Fig. 176Fig. 176.—Sivatherium restored.
Fig. 176.—Sivatherium restored.
As if to rival these gigantic Mammals, great numbers of Reptiles seem to have lived in the Pliocene period, although they are no longer of the same importance as in the Secondary epoch. Only one of these, however, need occupy our attention, it is theSalamander. The living Salamanders are amphibious Batrachians, with smooth skins, and rarely attaining the length of twenty inches. TheSalamander of the Tertiary epoch had the dimensions of a Crocodile; and its discovery opens a pregnant page in the history of geology. The skeleton of this Reptile was long considered to be that of a human victim of the deluge, and was spoken of as “homo diluvii testis.” It required all the efforts of Camper and Cuvier to eradicate this error from the minds of the learned, and probably in the minds of the vulgar it survived them both.
Upon the left bank of the Rhine, not far from Constance, a little above Stein, and near the village of Œningen, in Switzerland, there are some fine quarries of schistose limestone. In consequence of their varied products these quarries have often been described by naturalists; they are of Tertiary age, and were visited, among others, by Horace de Saussure, by whom they are described in the third volume of his “Voyage dans les Alpes.”
In 1725, a large block of stone was found, incrusted in which a skeleton was discovered, remarkably well preserved; and Scheuchzer, a Swiss naturalist of some celebrity, who added to his scientific pursuits the study of theology, was called upon to give his opinion as to the nature of this relic of ancient times. He thought he recognised in the skeleton that of a man. In 1726 he published a description of these fossil remains in the “Philosophical Transactions” of London; and in 1731 he made it the subject of a special dissertation, entitled “Homo diluvii testis”—Man, a witness of the Deluge. This dissertation was accompanied by an engraving of the skeleton. Scheuchzer returned to the subject in another of his works, “Physica Sacra,” saying: “It is certain that this schist contains the half, or nearly so, of the skeleton of a man; that the substance even of the bones, and, what is more, of the flesh and of parts still softer than the flesh, are there incorporated in the stone; in a word, it is one of the rarest relics which we have of that accursed race which was buried under the waters. The figure shows us the contour of the frontal bone, the orbits with the openings which give passage to the great nerves of the fifth pair. We see there the remains of the brain, of the sphenoidal bone, of the roots of the nose, a notable fragment of the maxillary bone, and some vestiges of the liver.”
And our pious author exclaims, this time taking the lyrical form—
“Betrübtes Beingerüst von einem altem SünderErweiche, Stein, das Herz der neuen Bosheitskinder!”“O deplorable skeleton of an accursed ancient,Mayst thou soften the hearts of the late children of wickedness!”
“Betrübtes Beingerüst von einem altem SünderErweiche, Stein, das Herz der neuen Bosheitskinder!”
“O deplorable skeleton of an accursed ancient,Mayst thou soften the hearts of the late children of wickedness!”
The reader has before him the fossil of the Œningen schist(Fig. 177). It is obviously impossible to see in this skeleton what the enthusiastic savant wished to perceive. And we can form an idea from this instance, of the errors to which a preconceived idea, blindly followed, may sometimes lead. How a naturalist of such eminence as Scheuchzer could have perceived in this enormous head, and in these upper members, the least resemblance to the osseous parts of a man is incomprehensible!
Fig. 177Fig. 177.—Andrias Scheuchzeri.
Fig. 177.—Andrias Scheuchzeri.
The Pre-Adamite “witness of the deluge” made a great noise in Germany, and no one there dared to dispute the opinion of the Swiss naturalist, under his double authority of theologian and savant. This, probably, is the reason why Gesner in his “Traité des Pétrifactions,” published in 1758, describes with admiration the fossil of Œningen, which he attributes, with Scheuchzer, to theantediluvian man.
