Essay on the Theory of the Earth

by baron Georges Cuvier

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.

In my work on Fossil Bones, the object which I proposed was to discover to what animals the osseous remains, with which the superficial strata of the globe are filled, may have belonged. In pursuing this object, I had to follow a path in which but little progress had hitherto been made. As an antiquary of a new order, I was obliged at once to learn the art of restoring these monuments of past revolutions to their original forms, and to discover their nature and relations; I had to collect and bring together in their original order, the fragments of which they consisted; to reconstruct, as it were, the ancient beings to which these fragments belonged; to reproduce them with all their proportions and characters; and, lastly, to compare them with those which now live at the surface of the globe:—an art almost unknown, and which presupposed a science whose first developments had scarcely yet been traced, that of the laws which regulate the co-existence of the forms of the different parts in organised beings. I had therefore to prepare myself for these inquiries, by others of a far more extensive kind, respecting the animals which still exist. Nothing, except an almost complete review of creation in its present state, could give a character of demonstration to the results of my investigation into its ancient state; but, from this review, I had at the same time to expect a great body of rules and affinities not less satisfactorily demonstrated; and it became obvious, that, in consequence of this essay upon a small portion of the theory of the earth, the whole animal kingdom would necessarily be in some measure subjected to new laws.

Thus I was encouraged in this twofold investigation, by the equal interest which it promised to possess, both with regard to the general science of anatomy, the essential basis of all those which treat of organised bodies, and with regard to the physical history of the globe, the foundation of mineralogy, geography, and even, it may be said, of the history of Man, and of all that it most concerns him to know with regard to himself.

If it be so interesting to us to follow, in the infancy of our species, the almost obliterated traces of extinct nations, why should it not also be so, to search, amid the darkness of the infancy of the Earth, for the traces of revolutions which have taken place anterior to the existence of all nations? We admire the power by which the human mind has measured the motions of the celestial bodies, which nature seemed to have concealed for ever from our view. Genius and science have burst the limits of space; and observations, explained by just reasoning, have unveiled the mechanism of the universe. Would it not also be glorious for man to burst the limits of time, and, by means of observations, to ascertain the history of this world, and the succession of events which preceded the birth of the human race? Astronomers have undoubtedly advanced more rapidly than naturalists; and the present period, with respect to the Theory of the Earth, bears some resemblance to that in which some philosophers fancied that the heavens were formed of polished stones, and that the moon was of the size of the Peloponnesus; but after Anaxagoras, came Copernicus and Kepler, who pointed the way to Newton; and why should not natural history also one day have its Newton?

Plan of this Essay.

What I especially propose to present in this discourse, is the plan and the result of my labours regarding Fossil Bones. I shall also attempt to trace a rapid sketch of the efforts that have been made up to the present day, to restore the history of the revolutions of the globe. The facts which I have been enabled to discover, form, without doubt, only a small portion of those which would be necessary to complete this ancient history; but several of them lead to decisive consequences, and the rigorous manner in which I have proceeded in their determination, affords me reason to think that they will be regarded as points definitively fixed, and which in their aggregate will form an epoch in science. Lastly, I trust their novelty will be a sufficient excuse for me, if I claim for them the earnest attention of my readers.

My object will first be to shew by what relations the history of the fossil bones of terrestrial animals connects itself with the theory of the earth, and for what reasons a peculiar importance is to be attributed to it, with reference to this subject. I shall then unfold the principles upon which is founded the art of determining these bones, or, in other words, of recognizing a genus, and of distinguishing a species, by a single fragment of bone,—an art, on the certainty of which depends that of my whole work, I shall give a rapid account of the new species, and of genera previously unknown, which the application of these principles has led me to discover, as well as the different kinds of deposits in which they are contained. And as the difference between these species and those which exist at the present day is bounded by certain limits, I shall show that these limits much exceed those which now distinguish the varieties of the same species. I shall therefore make known to what extent these varieties may go, whether from the influence of time, or from that of climate, or, lastly, from that of domestication.

In this way I shall be enabled to conclude, and to induce my readers to conclude with me, that great events were necessary to produce the more considerable differences which I have discovered. I shall next mention the particular modifications which my researches must necessarily introduce into the hitherto received opinions regarding the revolutions of the globe; and, lastly, I shall inquire how far the civil and religious history of different nations corresponds with the results of observation with regard to the physical history of the Earth, and with the probabilities which these observations afford concerning the period at which societies of men may have found fixed places of abode, and fields susceptible of cultivation, and at which, therefore, they may have assumed a durable form.

First Appearance of the Earth.

When the traveller passes over those fertile plains where gently flowing streams nourish in their course an abundant vegetation, and where the soil, inhabited by a numerous population, adorned with flourishing villages, opulent cities, and superb monuments, is never disturbed, except by the ravages of war, or by the oppression of the powerful, he is not led to suspect that Nature also has had her intestine wars, and that the surface of the globe has been broken up by revolutions and catastrophes. But his ideas change as soon as he digs into that soil which now presents so peaceful an aspect, or ascends to the hills which border the plain; his ideas are expanded, if I may use the expression, in proportion to the expansion of the view, and begin to embrace the full extent and grandeur of those ancient events, when he climbs the more elevated chains, whose base is skirted by these hills, or when, by following the beds of the torrents which descend from those chains, he penetrates, as it were, into their interior.

First proofs of Revolutions on the surface of the Globe.

The lowest and most level parts of the earth, exhibit nothing, even when penetrated to a very great depth, but horizontal strata composed of substances more or less varied, and containing almost all of them innumerable marine productions. Similar strata, with the same kind of productions, compose the lesser hills to a considerable height. Sometimes the shells are so numerous as to constitute of themselves the entire mass of the rock; they rise to elevations superior to the level of every part of the ocean, and are found in places where no sea could have carried them at the present day, under any circumstances; they are not only enveloped in loose sand, but are often inclosed in the hardest rocks. Every part of the earth, every hemisphere, every continent, every island of any extent, exhibits the same phenomenon.

The times are past when ignorance could maintain, that these remains of organized bodies are mere sportings of nature, productions generated in the womb of the Earth, by its own creative powers; and the efforts made by some metaphysicians of the present day, will not probably succeed in bringing these exploded opinions again into repute. A scrupulous comparison of the forms of these remains, of their texture, and often even of their chemical composition, does not disclose the slightest difference between the fossil shells and those which still inhabit the sea: the preservation of the former is not less perfect than that of the latter; most commonly we neither observe detrition nor fracture in them, nothing, in short, that announces a violent removal from their original places; the smallest of them retain their sharpest ridges, and their most delicate spines. They have, therefore, not only lived in the sea, but they have also been deposited by it. It is the sea which has left them in the places where they are now found. But this sea has remained for a certain period in those places; it has covered them long enough, and with sufficient tranquillity to form those deposits, so regular, so thick, so extensive, and partly also so solid, which contain those remains of aquatic animals. The basin of the sea has therefore undergone one change at least, either in extent, or in situation. Such is the result of the very first search, and of the most superficial examination.

