Part 29 (2/2)

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, ent.i.tled ”_h.o.m.o 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 pa.s.sage 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--

”Betrubtes Beingerust von einem altem Sunder Erweiche, 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 ningen 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!

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ”Traite des Petrifactions,” published in 1758, describes with admiration the fossil of ningen, which he attributes, with Scheuchzer, to the _antediluvian man_.

Pierre Camper alone dared to oppose this opinion, which was then universally professed throughout Germany. He went to ningen 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 possibly pa.s.s for a man?” It was left to Cuvier to place in its true family the fossil of ningen; 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 vertebrae, 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 cert.i.tude of the methods of observation and induction on which palaeontology 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--the _Dolphin_ and _Balaena_ belonging 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 its long 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 of _Balaenodon Lamanoni_. The examination of this figure by Cuvier led him to recognise it as a bone belonging to one of the antediluvian Balaenae, 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 Balaena 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 Balaena was disinterred at Monte-Pulgnas...o...b.. 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 of _Ziphius_. The animals to which he gave the name, however, are not identical either with the Whales (_Balaenae_), the Cachelots or Sperm Whales, or with the Hyperoodons. They hold, in the order of Cetaceans, the place that the Palaeotherium and Anoplotherium occupy among the Pachyderms, or that which the Megatherium and Megalonyx occupy in the order of the Edentates. The _Ziphius_ still lives in the Mediterranean.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 178.--Pecten Jacobaeus.

(Living species.)]

The genera of Mollusca, which distinguish this period from all others, are very numerous. They include the Cardium, Panopaea, Pecten (Fig.

178), Fusus, Murex, Cypraea, Voluta, Chenopus, Buccinum, Na.s.sa, and many others.

The _Pliocene_ series prevails over Norfolk, Suffolk, and Ess.e.x, where it is popularly known as the Crag. In Ess.e.x it rests directly on the London Clay. Near Norwich it rests on the Chalk.

The _Pliocene rocks_ are divided into lower and upper. The _Older Pliocene_ comprises the White or Coralline Crag, including the Red Crag of Suffolk, containing marine sh.e.l.ls, of which sixty per cent. are of extinct species. The _Newer Pliocene_ is 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 pa.s.sing 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.

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