Pierre Camper alone dared to oppose this opinion, which was then universally professed throughout Germany. He went to Œningen in 1787 to examine the celebrated fossil animal; he had no difficulty in detecting the error into which Scheuchzer had fallen. He recognised at once that it was a Reptile; but he deceived himself, nevertheless, as to the family to which it belonged; he took it for a Saurian. “A petrified lizard,” Camper wrote; “could it possiblypass for a man?” It was left to Cuvier to place in its true family the fossil of Œningen; in a memoir on the subject he demonstrated that this skeleton belonged to one of the amphibious batrachians called Salamanders. “Take,” he says in his memoir, “a skeleton of a Salamander and place it alongside the fossil, without allowing yourself to be misled by the difference of size, just as you could easily do in comparing a drawing of the salamander of the natural size with one of the fossil reduced to a sixteenth part of its dimensions, and everything will be explained in the clearest manner.”
“I am even persuaded,” adds the great naturalist, in a subsequent edition of this memoir, “that, if we could re-arrange the fossil and look closer into the details, we should find still more numerous proofs in the articular faces of the vertebræ, in those of the jaws, in the vestiges of very small teeth, and even in the labyrinth of the ear.” And he invited the proprietors or depositaries of the precious fossil to proceed to such an examination. Cuvier had the gratification of making, personally, the investigation he suggested. Finding himself at Haarlem, he asked permission of the Director of the Museum to examine the stone which contained the supposed fossil man. The operation was carried on in the presence of the director and another naturalist. A drawing of the skeleton of a Salamander was placed near the fossil by Cuvier, who had the satisfaction of recognising, as the stone was chipped away under the chisel, each of the bones, announced by the drawing, as they made their appearance. In the natural sciences there are few instances of such triumphant results—few demonstrations so satisfactory as this, of the certitude of the methods of observation and induction on which palæontology is based.
During the Pliocene period Birds of very numerous species, and which still exist, gave animation to the vast solitudes which man had not yet occupied. Vultures and Eagles, among the rapacious birds; and among other genera of birds, gulls, swallows, pies, parroquets, pheasants, jungle-fowl, ducks, &c.
In the marine Pliocene fauna we see, for the first time, aquatic Mammals or Cetaceans—theDolphinandBalænabelonging to the period. Very little, however, is known of the fossil species belonging to the two genera. Some bones of Dolphins, found in different parts of France, apprise us, however, that the ancient species differed from those of our days. The same remark may be made respecting the Narwhal. This Cetacean, so remarkable for itslong tusk, or tooth, in the form of a horn, has at all times been an object of curiosity.
The Whales, whose remains are found in the Pliocene rocks, differ little from those now living. But the observations geologists have been able to make upon these gigantic remains of the ancient world are too few to allow of any very precise conclusion. It is certain, however, that the fossil differs from the existing Whale in certain characters drawn from the bones of the cranium. The discovery of an enormous fragment of a fossil Whale, made at Paris in 1779, in the cellar of a wine-merchant in the Rue Dauphine, created a great sensation. Science pronounced, without much hesitation, on the true origin of these remains; but the public had some difficulty in comprehending the existence of a whale in the Rue Dauphine. It was in digging some holes in his cellars that the wine-merchant made this interesting discovery. His workmen found, under the pick, an enormous piece of bone buried in a yellow clay. Its complete extraction caused him a great deal of labour, and presented many difficulties. Little interested in making further discoveries, our wine-merchant contented himself with raising, with the help of a chisel, a portion of the monstrous bone. The piece thus detached weighed 227 pounds. It was exhibited in the wine-shop, where large numbers of the curious went to see it. Lamanon, a naturalist of that day, who examined it, conjectured that the bone belonged to the head of a whale. As to the bone itself, it was purchased for the Teyler Museum, at Haarlem, where it still remains.
There exists in the Museum of Natural History in Paris only a copy of the bone of the whale of the Rue Dauphine, which received the name ofBalænodon Lamanoni. The examination of this figure by Cuvier led him to recognise it as a bone belonging to one of the antediluvian Balænæ, which differed not only from the living species, but from all others known up to this time.
Since the days of Lamanon, other bones of Balæna have been discovered in the soil in different countries, but the study of these fossils has always left something to be desired. In 1806 a fossil Balæna was disinterred at Monte-Pulgnasco by M. Cortesi. Another skeleton, seventy-two feet long, was found on the banks of the river Forth, near Alloa, in Scotland. In 1816 many bones of this animal were discovered in a little valley formed by a brook running into the Chiavana, one of the affluents of the Po.