The traces of revolutions become still more apparent and decisive, when we ascend a little higher, and approach nearer to the foot of the great chains. There are still found many beds of shells; some of these are even thicker and more solid; the shells are quite as numerous, and as well preserved, but they are no longer of the same species. The strata which contain them are not so generally horizontal; they assume an oblique position, and are sometimes almost vertical. While in the plains and low hills it was necessary to dig deep, in order to discover the succession of the beds, we here discover it at once by their exposed edges, as we follow the valleys that have been produced by their disjunction. Great masses of debris form at the foot of the cliffs, rounded hills, the height of which is augmented by every thaw and tempest.

These inclined strata, which form the ridges of the secondary mountains, do not rest upon the horizontal strata of the hills which are situate at their base, and which form the first steps in approaching them; but, on the contrary, dip under them, while the hills in question rest upon their declivities. When we dig through the horizontal strata in the vicinity of mountains whose strata are inclined, we find these inclined strata re-appearing below; and even sometimes, when the inclined strata are not too elevated, their summit is crowned by horizontal ones[1]. The inclined strata are therefore older than the horizontal strata; and as they must necessarily, at least the greater number of them, have been formed in a horizontal position, it is evident that they have been raised[2], and that this change in their direction has been effected before the others were superimposed upon them[3].

Thus the sea, previous to the deposition of the horizontal strata, had formed others, which, by the operation of problematical causes, were broken, raised, and overturned in a thousand ways; and, as several of those inclined strata which it had formed at more remote periods, rise higher than the horizontal strata which have succeeded them, and which surround them, the causes by which the inclination of these beds was effected, had also made them project above the level of the sea, and formed islands of them, or at least shoals and inequalities; and this must have happened, whether they had been raised by one extremity, or whether the depression of the opposite extremity had made the waters subside. This is the second result, not less clear, nor less satisfactorily demonstrated, than the first, to every one who will take the trouble of examining the monuments on which it is established.

Proofs that such revolutions have been numerous.

But it is not to this subversion of the ancient strata, nor to this retreat of the sea after the formation of the new strata, that the revolutions and changes which have given rise to the present state of the Earth are limited.

When we institute a more detailed comparison between the various strata and those remains of animals which they contain, we presently perceive, that this ancient sea has not always deposited mineral substances of the same kind, nor remains of animals of the same species; and that each of its deposits has not extended over the whole surface which it covered. There has existed a succession of variations; the former of which alone have been more or less general, while the others appear to have been much less so. The older the strata are, the more uniform is each of them over a great extent; the newer they are, the more limited are they, and the more subject to vary at small distances. Thus the displacements of the strata were accompanied and followed by changes in the nature of the fluid, and of the matters which it held in solution; and when certain strata, by making their appearance above the waters, had divided the surface of the seas by islands and projecting ridges, different changes might take place in particular basins.

Amidst these variations in the nature of the general fluid, it is evident, that the animals which lived in it could not remain the same. Their species, and even their genera, changed with the strata; and, although the same species occasionally recur at small distances, it may be announced as a general truth, that the shells of the ancient strata have forms peculiar to themselves; that they gradually disappear, so as no longer to be seen at all in the recent strata, and still less in the presently existing ocean, in which their corresponding species are never discovered, and where several, even of their genera, do not occur: that, on the contrary, the shells of the recent strata are similar, in respect to their genera, to those which exist in our seas; and that, in the latest and least consolidated of these strata, and in certain recent and limited deposits, there are some species which the most experienced eye could not distinguish from those which are found in the neighbouring seas.

There has, therefore, been a succession of variations in the economy of organic nature, which has been occasioned by those of the fluid in which the animals lived, or which has at least corresponded with them; and these variations have gradually conducted the classes of aquatic animals to their present state, till, at length, at the time when the sea retired from our continents for the last time, its inhabitants did not differ much from those which are found in it at the present day.

We say for the last time, because, if we examine with still greater care those remains of organised bodies, we discover, in the midst of even the oldest strata of marine formation, other strata replete with animal or vegetable remains of terrestrial or fresh-water productions; and, amongst the more recent strata, or, in other words, those that are nearest the surface, there are some in which land animals are buried under heaps of marine productions. Thus, the various catastrophes which have disturbed the strata, have not only caused the different parts of our continents to rise by degrees from the bosom of the waves, and diminished the extent of the basin of the ocean, but have also given rise to numerous shiftings of this basin. It has frequently happened, that lands which have been laid dry, have been again covered by the waters, in consequence either of their being ingulphed in the abyss, or of the sea having merely risen over them. The particular portions also, of the Earth, which the sea abandoned in its last retreat,—those which are now inhabited by man and terrestrial animals,—had already been once laid dry, and had then afforded subsistence to quadrupeds, birds, plants, and land productions of all kinds: the sea which left it had, therefore, covered it at a previous period[4].

The changes in the level of the waters have not, therefore, consisted solely in a more or less gradual, or more or less general retreat; there have been various successive irruptions and retreats, the final result of which, however, has been a universal depression of the level of the sea.

Proofs that these Revolutions have been sudden.

It is of much importance to remark, that these repeated irruptions and retreats of the sea have neither all been slow nor gradual; on the contrary, most of the catastrophes which have occasioned them have been sudden; and this is especially easy to be proved, with regard to the last of these catastrophes, that which, by a two-fold motion, has inundated, and afterwards laid dry, our present continents, or at least a part of the land which forms them at the present day. In the northern regions, it has left the carcases of large quadrupeds which became enveloped in the ice, and have thus been preserved even to our own times, with their skin, their hair, and their flesh. If they had not been frozen as soon as killed, they would have been decomposed by putrefaction. And, on the other hand, this eternal frost could not previously have occupied the places in which they have been seized by it, for they could not have lived in such a temperature. It was, therefore, at one and the same moment that these animals were destroyed, and the country which they inhabited became covered with ice. This event has been sudden, instantaneous, without any gradation; and what is so clearly demonstrated with respect to this last catastrophe, is not less so with reference to those which have preceded it. The breaking to pieces, the raising up and overturning of the older strata, leave no doubt upon the mind that they have been reduced to the state in which we now see them, by the action of sudden and violent causes; and even the force of the motions excited in the mass of waters, is still attested by the heaps of debris and rounded pebbles which are in many places interposed between the solid strata. Life, therefore, has often been disturbed on this earth by terrible events. Numberless living beings have been the victims of these catastrophes; some, which inhabited the dry land, have been swallowed up by inundations; others, which peopled the waters, have been laid dry, from the bottom of the sea having been suddenly raised; their very races have been extinguished for ever, and have left no other memorial of their existence than some fragments, which the naturalist can scarcely recognize.

Such are the conclusions to which we are necessarily led by the objects that we meet with at every step, and which we can always verify, by examples drawn from almost every country. These great and terrible events are every where distinctly recorded, so as to be always legible by the eye skilled to decypher their history in the monuments which they have left behind.

But what is still more astonishing and not less certain, life has not always existed upon the globe; and it is easy for the observer to distinguish the point at which it has begun to deposit its productions.

Proofs that there have been Revolutions anterior to the existence of living beings.

