Part 39

The Miocene rocks, of marine origin, are very imperfectly represented in the Paris basin, and their composition changes with the localities. They are divided into two groups of beds: 1. Molasse, or soft clay; 2. Faluns, or shelly marl.

In the Paris basin the Molasse presents, at its base, quartzose sands of great thickness, sometimes pure, sometimes a little argillaceous or micaceous. They include beds of sandstone (with some limestone), which are worked in the quarries of Fontainebleau, d’Orsay, and Montmorency, for paving-stone for the streets of Paris and the neighbouring towns. This last formation is altogether marine. To these sands and sandstones succeeds a fresh-water deposit, formed of a whitish and partly siliceous limestone, which forms the ground of the plateau of La Beauce, between the valleys of the Seine and the Loire: this is called the Calcaire de la Beauce. It is there mixed with a reddish and more or less sandy clay, containing small blocks of burrh-stone used for millstones, easily recognised by their yellow-ochreous colour, and the numerous cavities or hollows with which their texture is honeycombed.

This grit, or silex meulier, is much used in Paris for the arches of cellars, underground conduits, sewers, &c.

The Faluns in the Paris basin consist of divers beds formed of shells and Corals, almost entirely broken up. In many parts of the country, and especially in the environs of Tours and Bordeaux, they are dug out for manuring the land. To the Falun series belong the fresh-water marl, limestone, and sand, which composed the celebrated mound of Sansan, near Auch, in the Department of Gers, in which M. Lartet found a considerable number of bones of Turtles, Birds, and especially Mammals, such as Mastodon and Dinotherium, together with a species of long-armed ape, which he named Pithecus antiquus, from the circumstance of its affording the earliest instance of the discovery of the remains of the quadrumana, or monkey-tribe, in Europe. Isolated masses of Faluns occur, also, near the mouth of the Loire and to the south of Tours, and in Brittany.

PLIOCENE PERIOD.

This last period of the Tertiary epoch was marked, in some parts of Europe, by great movements of the terrestrial crust, always due to the same cause--namely, the continual and gradual cooling of the globe. This leads us to recall what we have repeatedly stated, that this cooling, during which the outer zone of the fluid mass passed to the solid state, produced irregularities and inequalities in the external surface, sometimes accompanied by fractures through which the semi-fluid or pasty matter poured itself; leading afterwards to the upheaval of mountain ranges through these gaping chasms. Thus, during the Pliocene period, many mountains and mountain-chains were formed in Europe by basaltic and volcanic eruptions. These upheavals were preceded by sudden and irregular movements of the elastic mass of the crust--by earthquakes, in short--phenomena which have been already sufficiently explained.

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In order to understand the nature of the vegetation of the period, as compared with that with which we are familiar, let us listen to M. Lecoq: “Arrived, finally,” says that author, “at the last period which preceded our own epoch--the epoch in which the temperate zones were still embellished by tropical forms of vegetation, which were, however, slowly declining, driven out as it were by a cooling climate and by the invasion of more vigorous species--great terrestrial commotions took place: mountains are covered with eternal snow; continents now take their present forms; but many great lakes, now dried up, still existed; great rivers flowed majestically through smiling countries, whose surface man had not yet come to modify.

“Two hundred and twelve species compose this rich flora, in which the Ferns of the earlier ages of the world are scarcely indicated, where the Palms seem to have quite disappeared, and we see forms much more like those which are constantly under our observation. The Culmites arundinaceus (Unger) abounds near the water, where also grows the Cyperites tertiarius (Unger), where floats Dotamogeton geniculatus (Braun), and where we see submerged Isoctites Brunnii (Unger). Great Conifers still form the forests. This fine family has, as we have seen, passed through every epoch, and still presents us with its elegant forms and persistent evergreen foliage; Taxodites, Thuyoxylum, Abietites, Pinites, Eleoxylon, and Taxites being still the forms most abundant in these old natural forests.

“The predominating character of this period is the abundance of the group of the Amentaceæ; whilst the Conifers are thirty-two in number, of the other we reckon fifty-two species, among which are many European genera, such as Alnus; Quercus, the oak; Salix, the willow; Fagus, the beech; Betula, the birch, &c.

“The following families constitute the arborescent flora of the period besides those already mentioned:--Balsaminaceæ, Lauraceæ, Thymelæaceæ, Santalaceæ, Cornaceæ, Myrtaceæ, Calycanthaceæ, Pomaceæ, Rosaceæ, Amygdaleæ, Leguminosæ, Anacardiaceæ, Juglandaceæ, Rhamnaceæ, Celastrinaceæ, Sapindaceæ, Meliaceæ, Aceraceæ, Tiliaceæ, Magnoliaceæ, Capparidaceæ, Sapoteaceæ, Styracaceæ, Oleaceæ, Juncaceæ, Ericaceæ.

“In all these families great numbers of European genera are found, often even more abundant in species than now. Thus, as Brongniart observes, in this flora we reckon fourteen species of Maple; three species of Oak; and these species proceed from two or three very circumscribed localities, which would not probably, at the present time, represent in a radius of several leagues more than three or four species of these genera.”