Cuvier has established, among the cetacean fossils, a particular genus, which he designates under the name ofZiphius. The animals to which he gave the name, however, are not identical either withthe Whales (Balænæ), the Cachelots or Sperm Whales, or with the Hyperoodons. They hold, in the order of Cetaceans, the place that the Palæotherium and Anoplotherium occupy among the Pachyderms, or that which the Megatherium and Megalonyx occupy in the order of the Edentates. TheZiphiusstill lives in the Mediterranean.
Fig. 178Fig. 178.—Pecten Jacobæus.(Living species.)
Fig. 178.—Pecten Jacobæus.(Living species.)
The genera of Mollusca, which distinguish this period from all others, are very numerous. They include the Cardium, Panopæa,Pecten (Fig. 178), Fusus, Murex, Cypræa, Voluta, Chenopus, Buccinum, Nassa, and many others.
ThePlioceneseries prevails over Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, where it is popularly known as the Crag. In Essex it rests directly on the London Clay. Near Norwich it rests on the Chalk.
ThePliocene rocksare divided into lower and upper. TheOlder Pliocenecomprises the White or Coralline Crag, including the Red Crag of Suffolk, containing marine shells, of which sixty per cent. are of extinct species. TheNewer Plioceneis represented by the Fluvio-marine or Norwich Crag, which last, according to the Rev. Osmond Fisher, is overlaid by Chillesford clay, a very variable and more arctic deposit, often passing suddenly into sands without a trace of clay.
The Norfolk Forest Bed rests upon the Chillesford clay, when that is not denuded.
A ferruginous bed, rich in mammalian remains, and known as the Elephant bed, overlies the Forest Bed, of which it is considered by the Rev. John Gunn to be an upper division.
The Crag, divided into three portions, is a local deposit of limited extent. It consists of variable beds of sand, gravel, and marl; sometimes it is a shelly ferruginous grit, as the Red Crag; at others a soft calcareous rock made up of shells and bryozoa, as the Coralline Crag.
TheCoralline Crag, of very limited extent in this country, ranges over about twenty miles between the rivers Stour and Alde, with a breadth of three or four. It consists of two divisions—an upper one, formed chiefly of the remains of Bryozoa, and a lower one of light-coloured sands, with a profusion of shells. The upper division is about thirty-six feet thick at Sudbourne in Suffolk, where it consists of a series of beds almost entirely composed of comminuted shells and remains of Bryozoa, forming a soft building-stone. The lower division is about forty-seven feet thick at Sutton; making the total thickness of the Coralline Crag about eighty-three feet.
Many of the Coralline Crag Mollusca belong to living species; they are supposed to indicate an equable climate free from intense cold—an inference rendered more probable by the prevalence of northern forms of shells, such asGlycimeris,Cyprina, andAstarte. The late Professor Edward Forbes, to whom science is indebted for so many philosophical deductions, points out some remarkable inferences drawn from the fauna of the Pliocene seas.[95]It appears that in theglacial period, which we shall shortly have under consideration, many shells, previously established in the temperate zone, retreated southwards, to avoid an uncongenial climate. The Professor gives a list of fifty which inhabited the British seas while the Coralline and Red Crag were forming, but which are all wanting in the glacial deposits;[96]from which he infers that they migrated at the approach of the glacial period, and returned again northwards, when the temperate climate was restored.[97]
In the Upper or Mammaliferous (or Norwich) Crag, of which there is a good exposure in a pit near the asylum at Thorpe, bones of Mammalia are found with existing species of shells. The greater number of the Mammalian remains have been supposed, until lately, to be extraneous fossils; but they are now considered by Mr. Prestwich as truly contemporaneous. The peculiar mixture of southern forms of life with others of a more northern type lead to the inference that, at this early period, a lowering of temperature began gradually to set in from the period of the Coralline Crag to that of the Forest Bed, which marks the commencement of the Glacial Period.