If we ascend to higher points of elevation, and advance towards the great ridges, the craggy summits of the mountain chains, we shall presently find those remains of marine animals, those innumerable shells, of which we have spoken, becoming more rare, and at length disappearing altogether. We arrive at strata of a different nature, which contain no vestiges of living beings. Nevertheless, their crystallization, and even their stratification, shew that they have been also in a liquid state at their formation; their inclined position, and the cliffs into which they are broken, shew that they also have been forcibly moved from their original places; the oblique manner in which they dip under the shelly strata, that they have been formed previously to these latter; and lastly, the height to which their rugged and bare peaks rise above all these shelly strata, that their summits had already emerged from the waters, when the shelly strata were forming.

Such are those celebrated Primitive Mountains which traverse our continents in different directions, raising themselves above the clouds, separating the basins of rivers from one another, affording, in their perennial snows, reservoirs which feed the springs, and forming, in some measure, the skeleton, and as it were the rough framework, of the Earth.

The eye perceives from afar, in the indentations with which their ridge has been marked, and in the sharp peaks with which it is bristled, indications of the violent manner in which they have been elevated. Their appearance, in this respect, is very different from that of those rounded mountains, and hills with long flat surfaces, whose less ancient masses have always remained in the situation in which they were quietly deposited by the waters of more recent seas.

These indications become more obvious as we approach. The valleys have no longer those gently-sloping sides, those salient and re-entering angles corresponding on either side to each other, which seem to denote the beds of ancient streams. They widen and they contract without any general rule; their waters, at one time, expand into lakes; at another, fall in torrents; and sometimes their rocks, suddenly approaching from each side, form transverse dikes, over which the waters tumble in cataracts. The dissevered strata, while they shew on one side their edges perpendicularly raised, on the other present large portions of their surface lying obliquely; they do not correspond in height, but those which, on one side, form the summit of the cliff, often dip underneath on the other, and are no longer visible.

Yet, amidst all this confusion, distinguished naturalists have been able to demonstrate, that there still reigns a certain order, and that those immense deposits, broken and overturned though they be, observe a regular succession with regard to each other, which is nearly the same in all the great mountain chains. According to them, Granite, of which the central ridges of the greater number of these chains consist, and which thus surmounts every other rock, is also the rock which is found deepest in the solid crust of the globe. It is the most ancient of those which we have found means of examining in the place assigned them by nature; and we inquire not at present, whether it owes its origin to a general fluid, which formerly held every thing in solution, or may have been the first consolidated by the cooling of a great mass in fusion, or even in a state of vapour[5]. Foliated rocks rest upon its sides, and form the lateral ridges of these great chains; schists, porphyries, sandstones, and talcose rocks, intermingle with their strata; lastly, granular marbles, and other limestones destitute of shells, resting upon the schists, form the outer ridges, the lower steps as it were, the counterforts, of these chains, and are the last formations, by which this unknown fluid, this sea without inhabitants, would seem to have prepared materials for the mollusca and zoophytes, which were presently to deposite upon these foundations vast heaps of their shells and corals.

We even find the first productions of these mollusca and zoophytes appearing in small numbers, and scattered at greater or less distances, in the last strata of these primitive formations, or in that portion of the crust of the globe to which geologists have given the name of Transition rocks. Here and there we meet with beds containing shells, interposed between certain granites of later formation than the others, between schists of various kinds, and between some newer beds of granular marbles. Life, which was in the end to obtain entire possession of the globe, seems, in these primordial times, to have struggled with the inert nature which formerly predominated; and it was not until a considerable time after, that it obtained the ascendancy over it, and acquired for itself the exclusive right of continuing and elevating the solid envelope of the Earth.

Hence, it is impossible to deny, that the masses which now constitute our highest mountains, have been originally in a liquid state; and that they have for a long time been covered by waters in which no living beings existed. Thus, it has not been only since the appearance of life that changes have been operated in the nature of the matters which have been deposited; for the masses formed previous to that event, have varied, as well as those which have been formed since. They have also experienced violent changes in their position, and a part of these changes must have taken place at the period when these masses existed by themselves, and were not covered over by the shelly masses. The proof of this lies in the overturnings, the disruptions, and the fissures, which are observable in their strata, as well as in those of more recent formations, and which are in the ancient strata even in greater number and better defined.

But these primitive masses have also undergone other revolutions since the formation of the secondary strata, and have, perhaps, given rise to, or at least have partaken of, some of those changes which these strata themselves have experienced. There are actually considerable portions of the primitive formations uncovered, although placed in lower situations than many of the secondary formations; and we cannot conceive how it should have so happened, unless the primitive strata in those places had forced themselves into view, after the secondary strata had been formed. In certain countries, we find numerous large blocks of primitive substances scattered over the surface of secondary formations, and separated by deep valleys, or even by arms of the sea, from the peaks or ridges from which they must have been derived. We must necessarily conclude, therefore, either that these blocks have been ejected by eruptions, or that the valleys (which must have stopped their course) did not exist at the time of their being transported; or, lastly, that the motions of the waters by which they were transported, exceeded in violence any thing that we can imagine at the present day[6].

Here, therefore, we have a collection of facts, a series of epochs, anterior to the present time, of which the successive steps may be perfectly ascertained, although the duration of their intervals cannot be defined with precision. They are so many fixed points, which serve to regulate and direct our inquiries respecting this ancient chronology.

Examination of the Causes which act at present on the surface of the Globe.

Let us now examine those changes which are taking place at the present day upon the globe, investigating the causes which still act in its surface, and endeavouring to determine the possible extent of their effects. This portion of the history of the Earth is so much the more important, that it has long been considered possible to explain the more ancient revolutions on its surface by means of these still existing causes; in the same manner as it is found easy to explain past events in political history, by an acquaintance with the passions and intrigues of the present day. But we shall presently see, that unfortunately the case is different in physical history:—the thread of operations is here broken; the march of Nature is changed; and none of the agents which she now employs, would have been sufficient for the production of her ancient works.

There still exist, however, four causes in full activity, which contribute to alter the surface of our continents. These are, rains and thaws, which waste down the steep mountains, and precipitate the fragments to their bottoms; running waters, which carry off these fragments, and deposit them in places where their current is abated; the sea, which undermines the foundations of elevated coasts, forming steep cliffs, and which throws up great banks of sand upon the low coasts; and, lastly, volcanoes, which pierce through the solid strata from below, elevate these strata, or spread over the surface vast quantities of ejected matter[7].

Of Slips, or Falling down of the Materials of Mountains.

In every place where the broken strata present their edges on abrupt surfaces, there fall down to their base, every spring, and even after every storm, fragments of their materials, which are rounded by rolling upon each other. These collected heaps gradually assume an inclination determined by the laws of cohesion, and thus form, at the bottom of the cliff, taluses, of greater or less elevation, according as the fragments which have fallen are more or less abundant. These taluses constitute the sides of the valleys in all elevated, mountainous regions, and are covered with a rich vegetation, whenever the fragments from the upper parts begin to fall less abundantly; but their want of solidity subjects themselves also to slips, when they are undermined by rivulets. On these occasions, towns, and rich and populous districts, are sometimes buried under the ruins of a mountain; the courses of rivers are interrupted, and lakes are formed in places which were before the abodes of fertility and cheerfulness. Fortunately these great slips happen but seldom, and the principal use of those hills of debris, is to furnish materials for the ravages of torrents.

