate, and fragments of shells and madrepores of the neighbouring sea; the bones of oxen, deer, roes, and beavers, common in peat-bogs, and all the bones of men and domestic animals found in the mud and sand deposited by rivers, in burying grounds, and upon ancient fields of battle.

None of these remains belong either to the great deposit formed at the time of the last catastrophe, nor to those of preceding ages.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

_On the birds to which the name of Ibis was given by the ancient Egyptians._

Every body has heard of the Ibis, a bird to which the ancient Egyptians rendered a religious homage; which they reared within the precincts of their temples; allowed to wander unmolested through their towns; whose murderer, even although he had involuntarily become so, was punished with death[341]; which they embalmed with as much care as their parents;--a bird to which they attributed a virgin purity; an inviolable attachment to their country, of which it was the emblem, an attachment so great that it suffered itself to die of hunger when it was transported elsewhere;--a bird which possessed instinct enough to know the increase and waning of the moon, and to regulate accordingly the quantity of its daily food, and the development of its young; which arrested at the frontiers of Egypt the serpents which would otherwise have carried destruction into that sacred land[342], and which inspired them with such terror that they dreaded its very feathers[343];--a bird, in fine, whose form the gods would have assumed, had they been forced to adopt a mortal figure, and into which Mercury was really transformed, when he had a mind to traverse the earth, and instruct men in the sciences and arts.

No other animal could have been so easy to recognize as this; for there is no other of which the ancients have left us at once, as of the ibis, excellent descriptions, accurate and even coloured figures, and the body itself preserved with its feathers, under the triple envelope of a preservative bitumen, thick and close folds of linen, and solid and well varnished vases. And yet, of all the modern authors who have spoken of the ibis, there is but one, the celebrated Bruce, a traveller more famous for his courage than for the justness of his opinions in natural history, who has not blundered respecting the true species of this bird; and his ideas with regard to this subject, however accurate they were, have not even been adopted by naturalists[344].

After several changes of opinion respecting the ibis, it was seemingly agreed, at the period when I published the first edition of this work, to give the name of Ibis to a bird a native of Africa, almost of the size of the stork, with white plumage, having the quills black, perched upon long red legs, armed with a long arched beak, of a pale yellow colour, sharp at its edges, rounded at its base, and notched at its point, and whose face is covered with a red skin destitute of feathers, which do not extend farther forward than the eyes.

Such is the Ibis of Perrault[345], the Ibis candida of Brisson[346], the Ibis blanc d’Egypte of Buffon[347], and the Tantalus Ibis of Linnæus, in his twelfth edition. It was to this same bird, also, that Blumenbach, while he avowed that it is of very rare occurrence at the present day, at least in Lower Egypt, asserted that the Egyptians rendered divine honours[348]; and yet this naturalist had possessed opportunities of examining bones of the true ibis in a mummy which he opened in London[349].

I also participated in the error of those celebrated men whom I have just mentioned, until the moment when I was enabled to examine some mummies of the ibis by myself. This pleasure was procured for me, for the first time, by the late M. Fourcroy, to whom M. Grobert, Colonel of Artillery, on his return from Egypt, had given two of these mummies, both taken from the pits of Saccara. On carefully exposing them, we perceived that the bones of the embalmed bird were much smaller than those of the _Tantalus ibis_ of naturalists; that they did not much exceed those of the curlew in size, that its beak resembled that of the latter, being only a little shorter in proportion to its thickness, and not at all that of the tantalus; and, lastly, that its plumage was white with the quills marked with black, as the ancients have described it.

We are therefore convinced, that the bird which the ancient Egyptians embalmed, was by no means the Tantalus ibis of naturalists, that it was smaller, and that it was to be sought for in the curlew genus. We found, after some inquiries, that the mummies of the ibis which had been opened before by different naturalists, were similar to ours. Buffon says expressly that he examined several of them; that the birds which they contained had the beak and size of curlews; and yet he has blindly followed Perrault in taking the African tantalus for the ibis. One of those mummies opened by Buffon still exists in the museum; it is similar to those which we have examined.

Dr Shaw, in the supplement to his Travels[350], describes and figures with care the bones of a similar mummy. The beak, he says, was six English inches in length, similar to that of the curlew, &c. In a word, its description agrees entirely with ours.

Caylus, in his Collection of Antiquities, vol. vi. pl. xl. fig. 1., gives a representation of the mummy of an ibis, the height of which, with its bandages, is only one foot seven inches four lines, although he says expressly that the bird was placed upon its feet with the head straight out, and that it had no part inflected in its embalment.

Hasselquist, who took a small white and black heron for the ibis, gives, as his principal reason, that the size of this bird, which is that of a crow, corresponds very well with that of the mummies of the ibis[351]. How, then, could Linnæus have given the name of ibis to a bird as large as a stork? How, especially, could he have considered this bird to be the same as the Ardea ibis of Hasselquist, which, besides its smallness, had the beak straight? And how has this latter error of synonymy been preserved to this very day in the _Systema Naturæ_?

A short time after this examination, which was made in the presence of M. Fourcroy, M. Olivier had the politeness to shew us the bones which he had taken from two mummies of the ibis, and to open along with us two others. These bones were found similar to those of Colonel Grobert’s mummies; one of the four only was smaller, but it was easy to judge by the epiphyses that it had belonged to a young individual.