The distinction between the Mammaliferous Crag of Norwich and the Red Crag of Suffolk is purely palæontological, no case of superposition having yet been discovered, and they are now generally considered as contemporaneous. Two Proboscidians abundant during the Crag period were theMastodon Arvernensisand theElephas meridionalis. In the Red Crag the Mastodon is stated by the Rev. John Gunn to be more abundant than the Elephant, while in the Norwich beds their proportions are nearly equal.
At or near the base of the Red Crag there is a remarkable accumulation, varying in thickness from a few inches to two feet, of bones, teeth, and phosphatic nodules (called coprolites), which are worked for making superphosphate of lime for agricultural manure.
The foreign equivalents of the older Pliocene are found in thesub-Apennine strata. These rocks are sufficiently remarkable in the county of Suffolk, where they consist of a series of marine beds of quartzose sand, coloured red by ferruginous matter.
At the foot of the Apennine chain, which forms the backbone, asit were, of Italy, throwing out many spurs, the formations on either side, and on both sides of the Adriatic, are Tertiary strata; they form in many cases, low hills lying between the Apennines of Secondary formation and the sea, the strata generally being a light-brown or bluish marl covered with yellow calcareous sand and gravel, with some fossil shells, which, according to Brocchi, are found all over Italy. But this wide range includes some older Tertiary formations, as in the strata of the Superga near Turin, which are Miocene.
TheAntwerpCrag, which is of the same age with the Red and Coralline Crag of Suffolk, forms great accumulations upon divers points of Europe: at Antwerp in Belgium, at Carentan and Perpignan, and, we believe, in the basin of the Rhône, in France. The thickest deposits of this rock consist of clay and sand, alternating with marl and arenaceous limestone. These constitute the sub-Apennine hills, alluded to above as extending on both slopes of the Apennines. This deposit occupies the Upper Val d’Arno, above Florence. Its presence is recognised over a great part of Australia. Finally, the seven hills of Rome are composed, in part, of marine Tertiary rocks belonging to the Pliocene period.
Plate XXVXXV.—Ideal Landscape of the Pliocene Period.
XXV.—Ideal Landscape of the Pliocene Period.
InPlate XXV.an ideal landscape of the Pliocene period is given under European latitudes. In the background of the picture, a mountain, recently thrown up, reminds us that the period was one of frequent convulsions, in which the land was disturbed and upheaved, and mountains and mountain-ranges made their appearance. The vegetation is nearly identical with the present. We see assembled in the foreground the more important animals of the period—the fossil species, as well as those which have survived to the present time.
At the close of the Pliocene period, and in consequence of the deposits left by the seas of the Tertiary epoch, the continent of Europe was nearly what it is now; few permanent changes have occurred since to disturb its general outline. Although the point does not admit of actual proof, there is strong presumptive evidence that in this period, or in that immediately subsequent to it, the entire European area, with some trifling exceptions, including the Alps and Apennines, emerged from the deep. In Sicily, Newer Pliocene rocks, covering nearly half the surface of the island, have been raised from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the level of the sea. Fossil shells have been observed at the height of 8,000 feet in the Pyrenees; and, as if to fix the date of upheaval, there are great masses of granite which have penetrated the Lias and the Chalk. Fossil shells of the period are also found at a height of 10,000 feet in the Alps, at 13,000 feet in the Andes, and at 18,000 feet in the Himalayas.
In the mountainous regions of the Alps it is always difficult to determine the age of beds, in consequence of the disturbed state of the strata; for instance, the lofty chain of the Swiss Jura consists of many parallel ridges, with intervening longitudinal valleys; the ridges formed of contorted fossiliferous strata, which are extensive in proportion to the number and thickness of the formations which have been exposed on upheaval. The proofs which these regions offer of comparatively recent elevation are numerous. In the central Alps, Cretaceous, Oolitic, Liassic, and Eocene strata are found at the loftiest summits, passing insensibly into metamorphic rocks of granular limestone, and into talcose and mica-schists. In the eastern parts of the chain the older fossiliferous rocks are recognised in similar positions, presenting signs of intense Plutonic action. Oolitic and Cretaceous strata have been raised 12,000 feet, Eocene 10,000, and Miocene 4,000 and 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. Equally striking proofs of recent elevation exist in the Apennines; the celebrated Carrara marble, once supposed—from its crystalline texture and the absence of fossils, and from its resting—1. on talcose schists, 2. on quartz and gneiss—to be very ancient, now turns out to be an altered limestone of the Oolitic series, and the underlying crystalline rocks to be metamorphosed Secondary sandstones and shales. Had all these rocks undergone complete metamorphism, another page in the earth’s history would have been obscured. As it is, the proofs of what we state are found in the gradual approach of the rocks to their unaltered condition as the distance from the intrusive rock increases. This intrusive rock, however, does not always reach the surface, but it exists below at no great depth, and is observed piercing through the talcose gneiss, and passing up into Secondary strata.