Alluvial Formations[8].

The rains which fall, the vapours which are condensed, and the snows which are melted, upon the ridges and summits of mountains, descend, by an infinite number of rills, along their slopes, carrying with them some portions of the materials of which these slopes are composed, and tracing slight furrows by their passage. These rills soon unite in the deeper gutters with which the surface is marked, run off by the deep valleys which intersect their bottom, and thus form streams and rivers, which carry back to the sea the waters it had formerly supplied to the atmosphere. On the melting of the snows, or when a storm takes place, these mountain torrents become suddenly swollen, and rush down the declivities with a velocity proportioned to their steepness. They dash violently against the bases of those taluses of fallen fragments which cover the sides of all the high valleys, carrying off the already rounded fragments of which they are composed, and which thus become smoothed, and still farther polished, by attrition. But in proportion as they reach the more level valleys, where their violence is diminished, or when they arrive at more expanded basins, where their waters are permitted to spread, they throw out upon their banks the largest of those stones which they had rolled down. The smaller fragments are deposited still lower; and nothing reaches the great canal of the river excepting the minutest particles, or the most impalpable mud. It often happens, also, that before these streams unite to form great rivers, they have to pass through large and deep lakes, in which their mud is deposited, and from which their waters come forth limpid.

The lower rivers, and all the streams which descend from the less elevated mountains and hills, also produce effects, upon the districts through which they flow, more or less analogous to those of the torrents from the higher mountains. When these rivers are swollen by great rains, they attack the base of the earthy or sandy hills which they meet with in their course, and carry their fragments to be deposited upon the lower grounds, and which are thus, in some degree, raised by each succeeding inundation. Finally, when the rivers reach great lakes or the sea, and when that rapidity, which carried off and kept in suspension the particles of mud comes to cease entirely, these particles are deposited at the sides of their mouths, where they form low grounds, by which the shores are prolonged. And if these shores are such, that the sea also throws up sand upon them, and thus contributes to their increase; there are created, as it were, provinces, and even entire kingdoms, which usually become the most fertile, and speedily the richest, in the world, if their rulers permit human industry to exert itself in peace.

Formation of Downs.[9]

The effects which the sea produces, without the co-operation of rivers, are much less beneficial. When the coast is low, and the bottom sandy, the waves push the sand toward the shore, where, at every reflux of the tide, it becomes partially dried; and the wind, which almost always blows from the sea, drifts it upon the beach. Thus are formed those hillocks of sand, named Downs, which, if the industry of man does not fix them by suitable plants, move slowly, but invariably, toward the interior of the country, and overwhelm fields and dwellings, because the same wind that raises the sand of the beach upon the down, throws that of its summit in the opposite direction from the sea. When the nature of the sand, and that of the water which is raised with it, are such as to form a durable cement, the shells and bones, thrown upon the beach, become incrusted with it. Pieces of wood, trunks of trees, and plants growing near the sea, are enveloped in these aggregates; and thus are produced what might be denominated indurated downs, such as we see upon the coasts of New Holland, and of which a precise idea may be formed from the description given of them by Peron[10].

Formation of Cliffs or Steep Shores.

On the other hand, when the coast is high, the sea, which is thus prevented from throwing up any thing, exercises a destructive action upon it. Its waves, by sapping the foundation, cause the superincumbent portion of the face of the cliff, thus deprived of support, to be incessantly falling down in fragments. These fragments are tumbled about by the billows, until the softer and more divided parts disappear. The harder portions, from being rolled in contrary directions, assume the form of boulders and pebbles; and these, at length, accumulate in sufficient quantity to form a rampart, by which the bottom of the cliff is protected against farther depredations.

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Such is the action of water upon the solid land; and we see, that it consists almost entirely in reducing it to lower levels, but not indefinitely. The fragments of the great mountain ridges are carried down into the valleys; their finer particles, together with those of the lower hills and plains, are borne to the sea; alluvial depositions extend the coasts at the expence of the high grounds. These are limited effects, to which vegetation in general puts a stop, and which, besides, presuppose the existence of mountains, valleys, and plains, in short, all the inequalities of the globe; and which, therefore, cannot have given rise to these inequalities. The formation of downs is a phenomenon still more limited, both in regard to height and horizontal extent; and has no relation whatever to that of those enormous masses into the origin of which it is the object of geology to inquire.[11]

Depositions formed in Water.

Although we cannot obtain a precise knowledge of the action exerted by water within its own bosom, it is yet possible to determine its limits to a certain degree.

Lakes, pools, marshes, and sea-ports, into which rivulets discharge their waters, more especially when these descend from near and steep hills, deposit large quantities of mud, which would at length fill them up entirely, if care were not taken to clean them out. The sea also throws quantities of slime and sediment into harbours and creeks; into all places, in short, where its waters are more tranquil than ordinary. The currents also heap up at their meeting, or throw out at their sides, the sand which they are continually raising from the bottom of the sea, forming it into banks and shallows.

Stalactites.

Certain waters, after dissolving calcareous substances by means of the superabundant carbonic acid with which they are impregnated, allow these substances to crystallize after the acid has evaporated; and, in this manner, form stalactites, and other concretions. There are strata, confusedly crystallized in fresh water, which are sufficiently extensive to be compared with some of those which have been deposited by the ancient sea. The famous Travertine quarries of the neighbourhood of Rome, and the rocks of the same substance, which are formed, and continually varied in figure, by the river of Teverona, are generally known. These two modes of action may be combined; the deposits accumulated by the sea may be solidified by stalactite. Thus, when springs abounding in calcareous matter, or containing some other substance in solution, happen to fall into places where these deposits are formed, we then find aggregates in which marine and fresh-water productions may be blended. Of this description are the banks in the island of Guadeloupe, which, along with human skeletons, present land and sea shells mingled together. Of the same nature also is the quarry described by Saussure, in the neighbourhood of Messina, in which the sandstone is seen forming by the consolidation of the sand thrown up by the sea.

Lithophytes.

In the torrid zone, where lithophytes of many species abound, and are propagated with great rapidity, their strong trunks are interwoven and accumulated so as to form rocks and reefs; and rising even to the surface of the water, shut up the entrance of harbours, and lay frightful snares for navigators. The sea, throwing up sand and mud upon the tops of these shoals, sometimes raises their surface above its own level, and forms islands, which are soon covered with a rich vegetation.

Incrustation.

It is also possible, that, in particular places, large quantities of the animals inhabiting shells, leave their stony coverings when they die, and that these, cemented together by slime of greater or less consistence, or by other cementing substances, form extensive deposits or shell banks. But we have no evidence that the sea can now incrust those shells with a paste as compact as that of the marbles, the sandstones, or even the coarse limestone (calcaire grossier) in which we see the shells of our strata enveloped. Still less do we any where find the sea depositing those more solid and more siliceous strata which have preceded the formation of the shelly strata.

In short, all these causes united, would not change, in an appreciable degree, the level of the sea; nor raise a single stratum above its surface; and still less would they produce the smallest hillock upon the surface of the earth.