The only figure of the beak of an embalmed ibis, which does not entirely agree with the objects which we have had under our eyes, is that of Edwards (pl. cv.); it is a ninth part larger, and yet we do not doubt its accuracy, for M. Olivier shewed us also a beak an eighth or a ninth longer than the others, or in the proportion of 180 to 165, which had been equally taken from a mummy. This beak only shews that there were among the ibises individuals larger than others; but it proves nothing in favour of the tantalus, for it has not at all the form of the beak of that animal. Its beak is perfectly similar to that of the curlews; and besides, the beak of the tantalus is a third longer than that of our largest embalmed ibises, and two-fifths longer than that of the smallest.

We have ascertained further, that similar variations with regard to the size of the beak exist in our European curlews, according to the age and sex. They are still more strongly marked in the green curlew of Italy, and in our godwits; and this variation appears to be a property common to most of the species of the family of scolopaceous birds.

Lastly, our naturalists returned from the expedition to Egypt with a rich harvest of objects, as well ancient as recent. My learned friend M. Geoffroy St Hilaire, in particular, had occupied himself with the greatest care in collecting mummies of all descriptions, and had brought with him a great number of those of the ibis, both from Saccara and Thebes.

The former were in the same state as those which M. Grobert had brought, that is to say, their bones had undergone a sort of half burning, and were without consistence; they broke on the slightest touch, and it was very difficult to obtain any entire, and still more so to detach them for the purpose of making a skeleton.

The bones of those brought from Thebes were much better preserved, either on account of the greater heat of the climate, or from the more efficacious means employed for their preparation; and M. Geoffroy having sacrificed some of them to me, M. Rousseau, my assistant, succeeded, by dint of patience and address, and by the employment of ingenious and delicate methods of procedure, in making up an entire skeleton, by stripping all the bones, and connecting them with a very fine wire. This skeleton is deposited in the anatomical galleries of the museum, of which it forms one of the most beautiful ornaments, and we have represented it in Pl. iv.

It is likely that this mummy must have been that of a bird kept in a state of domesticity in the temples, for its left humerus has been broken and joined again. It is probable that a wild bird, whose wing had been broken, would have perished before it had healed, from its being unable to pursue its prey, or to escape from its enemies.

This skeleton puts it in our power to determine, without any uncertainty, the characters and proportions of the bird. We see clearly that it was in all points a true curlew, a little larger than the common curlew of Europe, but having the beak thicker and shorter. The following is a comparative table of the dimensions of the two birds, taken, for the ibis, from the skeleton of the mummy of Thebes, and for the curlew, from a skeleton which previously existed in our anatomical galleries. We have added those of parts of the Saccara ibises, which we succeeded in obtaining entire.

+-----------------------+-------------+------------+----------------+
| | Skeleton of |Skeleton of |Saccara Ibises. |
| Parts. |an Ibis from |the Curlew. +-------+--------+
| | Thebes. | |Larger.|Smaller.|
+-----------------------+-------------+------------+-------+--------+
|Head and beak together,| 0.210 | 0.215 | ... | ... |
|Head alone, | 0.047 | 0.040 | ... | ... |
|The 14 vertebræ of | 0.192 | 0.150 | ... | ... |
| the neck together, | | | | |
|Back, | 0.080 | 0.056 | ... | ... |
|Sacrum, | 0.087 | 0.070 | ... | ... |
|Coccyx, | 0.037 | 0.035 | ... | ... |
|Femur, | 0.078 | 0.060 | ... | ... |
|Tibia, | 0.150 | 0.112 | ... | 0.095 |
|Tarsus, | 0.102 | 0.090 | ... | ... |
|Middle-toe, | 0.097 | 0.070 | ... | ... |
|Sternum, | 0.092 | 0.099 | ... | ... |
|Clavicle, | 0.055 | 0.041 | ... | 0.04 |
|Humerus, | 0.133 | 0.106 | 0.124 | ... |
|Fore-arm, | 0.153 | 0.117 | 0.144 | 0.114 |
|Hand, | 0.125 | 0.103 | ... | ... |
+-----------------------+-------------+------------+----------------+

It appears by this table, that the animal of Thebes was larger than our curlew; that one of the Saccara ibises was intermediate in size between that of Thebes and our common curlew, and that the other was smaller than this latter bird. It is also seen that the different parts of the body of the ibis do not observe the same proportions between each other, as those of the curlew. The beak of the former, for example, is in particular shorter, although all the other parts are longer, &c.

However, these differences of proportions do not exceed what might be expected in species of the same genus: the forms and characters which may be considered as generic, are absolutely the same.

We must therefore search for the true ibis, not among those tantaluses of large size and sharp beak, but among the curlews; and, let it be observed, that, by the name _curlew_, we intend to signify, not the artificial genus formed by Latham and Gmelin, of all the wading birds which have the beak curved downwards, but a natural genus, to which we shall give the name of _Numenius_, and which will comprehend all the waders with beaks curved downwards, soft and rounded, whether their head be bare or clothed with feathers. It is the genus _courlis_, such as Buffon imagined it[352].

A glance over the collection of birds belonging to the royal cabinet, has enabled us to distinguish a species, which is neither named nor described in the works of systematic writers, excepting perhaps by Dr Latham; and which, when carefully examined, will be found to correspond with all that the ancients, the monuments and mummies, indicate as characteristic of the ibis.