An important difference distinguishes the Pliocene flora, as compared with those of preceding epochs, it is the absence of the family of Palms in the European flora, as noted by Lecoq, which forms such an essential botanical feature in the Miocene period. We mention this, because, in spite of the general analogy which exists between the vegetation of the Pliocene period and that of temperate regions in the present day, it does not appear that there is a single species of the former period absolutely identical with any one now growing in Europe. Thus, the European vegetation, even at the most recent geological epoch, differs specifically from the vegetation of our age, although a general resemblance is observable between the two.

The terrestrial animals of the Pliocene period present us with a great number of creatures alike remarkable from their proportions and from their structure. The Mammals and the batrachian Reptiles are alike deserving of our attention in this epoch. Among the former the Mastodon, which makes its first appearance in the Miocene formations, continues to be found, but becomes extinct apparently before we reach the upper beds. Others present themselves of genera totally unknown till now, some of them, such as the Hippopotamus, the Camel, the Horse, the Ox, and the Deer, surviving to the present day. The fossil horse, of all animals, is perhaps that which presents the greatest resemblance to existing individuals; but it was small, not exceeding the ass in size.

The Mastodon, which we have considered in our description of the preceding period, still existed in Pliocene times; in Fig. 174 the species living in this latter age is represented--it is called the Mastodon of Turin. As we see, it has only two projecting tusks or defences in the upper jaw, instead of four, like the American species, which is described in page 343. Other species belonging to this period are not uncommon; the portion of an upper jaw-bone with a tooth which was found in the Norwich Crag at Postwick, near Norwich, Dr. Falconer has shown to be a Pliocene species, first observed in Auvergne, and named by Messrs. Croizet and Jobert, its discoverers, Mastodon Arvernensis.

The Hippopotamus, Tapir, and Camel, which appear during the Pliocene period, present no peculiar characteristics to arrest our attention.

The Apes begin to abound in species; the Stags were already numerous.

The Rhinoceros, which made its appearance in the Miocene period, appears in greater numbers in the Pliocene deposits. The species peculiar to the Tertiary epoch is R. tichorhinus, which is descriptive of the bony partition which separated its two nostrils, an anatomical arrangement which is not found in our existing species. Two horns surmount the nose of this animal, as represented in Fig. 175. Two living species, namely, the Rhinoceros of Africa and Sumatra, have two horns, but they are much smaller than those of R. tichorhinus. The existing Indian Rhinoceros has only one horn.

The body of R. tichorhinus was covered with very thick hair, and its skin was without the rough and callous scales which we remark on the skin of the living African species.

Contemporaneously with this gigantic species there existed a dwarf species about the size of our Hog; and along with it several intermediate species, whose bones are found in sufficient numbers to enable us to reconstruct the skeleton. The curvature of the nasal bone of the fossil Rhinoceros and its gigantic horn have given rise to many tales and popular legends. The famous bird, the Roc, which played so great a part in the fabulous myths of the people of Asia, originated in the discovery in the bosom of the earth of the cranium and horns of a fossil Rhinoceros. The famous dragons of western tradition have a similar origin.

In the city of Klagenfurth, in Carinthia, is a fountain on which is sculptured the head of a monstrous dragon with six feet, and a head surmounted by a stout horn. According to the popular tradition still prevalent at Klagenfurth, this dragon lived in a cave, whence it issued from time to time to frighten and ravage the country. A bold cavalier kills the dragon, paying with his life for this proof of his courage. It is the same legend which is current in every country, from that of the valiant St. George and the Dragon and of St. Martha, who nearly about the same age conquered the fabulous Tarasque of the city of Languedoc, which bears the name of Tarascon.

But at Klagenfurth the popular legend has happily found a mouth-piece--the head of the pretended dragon, killed by the valorous knight, is preserved in the Hôtel de Ville, and this head has furnished the sculptor for his fountain with a model for the head of his statue. Herr Unger, of Vienna, recognised at a glance the cranium of the fossil Rhinoceros; its discovery in some cave had probably originated the fable of the knight and the dragon. And all legends are capable of some such explanation when we can trace them back to their sources, and reason upon the circumstances on which they are founded.

The traveller Pallas gives a very interesting account of a Rhinoceros tichorhinus which he saw, with his own eyes, taken out of the ice in which its skin, hair, and flesh had been preserved. It was in December, 1771, that the body of the Rhinoceros was observed buried in the frozen sand upon the banks of the Viloui, a river which discharges itself into the Lena below Yakutsk, in Siberia, in 64° north latitude. “I ought to speak,” the learned naturalist says, “of an interesting discovery which I owe to the Chevalier de Bril. Some Yakouts hunting this winter near the Viloui found the body of a large unknown animal. The Sieur Ivan Argounof, inspector of the Zimovic, had sent on to Irkutsk the head and a fore and hind foot of the animal, all very well preserved.” The Sieur Argounof, in his report, states that the animal was half buried in the sand; it measured as it lay three ells and three-quarters Russian in length, and he estimated its height at three and a half; the animal, still retaining its flesh, was covered with skin which resembled tanned leather; but it was so decomposed that he could only remove the fore and hind foot and the head, which he sent to Irkutsk, where Pallas saw them. “They appeared to me at first glance,” he says, “to belong to a Rhinoceros; the head especially was quite recognisable, since it was covered with its leathery skin, and the skin had preserved all its external characters, and many short hairs. The eyelids had even escaped total decay, and in the cranium here and there, under the skin, I perceived some matter which was evidently the remains of putrefied flesh. I also remarked in the feet the remains of the tendons and cartilages where the skin had been removed. The head was without its horn, and the feet without hoofs. The place of the horn, and the raised skin which had surrounded it, and the division which existed in both the hind and fore feet, were evident proofs of its being a Rhinoceros. In a dissertation addressed to the Academy of St. Petersburg, I have given a full account of this singular discovery. I give there reasons which prove that a Rhinoceros had penetrated nearly to the Lena, in the most northern regions, and which have led to the discovery of the remains of other strange animals in Siberia. I shall confine myself here to a description of the country where these curious remains were found, and to the cause of their long preservation.