It has been asserted that the sea has undergone a general diminution of level; and proofs of this are said to have been discovered in some parts of the shores of the Baltic.[12] But whatever may be the causes of these appearances, we are certain that they are not general in their operation; and that, in the greater number of harbours, where any alteration of the level would be a matter of so much interest, and where fixed and ancient works afford so many means of measuring its variations, the mean level of the sea is constant. There has, therefore, never been a universal lowering, nor a universal encroachment, of the waters of the ocean. In some places, indeed, such as Scotland, and various parts of the Mediterranean, evidence has been thought to have been found, that the sea has risen, and that it now covers shores which were formerly above its level[13].

Volcanoes.

The action of volcanoes is still more limited, and more local, than any of those which have yet been mentioned. Although we have no precise idea of the means by which nature keeps up these violent fires at such great depths, we can judge decidedly, by their effects, of the changes which they may have produced at the surface of the globe. After a volcano has announced itself, by some shocks of an earthquake, it forms for itself an opening. Stones and ashes are thrown to a great distance, and lava is vomited forth. The more fluid part of the lava flows in long streams, while the less fluid portion stops at the edges of the opening, raises its margins all round, and forms a cone, terminated by a crater. Thus volcanoes accumulate upon the surface matters which were previously buried in the bowels of the earth, after modifying their nature, and raise themselves into mountains. By these means, they have formerly covered some parts of our continent, and have also suddenly produced islands in the middle of the sea. But these mountains and islands have always been composed of lava, and all their materials have undergone the action of fire: they are disposed as matters should be, which have flowed from an elevated point. Volcanoes, therefore, neither raise nor overturn the strata through which their apertures pass; and if some causes acting from those depths have contributed, in certain cases, to raise up large mountains, they cannot have been volcanic agents of the same nature as those which exist at the present day.

---

Thus, we repeat, it is in vain that we search, among the powers which now act at the surface of the earth, for causes sufficient to produce the revolutions and catastrophes, the traces of which are exhibited by its crust: And if we have recourse to the constant external forces with which we are as yet acquainted, we shall have no greater success.

Constant Astronomical Causes.

The pole of the earth moves in a circle around the pole of the ecliptic, and its axis is more or less inclined to the plane of the ecliptic; but these two motions, the causes of which are now ascertained, are much too limited for the production of effects like those whose magnitude we have just been stating. At any rate, their excessive slowness would render them altogether inadequate to account for catastrophes which, as we have shewn, must have been sudden.

The same reasoning applies to all other slow motions which have been conceived as causes of the revolutions in question, chosen doubtless in the hope that their existence could not be denied, because it might always be easy to hold out that their very slowness rendered them imperceptible. But whether they be true or not is of little importance, for they explain nothing, as no cause acting slowly could have produced sudden effects.

Admitting that there has been a gradual diminution of the waters; that the sea has transported solid matters in all directions; that the temperature of the globe is either diminishing or increasing;—none of these causes could have overturned our strata; enveloped in ice large animals, with their flesh and skin; laid dry marine testacea, the shells of which are, at the present day, as well preserved as if they had been drawn up alive from the sea; and, lastly, destroyed numerous species, and even entire genera.

These considerations have struck most naturalists; and among those who have endeavoured to explain the present state of the globe, hardly any one has attributed it entirely to the agency of slow causes, still less to causes operating under our eyes. The necessity to which they are thus reduced, of seeking for causes different from those which we see acting at the present day, is the very circumstance that has forced them to make so many extraordinary suppositions, and to lose themselves in so many erroneous and contradictory speculations, that the very name of their science, as I have elsewhere remarked, has long been a subject of ridicule to prejudiced persons, who have only looked to the systems which it has been the means of hatching, and have forgotten the extensive and important series of authentic facts which it has brought to light[14].

Older Systems of Geologists.

During a long time, two events or epochs only, the Creation and the Deluge, were admitted as comprehending the changes which have been operated upon the globe; and all the efforts of geologists were directed to account for the present existing state of things, by imagining a certain original state, afterwards modified by the deluge, of which also, as to its causes, its operations, and its effects, each entertained his own theory.

Thus, according to one[15], the earth was at first invested with an uniform light crust, which covered the abyss of the sea; and which being broken up for the production of the deluge, formed the mountains by its fragments. According to another[16], the deluge was occasioned by a momentary suspension of cohesion among the particles of mineral bodies; the whole mass of the globe was dissolved, and the paste thus formed became penetrated with shells. According to a third[17], God raised up the mountains for the purpose of allowing the waters, which had produced the deluge, to run off; and selected those places in which there was the greatest quantity of rocks, without which the mountains could not have supported themselves. A fourth[18] created the earth from the atmosphere of one comet, and deluged it by the tail of another: The heat which it retained from its origin, was what, in his opinion, excited the whole of the living beings upon it to sin; for which they were all drowned, excepting the fishes, whose passions were apparently less vehement.

It is evident, that, even while confined within the limits prescribed by the Book of Genesis, naturalists might still have a pretty wide range: they soon found themselves, however, in too narrow bounds; and when they had succeeded in converting the six days of creation into so many indefinite periods, the lapse of ages no longer forming an obstacle to their views, their systems took a flight proportioned to the periods which they could then dispose of at pleasure.

Even the great Leibnitz amused himself, like Descartes, by conceiving the earth to be an extinguished sun[19], a vitrified globe, upon which the vapours falling down again, after it had cooled, formed seas, which afterwards deposited the limestone formations.

By Demaillet the whole globe was conceived to have been covered with water for many thousands of years. He supposed this water had gradually retired; that all the land animals were originally inhabitants of the sea; that man himself commenced his career as a fish; and he asserts, that it is not uncommon, even now, to meet with fishes in the ocean, which are still only half converted into men, but whose descendants will in time become perfect human beings[20].

The system of Buffon is merely an extension of that of Leibnitz, with the addition only of a comet, which, by a violent blow, struck off from the sun the liquefied mass of the earth, together with those of all the other planets at the same instant. From this supposition, he was enabled to assume positive dates, as, from the present temperature of the earth, it could be calculated how long it had taken to cool down so far; and, as all the other planets had come from the sun at the same time, it could also be calculated how many ages are still required for cooling the greater ones, and to what degree the smaller are already frozen[21].

More recent Systems.

In our own times, men of still bolder imaginations have exercised their minds upon this great subject. Some writers have revived and greatly extended the ideas of Demaillet. They suppose that every thing was originally fluid; that this fluid gave existence to animals, which were at first of the most simple kind, such as the monads and other infusory and microscopic species; that, in process of time, and by assuming different habits, the races of animals became complicated, and assumed that diversity of nature and character in which they now appear. By means of those various races of animals, part of the waters of the sea have gradually been converted into calcareous earth; while the vegetables, concerning the origin and metamorphoses of which these writers are totally silent, have, on their part, converted a portion of the same water into clay: These two earths, on being stripped of the characters which life had impressed upon them, are resolved, by a final analysis, into silex; and hence the reason that the oldest mountains are more siliceous than the rest. All the solid parts of the earth, therefore, owe their existence to life, and, without life, the globe would still be entirely liquid[22].