At the close of this epoch, therefore, there is every probability that Europe and Asia had pretty nearly attained their present general configuration.
[81]Lyell’s “Elements of Geology,” p. 187.[82]This limestone belongs to the Bembridge beds, and forms part of the Fluvio-marine series. See “Survey Memoir on the Geology of the Isle of Wight,” by H. W. Bristow.[83]Similar beds of Miliolite limestone are found in the Middle Bagshot beds on the coast of Sussex, off Selsey—the only instance in England of the occurrence of such calcareous deposits of Middle Eocene age.—H. W. B.[84]“Elements of Geology,” p. 292.[85]“Memoir of the Geological Survey of Great Britain. The Geology of Middlesex, &c.;” by W. Whitaker, p. 9.[86]Prestwich.Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., vol. x., p. 448.[87]Detailed sections of the whole of the Tertiary strata of the Isle of Wight have been constructed by Mr. H. W. Bristow from actual measurement of the beds in their regular order of succession, as displayed at Hempstead, Whitecliff Bay, Colwell and Tolland’s Bays, Headon Hill, and Alum Bay. These sections, published by the Geological Survey of Great Britain, show the thickness, mineral character, and organic remains found in each stratum, and are accompanied by a pamphlet in explanation.[88]“Elements of Geology,” p. 300.[89]Ibid., p. 305.[90]Quarterly Journal of Geol. Soc., vol. vii., p. 89.[91]See Bristow’s “Glossary of Mineralogy,” p. 11.[92]“Pallas’s Voyage,” vol. iv., pp. 130-134.[93]“Commentarii Academiæ Petersburgicæ,” p. 3.[94]Dr. James Murie,Geological Magazine, vol. viii., p. 438.[95]Edward Forbes in “Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain,” vol. i., p. 336.[96]For full information on these deposits the reader is referred to the “Memoirs on the Structure of the Crag-beds of Norfolk and Suffolk,” by J. Prestwich, F.R.S., in theQuart. Jour. Geol. Soc., vol. xxvii., pp. 115, 325, and 452 (1871). Also to the many Papers by the Messrs. Searles Wood published in theQuar. Jour. Geol. Soc., theAnn. Nat. Hist., thePhil. Mag., &c.[97]Lyell’s “Elements of Geology,” p. 203.
[81]Lyell’s “Elements of Geology,” p. 187.
[82]This limestone belongs to the Bembridge beds, and forms part of the Fluvio-marine series. See “Survey Memoir on the Geology of the Isle of Wight,” by H. W. Bristow.
[83]Similar beds of Miliolite limestone are found in the Middle Bagshot beds on the coast of Sussex, off Selsey—the only instance in England of the occurrence of such calcareous deposits of Middle Eocene age.—H. W. B.
[84]“Elements of Geology,” p. 292.
[85]“Memoir of the Geological Survey of Great Britain. The Geology of Middlesex, &c.;” by W. Whitaker, p. 9.
[86]Prestwich.Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., vol. x., p. 448.
[87]Detailed sections of the whole of the Tertiary strata of the Isle of Wight have been constructed by Mr. H. W. Bristow from actual measurement of the beds in their regular order of succession, as displayed at Hempstead, Whitecliff Bay, Colwell and Tolland’s Bays, Headon Hill, and Alum Bay. These sections, published by the Geological Survey of Great Britain, show the thickness, mineral character, and organic remains found in each stratum, and are accompanied by a pamphlet in explanation.
