NOTE XXII. § 123. Fossil Bones. 403. The remains of organized bodies, at present included in the solid parts of the globe, may be divided into three classes. The first consists of the shells, corals, and even bodies of fish, and amphibious animals, which are now converted into stone, and make integrant parts of the solid rock. All these are parts of animals that existed before the formation of the present land, or even of the rocks whereof it consists. These remains have been already treated of, and the evidence which they furnish must ever be regarded as of the utmost importance in the theory of the earth. The second class consists of remains, which, by the help of stalactitical concretions, are converted into stone. These are the exuviæ of animals, which existed on the very same continents on which we now dwell, and are no doubt the most ancient among their inhabitants, of which any monument is preserved. In comparison of the first class, they must, nevertheless, be considered as of very modern origin. 404. The third class consists of the bones of animals found in the loose earth or soil; these have not acquired a stony character, and their na ture appears to be but little changed, except by the progress of decomposition and of mouldering into earth. No decided line can be drawn between the antiquity of this and the preceding class, as there may be between the preceding and the first. In some instances, the objects of this third class may be coëval with those of the second; in general, they must be accounted of later origin, as they are certainly not preserved in a manner so well fitted for long continuance. Of 405. The animal remains of the second class, are generally found in the neighbourhood of limestone strata, and are either enveloped or penetrated by calcareous, or sometimes ferruginous matter. this sort are the bones found in the rock of Gibraltar, and on the coast of Dalmatia. The latter are peculiarly marked for their number, and the extent of the country over which they are scattered, leaving it doubtful whether they are the work of successive ages, or of some sudden catastrophe that has assembled in one place, and overwhelmed with immediate destruction, a vast multitude of the inhabitants of the globe. These remains are found in greatest abundance in the islands of Cherso and Osero; and always in what the Abbé Fortis calls an ocreostalactitic earth. The bones are often in the state of mere splinters, the broken and confused relics of various animals, concreted with fragments of marble and lime, in clefts and chasms of the strata. * Sometimes human bones are said to be found in these confused masses. 406. A very remarkable collection of bones in this state is found in the caves of Bayreuth in Franconia. Many of these belong, as is inferred with great certainty from the structure of their teeth, to a carnivorous animal of vast size, and having very little affinity to any of those that are now known. The bones are found in different states, some being without any stalactitical concretion, and having the calcareous earth still united to the phosphoric acid, so that they belong to the third, rather than the second, of the preceding divisions. In others, the phosphoric acid has wholly disappeared, and given place to the carbonic. The number of these bones, accumulated in the same place, is matter of astonishment, when it is considered, that the animals to which they belonged were carnivorous, so that more than two can never have lived in the same cavern at the same time. The caves of Bayreuth seem to have been the den and the tomb of a whole dynasty of unknown monsters, that issued from this central spot to devour the feebler inhabitants of the woods, during a long succession of ages, before man had * Travels into Dalmatia, p. 449. subdued the earth, and freed it from all domination but his own. 407. The fossil bones of the second and third class, but chiefly of the third, have now afforded matter of conjecture and discussion for more than a century. The facts with respect to them are very numerous and interesting, but can be considered here only very generally. The remains of this kind, consist of the bones only of large animals, so that they have generally been compared with those of the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, or other animals of great size. The bones of smaller animals have also been found, but much more rarely than the other. It is usually remarked, that the bones thus discovered in the earth are larger than those of the similar living animals. Another general fact concerning these remains, is, that they are found in all countries whatsoever, but always in the loose or travelled earth, and never in the genuine strata. Since the year 1696, when the attention of the curious was called to this subject, by the skeleton of an elephant dug up in Thuringia, and described by Tentzelius, there is hardly a country in Europe which has not afforded instances of the same kind. Fossil bones, particularly grinders and tusks of elephants, have been Phil. Trans. Vol. XIX. p. 757. * found in other places of Germany, in Poland, France, Italy, Britain, Ireland, and even Iceland. * Two countries, however, afford them in greater abundance by far than any other part of the known world; namely, the plains of Siberia in the old continent, and the flat grounds on the banks of the Ohio in the new. t 408. When the bones in Siberia were first discovered, they were supposed to belong to an animal that lived under ground, to which they gave the name of the mammouth; and the credit bestowed on this absurd fiction, is a proof of the strong desire which all men feel of reconciling extraordinary appearances with the regular course of nature. Much skill, however, in natural history was not required to discover that many of the bones in question resembled those of the elephant, particularly the grinders and the tusks of that animal. Others resembled the bones of the rhinoceros; and a head of that kind, having the hide preserved upon it, was found in Siberia, and is still in the imperial cabinet at Petersburgh. Pallas has described the fossil bones which he found in the museum at Petersburgh, on his being appointed to the superintendence of it, and enu A grinder of an elephant found in Iceland, is described by Bartholinus, Acta Hafniens. Vol. I. p. 83. The fossil bones on the Ohio are described in two papers by Mr P. Collinson, Phil. Trans. Vol. LVII. p. 464 and 468. |