Other writers have preferred the ideas of Kepler, and, like that great astronomer, have considered the globe itself as possessed of vital faculties. According to them a vital fluid circulates in it; a process of assimilation goes on in it, as well as in animated bodies; every particle of it is alive; it possesses instinct and volition, even to the most elementary molecules, which attract and repel each other according to sympathies and antipathies. Each kind of mineral has the power of converting immense masses into its own nature, as we convert our food into flesh and blood. The mountains are the respiratory organs of the globe, and the schists its organs of secretion; it is by these latter that it decomposes the water of the sea, in order to produce the matters ejected by volcanoes. The veins are carious sores, abscesses of the mineral kingdom; and the metals are products of rottenness and disease, which is the reason that almost all of them have so bad a smell[23].

More recently still, a philosophy, which substitutes metaphor for reasoning, and proceeds on the system of absolute identity or of pantheism, attributes the production of all phenomena, or which, in the eyes of its supporters, is the same thing, all beings, to polarization, such as is manifested by the two electricities; and denominating every kind of opposition or difference, whether of situation, of nature, or of function, by the title of Polarisation, opposes to each other, in the first place, God and the universe; then, in the universe, the sun and the planets; next, in each planet, the solid and the liquid; and, pursuing this course, changing its figures and allegories according to its necessities, at length arrives at the last details of organic species[24].

It must, however, be observed, that these are what may be termed extreme examples, and that all geologists have not carried the extravagance of their conceptions to such a length as those which we have just cited. Yet, among those who have proceeded with more caution, and have not searched for geological causes beyond the limits of physical and chemical science, much diversity and contradiction still prevail.

Diversities of all the Systems.

According to one system, every thing has been successively precipitated by crystallization, and deposited nearly as it exists at present; but the sea, which covered all, has gradually retired[25].

According to another, the materials of which the mountains consist, are incessantly worn down and carried off by the rivers to be deposited at the bottom of the sea, where they are heated under an enormous pressure, and form strata, which are one day to be violently lifted up by the heat which consolidates them[26].

A third supposes the fluid divided into a multitude of lakes, placed, like the seats of an amphitheatre, above each other, which, after having deposited our shelly strata, have successively broken their dikes, to descend and fill the basin of the ocean[27].

According to a fourth, tides of seven or eight hundred fathoms depth have carried off, from time to time, the matter lying at the bottom of the sea, and have thrown it, in the form of mountains and hills, upon the original valleys or plains of the continent[28].

A fifth makes the various fragments of which the earth is composed, fall successively from heaven, in the manner of meteoric stones, bearing the impress of their foreign origin in the unknown beings whose remains they contain[29].

A sixth represents the globe as hollow, and places within it a loadstone nucleus, which is transported from one pole to the other, by the attraction of comets, carrying along with it the centre of gravity, and the mass of waters at the surface; thus alternately drowning the two hemispheres[30].

We might mention twenty other systems, as different from one another as those enumerated. And to prevent mistake, we may here state, that our intention is not captiously to criticize or find fault with their authors; on the contrary, we admit that these ideas have generally been conceived by men of intellect and knowledge, who were not ignorant of facts, several of whom had even travelled extensively for the purpose of examining them, and who, in this manner, made numerous and important additions to science.

Causes of these differences.

Whence comes it, then, that there should be so much contrariety in the solutions of the same problem, that are given by men who proceed upon the same principles? May not this have been occasioned by the conditions of the problem never having been all taken into consideration at once; by which it has remained hitherto indeterminate, and susceptible of many solutions,—all equally good, when such or such conditions are abstracted; and all equally bad, when a new condition comes to be known, or when the attention is directed to some condition which had been formerly neglected?

Nature and Conditions of the Problem.

To quit the language of mathematics, it may be asserted, that almost all the authors of these systems, confining their attention to certain difficulties which struck them more forcibly than others, have endeavoured to solve these in a manner more or less plausible, and have left unnoticed others, equally numerous, and equally important. For example, the only difficulty with one consisted in explaining the changes that had taken place in the level of the sea; with another, it consisted in accounting for the solution of all terrestrial substances in one and the same menstruum; and with a third, in shewing how animals that were believed to be natives of the torrid zone could live in the frigid zone. Exhausting all the powers of the mind upon these questions, they conceived that they had done every thing that was necessary when they had contrived some method of answering them; and yet, while they neglected all the other phenomena, they did not always think of determining with precision the measure and limits of those which they had endeavoured to explain.

This is peculiarly the case with regard to the secondary formations, which constitute, however, the most important and most difficult part of the problem. During a long time, all that was done with respect to these, consisted of feeble attempts to determine the order of superposition of their strata, and the connections of these strata with the species of animals and plants whose remains they contain.

Are there certain animals and plants peculiar to certain strata, and not found in others? What are the species that appear first in order, and what those which succeed? Do these two kinds of species sometimes accompany each other? Are there alternations in their appearance; or, in other words, do the first reappear a second time, and do the others then disappear? Have these animals and plants all lived in the places where their remains are found, or have they been transported thither from other places? Do they all live at the present day in some part of the earth, or have they been partially or totally destroyed? Is there any constant connection between the antiquity of the strata and the resemblance, or non-resemblance, of the fossils contained in them to the animals and plants which now exist? Is there any connexion, in regard to climate, between the fossils and such living beings as resemble them most? May it be concluded, that the transportation of these living beings, if such a thing ever happened, has taken place from north to south, or from east to west; or were they irregularly scattered and mingled together; and can the epochs of these transportations be determined by the characters which they have impressed upon the strata?

What can be said regarding the causes of the existing state of the globe, if no reply can be made to these questions,—if there be no sufficient grounds to determine the choice between answering in the affirmative or negative? It is but too true, that, for a long time, none of these points was satisfactorily determined; and scarcely even would geologists seem to have had any idea of the propriety of clearing them up before constructing their systems.

Reason for which the Conditions of the Problem have been neglected.

The reason of this strange procedure will be discovered, when we reflect, that all geologists have hitherto been, either mere cabinet naturalists, who had themselves paid little attention to the structure of mountains, or mere mineralogists, who had not studied in sufficient detail the innumerable varieties of animals, and the infinite complication of their various parts. The former of these have only constructed systems: the latter have furnished excellent observations, and have laid the foundation of true geological science; but have been unable to complete the edifice.

Progress of Mineral Geology.

The purely mineral part of the great problem of the Theory of the Earth has been investigated with admirable care by Saussure, and has been since carried to an astonishing degree of development by Werner, and by the numerous enlightened pupils of his school.

The former of these celebrated men, by a laborious investigation of the most inaccessible districts, continued for twenty years, in which he examined the Alps on all sides, and penetrated through all their defiles; has laid open to our view the entire disorder of the primitive formations, and has distinctly traced the limits by which they are distinguished from the secondary formations. The other, taking advantage of the numerous excavations made in the most ancient mining district in the world, has fixed the laws by which the succession of the strata are regulated, pointing out the relative antiquity of these strata, and tracing each of them through all its metamorphoses. It is from him, and from him alone, that we date the commencement of real geology, in so far as concerns the mineral nature of the strata: but neither he nor Saussure have determined the fossil organic species occurring in each kind of stratum, with the accuracy which has become necessary, now that the number of animals already known is so great.

