Part 28

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.

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, and a whale very like our rorquals, both discovered in Lombardy by M. Cortesi; a large head of a whale found within the very precincts of Paris, 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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Another species, of rarer occurrence, and peculiar to more temperate climates (Rh. incisivus), had incisors like our present rhinoceroses of the East Indies, and, in particular, resembled that of Sumatra; 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. 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. 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. 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.

The Horse genus also existed in those times. 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.

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.