[88]“Elements of Geology,” p. 300.
[89]Ibid., p. 305.
[90]Quarterly Journal of Geol. Soc., vol. vii., p. 89.
[91]See Bristow’s “Glossary of Mineralogy,” p. 11.
[92]“Pallas’s Voyage,” vol. iv., pp. 130-134.
[93]“Commentarii Academiæ Petersburgicæ,” p. 3.
[94]Dr. James Murie,Geological Magazine, vol. viii., p. 438.
[95]Edward Forbes in “Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain,” vol. i., p. 336.
[96]For full information on these deposits the reader is referred to the “Memoirs on the Structure of the Crag-beds of Norfolk and Suffolk,” by J. Prestwich, F.R.S., in theQuart. Jour. Geol. Soc., vol. xxvii., pp. 115, 325, and 452 (1871). Also to the many Papers by the Messrs. Searles Wood published in theQuar. Jour. Geol. Soc., theAnn. Nat. Hist., thePhil. Mag., &c.
[97]Lyell’s “Elements of Geology,” p. 203.
The Quaternary epoch of the history of our globe commences at the close of the Tertiary epoch, and brings the narrative of its revolutions down to our own times.
The tranquillity of the globe was only disturbed during this era by certain cataclysms whose sphere was limited and local, and by an interval of cold of very extended duration; thedelugesand theglacialperiod—these are the two most remarkable peculiarities which distinguished this epoch. But the fact which predominates in the Quaternary epoch, and distinguishes it from all other phases of the earth’s history is the appearance of man, the culminating and supreme work of the Creator of the universe.
In this last phase of the history of the earth geology recognises three chronological divisions:—
1. The European Deluges.2. The Glacial Period.3. The creation of man and subsequent Asiatic Deluge.
1. The European Deluges.
2. The Glacial Period.
3. The creation of man and subsequent Asiatic Deluge.
Before describing the three orders of events which occurred in the Quaternary epoch, we shall present a brief sketch of the organic kingdoms of Nature, namely, of the animals and vegetables which flourished at this date, and the new formations which arose. Lyell, and some other geologists, designate this thePost-Tertiary Epoch, which they divide into two subordinate groups.—1.The Post-Pliocene Period; 2.The Recent or Pleistocene Period.
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 onlyre-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.
Fig. 179Fig. 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.
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 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, theMachairodus(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.
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 townis 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 theglacial 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 theDinornisandEpiornis, among birds. In America there existed in the Quaternary epoch some Edentates of colossal dimensions and of very peculiar structure, these wereMegatherium,Megalonyx, andMylodon; we shall pass these animals in review, beginning with those of our own hemisphere.
Fig. 180Fig. 180.—Skeleton of the Mammoth, Elephas primigenius.
Fig. 180.—Skeleton of the Mammoth, Elephas primigenius.
The Mammoth, the skeleton of which is represented inFig. 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 ofElephas primigenius.
Fig. 181Fig. 181.—Tooth of the Mammoth.
Fig. 181.—Tooth of the Mammoth.
In all ages, and in almost all countries, chance discoveries havebeen 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 weresometimes 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.”
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—entitledGigantology. 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, ateach 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 theskeleton 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 thefossil 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 theEbur fossile, orUnicornu 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 Elephantswhich 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 depositoriesbecome. 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 thisisle 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.
TheIsle of Boneshas 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 theMammoth, and its tusks that ofmammoth horns. The celebrated Russian savant, Pallas, who gave the first systematic description of the Mammoth, asserts that the name is derived from the wordmama, which in the Tartar idiom signifies theearth. According to others, the name is derived frombehemoth, mentioned in the Book of Job; or from the epithetmahemoth, 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 ittien-schu, and weread, in the great Chinese work on natural history, which was written in the sixteenth century: “The animal namedtien-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 alsotyn-schuoryn-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: “Thetyn-schuhaunts 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 riverTamschuann-tuytook place (in 1571), a great many tyn-schu appeared in the plain; it fed on the roots of the plantfu-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 asthat 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 ofits 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 bankof 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.”