without any difficulty, imagine the bodies of elephants, rhinoceri, bears, lions, and other large, coarse-skinned animals, floating upon the waters for several weeks, or even still longer, if they were rapidly carried into a cool latitude. We have not many positive data on which to form a judgment as to the length of time necessary for floating a body from the equatorial to the more northern regions; but, as one instance, well authenticated, is as valuable for our purpose as many, I shall quote that mentioned by Mr. Granville Penn, of the "Newcastle, 60 guns, Captain Fanshawe, which sailed from Halifax, in Nova Scotia, on the morning of the 12th of December, 1821, and anchored at Spithead on Christmas day, having traversed a space of 3000 miles in thirteen days.* Had it not been for an interruption of forty-eight hours, occasioned by contrary winds, this distance would have been run in eleven days. The average progress, therefore, was 273 miles in the twenty-four hours; and on one of the days, the vessel actually ran 288 miles. As the wind blew almost a constant hurricane, very little sail was carried."t We have here a recent instance of a large floating body following the direct line of one of the very currents which we have traced, (assisted, it is true, by a high wind,) and passing over a space of nearly 4000 miles in about eleven days, with very little assistance from artificial means. One glance at the map of the world will show that the same favourable current, and the same powerful wind, would, in a few days more, have carried the same body into the polar seas. Now, from the latitude of 20 degrees north, (or about the meridian of the centre of Hindostan,) to that of 75 degrees, (or that of the north of Nova Zembla and Siberia,) is not more than a distance of 3300 miles; and, therefore, even allowing for a smaller floating body than a ship of war, without much sail, we cannot hesitate in concluding to the impossibility of large inflated animal bodies remaining entire during a longer time than would be necessary for the passage of this distance, at a period peculiarly marked by storms and tempests. We are not, however, to suppose it probable, that the greater number of dead bodies reached a high northern lati *As the longitude of Halifax is 68 degrees west of London, the direct distance passed over by the Newcastle, must be fully 3700 geographical miles, or nearly 1000 more than Mr. Penn has calculated upon. + Comp. Estim. tude in an entire state. On the contrary, numbers must have sunk in every part of the temperate regions, and become embedded, piece-meal, in the rapidly accumulating diluvial formations where we now find them in a fossil state. But it must be admitted to be a remarkably corroborative circumstance, in support of this view of the subject, that, as the elephant, the hippopotamus and rhinoceros, are the animals, of all others, we should expect to float longest in an entire state, from the great strength and thickness of their skins, so they are the very animals now found in such vast numbers in the frozen regions, as to make their ivory a very considerable and valuable branch of northern commerce. CHAPTER X. High Importance of the Evidence of Fossils.-Siberian Mammoth.-The entire Elephant of the Lena.-Theories founded on this Specimen, unsupported by facts.-Consistent mode of accounting for Tropical Productions in Cold Climates.-Unchanged condition of the Climates of the Earth.-Italian Deposits.-Monte Bolca.—Fossils on the Coast of Norfolk.— Formations of the South of England.-The same View extended to the Continent. We may now proceed to the consideration of some of the most remarkable fossil remains of quadrupeds that have been found in the temperate regions, and in such quantities in high northern latitudes, as to have given rise to much speculation and vague theory amongst philosophers, respecting the means by which they came into their present unnatural situations. The bones of large quadrupeds have been observed, more or less, in all the quarters of the globe, where any attention has been paid to the search for them. In early times they were considered as the bones of the giants which were supposed to have formerly inhabited the earth. As mankind became more enlightened, these absurd opinions gave place to something nearer approaching the truth: it is, however, only within the last half century that science has applied that attention to the subject, of which it is so highly deserving; though the number of different opinions relating to these animal remains, proves how uncertain philosophers still are respecting them. The great attention of late paid to comparative anatomy, more especially in France, under that distinguished naturalist, the late Baron Cuvier, has greatly increased our knowledge of the different classes of animals, the remains of which are now found in the earth. But the geological views of that eminent man by no means kept pace with his zoological and anatomical knowledge. His theories of the earth, though exhibiting much talent, are all formed upon those very principles of secondary causes which we have found to be so objectional and unsound. His numerous revolutions, his alternate salt and fresh water deluges, all bespeak the school from which he derived his earliest geological ideas, and of which he himself latterly became the head. We cannot, therefore, with any consistency, or hope of profitable instruction, follow the track by which he would lead us to the origin of these fossil remains. It is in the arctic and north polar regions of the earth, that some of the most remarkable and best preserved of these fossil remains have been discovered. There cannot, however, be a doubt, that if the south polar regions were equally accessible, we should also find their icy masses charged with the remains of the antediluvian dead. In Siberia, that barren region, so associated in our minds with tyrannical cruelty, solitude and desolation, where neque ullæ Aut herbæ campo apparent aut arbore frondes: Terra gelu late, Semper hiems, semper spirantes frigora cauri, the great steppes, or plains, formed of a sandy and gravelly soil, intermixed with salt lakes, contain such quantities of the remains of elephants, that the fossil ivory forms a highly important and valuable branch of commerce. The natives of that country have given the name of mammoth, or the mole, to these fossil elephants; and, however strange it may appear, they look upon them as the bodies of animals now living under the ground; which idea is, however, founded on appearances and facts which render it in some sort plausible. For those who inhabit the northern regions, frequently find the remains of these large bodies still fresh and bloody; and as no such animals are ever seen on the surface of the ground in those regions, it is not unnatural for the ignorant peasants to suppose them to be a species of gigantic mole, which still lives and burrows in the earth. The able historian, Müller, who resided at Moscow in 1779, admitted that he was of the same opinion. About the year 1799, a large object was observed by some fishermen, near the mouth of the Lena, on the coast of the Arctic ocean, to project from an icy bank, but beyond the reach of examination. For several following seasons the same object was remarked, and every year a little more disengaged from its icy bed, by the slow melting of the ice during the short summers. At length, in 1803, it became entirely detached, and the enormous carcase of a mammoth fell upon the sand bank below. This remarkable specimen was quite entire when it first fell, and the flesh so well preserved that it was greedily devoured by the white bears, and by the dogs of the fishermen.* In 1806, the remains of this carcase were examined by Mr. Adams, a member of the academy of St. Petersburgh, when the greater part of the bones, and a large portion of the skin yet remained. The brain was then still within the skull, but shrunk and dried up; and one of the ears was well preserved, retaining a tuft of strong bristly hair. The animal was a male, and is described as having had a sort of mane on its neck. As the description of Mr. Adams, however, was given nearly three years after the body fell on the sands, and as it had been partially exposed to the atmosphere during several years more, there can be little doubt that, if it had been dug out of its icy bed when first seen in 1799, we should have had a complete and minute description and drawing of one species of the antediluvian elephant. Much stress has been laid by naturalists, whose theories of the earth required the aid of such evidence, on the remarkable shaggy coat of hair, with a species of wool at the roots, with which this antediluvian elephant was clothed: and it has been advanced, as a positive proof of the animal having lived where his remains were discovered; and, consequently, that * It may appear to some, an improbable part of the history of this remarkable fossil, that any animal substance could have so long resisted decomposition, when acted upon by a solar heat, capable of melting the ice in which it was embedded. But it must be considered, that, in those high northern latitudes, as in the great atmospheric elevations of mountain ridges, in the regions of eternal snow, the air is of so rare and dry a nature, that the decomposition of animal substances can scarcely take place under any circumstances. It is true, that the direct rays of the sun act, in such situations, for a short time, with great power. But a general heat is never produced, such as occasions rapid fermentation in the equatorial and temperate regions. |