“The country watered by the Viloui is mountainous; all the stratification of these mountains is horizontal. The beds consist of selenitic and calcareous schists and beds of clay, mixed with numerous beds of pyrites. On the banks of the Viloui we meet with coal much broken; probably coal-beds exist higher up near to the river. The brook Kemtendoï skirts a mountain entirely formed of selenite or crystallised sulphate of lime and of rock-salt, and this mountain of alabaster is more than 300 versts (about 200 miles), in ascending the Viloui, from the place where the Rhinoceros was found. Opposite to the place we see, near the river, a low hill, about a hundred feet high, which, though sandy, contains some beds of millstone. The body of the Rhinoceros had been buried in coarse gravelly sand near this hill, and the nature of the soil, which is always frozen, had preserved it. The soil near the Viloui never thaws to a great depth, for, although the rays of the sun soften the soil to the depth of two yards in the more elevated sandy places, in the valleys, where the soil is half sand and half clay, it remains frozen at the end of summer half an ell below the surface. Without this intense cold the skin of the animal and many parts of it would long since have perished. The animal could only have been transported from some southern country to the frozen north at the epoch of the Deluge, for the most ancient chronicles speak of no changes of the globe more recent, to which we could attribute the deposit of these remains and of the bones of elephants which are found dispersed all over Siberia.”

“Pallas’s Voyage,” vol. iv., pp. 130-134.

In this extract the author refers to a memoir previously published by himself, in the “Commentarii” of the Academy of St. Petersburg. This memoir, written in Latin, and entitled “Upon some Animals of Siberia,” has never been translated. After some general considerations, the author thus relates the circumstances attending the discovery of the fossil Rhinoceros, with some official documents affirming their correctness, and the manner in which the facts were brought under his notice by the Governor of Irkutsk, General Bril: “The skin and tendons of the head and feet still preserved considerable flexibility, imbued as it were with humidity from the earth; but the flesh exhaled a fetid ammoniacal odour, resembling that of a latrine. Compelled to cross the Baïkal Lake before the ice broke up, I could neither draw up a sufficiently careful description nor make sketches of the parts of the animal; but I made them place the remains, without leaving Irkutsk, upon a furnace, with orders that after my departure they should be dried by slow degrees and with the greatest care, continuing the process for some time, because the viscous matter which incessantly oozed out could only be dissipated by great heat. It happened, unfortunately, that during the operation the posterior part of the upper thigh and the foot were burnt in the overheated furnace, and they were thrown away; the head and the extremity of the hind foot only remained intact and undamaged by the process of drying. The odour of the softer parts, which still contained viscous matter in their interior, was changed by the desiccation into one resembling that of flesh decomposed in the sun.

“The Rhinoceros to which the members belonged was neither large for its species nor advanced in age, as the bones of the head attest, yet it was evidently an adult from the comparison made of the size of the cranium as compared with that of others of the same species more aged, which were afterwards found in a fossil state in divers parts of Siberia. The entire length of the head from the upper part of the nape of the neck to the extremity of the denuded bone of the jaw was thirty inches; the horns were not with the head, but we could still see evident vestiges of two horns, the nasal and frontal. The front, unequal and a little protuberant between the orbits, and of a rhomboidal egg-shape, is deficient in the skin, and only covered by a light horny membrane, bristling with straight hairs as hard as horn.

“The skin which covers the greater part of the head is in the dried state, a tenacious, fibrous substance, like curried leather, of a brownish-black on the outside and white in the inside; when burnt, it had the odour of common leather; the mouth, in the place where the lips should have been soft and fleshy, was putrid and much lacerated; the extremities of the maxillary bone were bare. Upon the left side, which had probably been longest exposed to the air, the skin was here and there decomposed and rubbed on the surface; nevertheless, the greater part of the mouth was so well preserved on the right side that the pores, or little holes from which doubtless the hairs had fallen, were still visible all over that side, and even in front. In the right side of the jaw there were still in certain places numerous hairs grouped in tufts, for the most part rubbed down to the roots, and here and there of two or three lines still retaining their full length. They stand erect, are stiff, and of an ashy colour, but with one or two black, and a little stiffer than the others, in each bunch.