Other naturalists, it is true, have examined the the fossil remains of organised bodies; they have collected and figured them by thousands, and their works will serve as so many precious collections of materials. But, considering these animals and plants more with reference to their own nature, than as connected with the theory of the earth; or regarding these petrifactions as curiosities, rather than as historical documents; or, lastly, contenting themselves with practical explanations regarding the position of each fragment, they have almost always neglected to investigate the general laws affecting the geological position of organic remains, or their connection with the strata.

Importance of Fossil Remains in Geology.

And yet, the idea of such an investigation was very natural; for it is abundantly obvious, that it is to these fossil remains alone that we owe even the commencement of a theory of the earth, and that, without them, we should perhaps never have even suspected that there had existed any successive epochs, and a series of different operations, in the formation of the globe. By them alone we are, in fact, enabled to ascertain, that the globe has not always had the same external crust; because, we are thoroughly assured, that the plants and animals must have lived at the surface before they had thus come to be buried deep beneath it. It is only by analogy that we have been enabled to extend to the primitive formations, the conclusion which is furnished directly for the secondary by the organic remains which they contain; and if there had only existed formations in which no fossil remains were inclosed, it could never have been shewn that these formations had not all been of simultaneous origin.

It is also by means of the organic remains, slight as is the knowledge we have hitherto acquired of them, that we have been enabled to discover the little that we yet know respecting the nature of the revolutions of the globe. From them we have learned, that the strata in which they are buried have been quietly deposited in a fluid; that their variations have corresponded with those of the fluid in question; that their being laid bare has been occasioned by the transportation of this fluid to some other place; and that this circumstance must have befallen them more than once. Nothing of all this could have been known with certainty, had no fossil remains existed.

The study of the mineral part of geology, though not less necessary, and even of much more utility to the practical arts, is yet much less instructive with reference to the object of our present inquiry.

We remain in utter ignorance respecting the causes which have given rise to the variety in the mineral substances of which the strata are composed. We are even ignorant of the agents which may have held some of these substances in solution; and it is still disputed, respecting several of them, whether they have owed their origin to water or to fire. After all, philosophers are only agreed on one point, which is, that the sea has changed its place; and how should this have been known, unless by means of the fossil remains?

The organic remains, therefore, which have given rise to the theory of the earth, have, at the same time, furnished it with its principal illustrations;—the only ones, indeed, that have as yet been generally acknowledged.

It is this consideration which has encouraged us to investigate the subject. But the field is vast; and it is but a very small portion of it that could be cultivated by the labour of a single individual. It was necessary, therefore, to select a particular department; and the choice was soon made. The class of fossil remains which forms the subject of this work, engaged our attention at the very outset, because it appeared to us to be that which is the most fertile in precise results, and yet, at the same time, less known, and richer in new objects of research[31].

High importance of the Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds.

It is obvious, in fact, that the fossil bones of quadrupeds must lead to more accurate conclusions than any other remains of organized bodies, and that for several reasons.

In the first place, they indicate much more clearly the nature of the revolutions to which they have already been subjected. Shells certainly announce the fact, that the sea has once existed in the places where they have been formed; but the changes which have taken place in their species, when rigorously inquired into, may have arisen from slight changes in the nature of the fluid in which they lived, or merely in its temperature. They may even have been produced by causes still more accidental. We can never be perfectly assured that certain species, and even genera, inhabiting the bottom of the sea, and occupying certain fixed spaces, for a longer or shorter time, may not have been driven away and supplanted by other species or genera.

In regard to quadrupeds, on the contrary, every thing is precise. The appearance of their bones in strata, and still more of their entire carcases, announces, either that the stratum itself which contains them has, at a former period, been laid dry, or, at least, that dry land must have existed in its neighbourhood. Their disappearance renders it certain, that this stratum has been inundated, or that the dry land in question has ceased to exist. It is from them, therefore, that we learn with perfect certainty the important fact of repeated irruptions of the sea, which the shells and other marine productions could not of themselves have proved; and it is by a careful investigation of them, that we may hope to ascertain the number and the epochs of these irruptions.

Secondly, The nature of the revolutions which have altered the surface of the globe, must have exerted a more powerful action upon terrestrial quadrupeds, than upon marine animals. As these revolutions have consisted chiefly of changes in the bed of the sea, and as the waters must have destroyed all the quadrupeds which they reached, if their irruption was general, it would necessarily have destroyed the entire class; or if it only overwhelmed certain continents at one time, it would at least have destroyed the species peculiar to those continents, without having the same effect upon the marine animals. On the other hand, millions of aquatic animals would have been left dry, or buried under newly-formed strata, or thrown violently on the coasts; while their races would still have been preserved in some more peaceful parts of the sea, whence they might again be propagated after the agitation of the waters had ceased.

Thirdly, This more complete action is also more easily ascertained. It is more easy to demonstrate its effects, because, the number of quadrupeds being limited, and the greater part of their species, at least the large ones, being known, we have more means of determining whether fossil bones belong to them, or to a species that is now lost. As, on the other hand, we are very far from being acquainted with all the testaceous animals and fishes which inhabit the sea, and as we are still probably ignorant of the greater number of those which live in deep water, it is impossible to know with certainty, whether a species which occurs in a fossil state, may not still exist somewhere alive. And hence, we see naturalists persisting in giving the name of pelagic shells, that is to say, shells inhabiting the open sea, to the belemnites, cornua-ammonis, and other testaceous remains, which have hitherto been found only in the older strata; meaning by this, that if they have not yet been discovered in a living state, it is because they inhabit the depths of the sea, far beyond the reach of our nets.

Small probability of discovering New Species of large Quadrupeds.

Naturalists, certainly, have not yet explored all the continents, nor do they even know all the quadrupeds which inhabit the countries that they have explored. New species of this class are discovered from time to time; and those who have not examined with attention all the circumstances belonging to these discoveries, might also imagine that the unknown quadrupeds, whose bones are found in our strata, may remain to this day concealed, in some islands not yet discovered by navigators, or in some of the vast deserts which occupy the middle of Asia, Africa, the two Americas, and New Holland.

However, if we carefully examine what kinds of quadrupeds have been recently discovered, and in what circumstances they have been found, we shall see that there is little hope of our ever finding alive those which have hitherto been observed only in a fossil state.

Islands of moderate extent, and at a considerable distance from the continents or large islands, possess very few quadrupeds, and these, for the greater part, of diminutive size. When they happen to contain any of the larger species, these must have been carried to them from other countries. Bougainville and Cook found no other large quadrupeds than hogs and dogs in the South Sea Islands; and the largest species of the West India Islands was the agouti.

It is true that the great continents, such as Asia, Africa, the two Americas, and New Holland, possess large quadrupeds, and, generally speaking, contain species peculiar to each; insomuch, that whenever large countries of this description have been discovered, which their situation has kept isolated from the rest of the world, the class of quadrupeds which they contained has been found entirely different from any that existed elsewhere. Thus, when the Spaniards first penetrated into South America, they did not find a single species of quadruped the same as any of Europe, Asia, or Africa. The puma, the jaguar, the tapir, the cabiai, the llama, the vicuna, the sloths, the armadilloes, the opossums, and the whole tribe of sapajous, were to them entirely new animals, of which they had no idea. Similar circumstances have recurred in our own time, when the coasts of New Holland and the adjacent islands were first explored. The various species of kangaroo, phascolomys, dasyurus, and perameles, the flying phalangers, the ornithorynchi and echidnæ, have astonished naturalists by the strangeness of their conformations, which presented proportions contrary to all former rules, and were incapable of being arranged under any of the systems then in use.

If there yet remained some great continent to be discovered, we might still hope to become acquainted with new species, among which there might be found some having more or less similarity to those of which we have discovered the remains in the bowels of the earth. But it is sufficient to cast a glance over the map of the world, and see the innumerable directions in which navigators have traversed the ocean, in order to be satisfied that there remains no other large land to be discovered, unless it may be situated towards the South Pole, where the existence of life would necessarily be precluded by the accumulation of ice.

Hence, it is only from the interior of the large divisions of the world, that we can have any hope of still procuring quadrupeds hitherto unknown. But a little reflection will be sufficient to convince us, that our expectations from this source have as little foundation as from that of the islands.

Doubtless, the European traveller cannot easily traverse vast extents of countries, which are either destitute of inhabitants, or are peopled only with ferocious tribes; and this is more especially true with regard to Africa. But there is nothing to prevent the animals themselves from roaming over these countries in all directions, and penetrating to the coasts. Even when there may be great chains of mountains between the coasts and the deserts of the interior, they must always be broken in some places to allow the rivers to pass through; and, in these burning deserts, the quadrupeds naturally follow the banks of rivers. The inhabitants of the coasts also ascend these rivers, and soon become acquainted with all the remarkable species which exist even to their sources, either from personal observation, or by means of intercourse with the inhabitants of the interior. At no period, therefore, could civilized nations have frequented the coast of a large country for any considerable length of time, without gaining some tolerable knowledge of such of the animals which it contained as were remarkable for their size or configuration.

This reasoning is confirmed by well known facts. Although the ancients never passed the mountains of Imaus, or crossed the Ganges, in Asia; and, although they never penetrated very far beyond Mount Atlas, in Africa; yet were they, in reality, acquainted with all the large animals of these two divisions of the world; and, if they have not distinguished all the species, it was not because they had not seen them, or heard them spoken of by others, but because the mutual resemblances of some of these species caused them to be confounded together. The only important exception which can be opposed to this assertion, presents itself in the Tapir of Malacca, recently sent home from India by two young naturalists, pupils of mine, Messrs Duvaucel and Diard, and which in fact is one of the most interesting discoveries with which Natural History has been enriched in these latter times.

The ancients were perfectly acquainted with the Elephant; and the history of that quadruped is given more accurately by Aristotle than by Buffon. They were not even ignorant of some of the differences which distinguish the elephants of Africa from those of Asia[32].

They knew the two-horned Rhinoceros, which has never been seen alive in modern Europe. Domitian exhibited it at Rome, and had it stamped on his medals, which have been very well described by Pausanias.

The one-horned Rhinoceros, distant as was its country, was equally known to them. Pompey shewed one at Rome; and Strabo has accurately described another which he saw at Alexandria[33].

The Rhinoceros of Sumatra described by Mr Bell; and that of Java, discovered and sent home by Messrs Duvaucel and Diard, do not appear to inhabit the continent. Hence, it is not surprising, that the ancients should have been ignorant of them; besides, they probably would not have distinguished them from the others.

The Hippopotamus has not been so well described as the preceding animals; yet very exact representations of it have been left by the Romans in their monuments relative to Egypt, such as the statue of the Nile, the Palestrine pavement, and a great number of medals. In fact, this animal was repeatedly seen by the Romans; having been exhibited by Scaurus, Augustus, Antoninus, Commodus, Heliogabalus, Philip, and Carinus[34].

The two species of Camel, the Bactrian and Arabian, are both very well described and characterized by Aristotle[35].

The Giraffe, or Camelopard (Camel-Leopard), was also well known to the ancients. A live one was shewn at Rome, in the circus, during the dictatorship of Julius Cæsar, in the year of Rome 708; and ten of them were exhibited together by Gordian III. all of which were killed at the secular games of Philip[36], a circumstance which may well surprise the moderns, who have only witnessed a single individual, which was sent by the Soldan of Egypt to Laurentius de Medicis, in the fifteenth century, and is painted in the frescoes of Poggio-Cajano.

If we read with attention the descriptions of the Hippopotamus, given by Herodotus and Aristotle, and which are supposed to have been borrowed from Hecatæus of Miletum, we shall find, that they must have been made up from two different animals, one of which was perhaps the true hippopotamus, and the other was assuredly the Gnou[37], a quadruped, of which our naturalists begin to take notice only about the end of the eighteenth century. It is the same animal of which fabulous accounts were given by Pliny and Ælian, under the name of catoblepas and catablepon[38].

The Ethiopian Boar of Agatharchides, which is described as having horns, is precisely the Ethiopian Boar of modern times, the enormous tusks of which deserve the name of horns nearly as much as those of the elephant[39].

The Bubalus and Nagor are described by Pliny[40]; the Gazelle by Ælian[41]; the Oryx by Oppian[42]; the Axis, so early as the time of Ctesias[43]; and the Algazel, and Corinne, are accurately figured upon the Egyptian monuments[44].

Ælian has well described the Bos grunniens or Yak, under the name of the ox having a tail which serves for a fly-flapper[45].

The Buffalo was not domesticated by the ancients; but the Indian Ox, of which Ælian speaks[46], and which had horns large enough to hold three amphoræ, was assuredly that variety of the buffalo which is now called the arnee. And even the wild ox with depressed horns, which is mentioned by Aristotle as inhabiting Arachosia, a province of ancient Persia, could be nothing else than the common buffalo[47].

The ancients were acquainted with the hornless variety of the ox[48], and with the African oxen, whose horns, being only attached to the skin, moved with it[49]. They also knew the Indian oxen, which equalled the horse in speed[50]; and those which were so small as not to exceed a he-goat in size[51]. Nor were the broad-tailed sheep unknown to them[52],—nor those of India, which were said to be as large as asses[53].

Although the accounts left us by the ancients, respecting the Aurochs, the Rein-deer, and Elk, are all mingled with fable, they are yet sufficient to prove that these animals were in some degree known to them, but that the reports which had reached them, had been communicated by ignorant people, and had not been corrected by a judicious examination[54]. These animals still inhabit the countries which the ancients assigned to them; and have only disappeared in such of them as have been too much cultivated for their habits. The aurochs[55] and elk still exist in the forests of Lithuania, which were formerly continuous with the great Hercynian Forest. The former of these animals still occurs in the northern parts of Greece, as it did in the days of Pausanias. The rein-deer inhabits the snowy regions of the north, where it always had its abode; it changes its colour, not at pleasure, but according to the change of the seasons. It was in consequence of mistakes scarcely excusable, that it was imagined to have occurred in the Pyrenees in the fourteenth century[56].

Even the White Bear had been seen in Egypt while under the Ptolemies[57].

Lions and Panthers were common at Rome, where they were presented by hundreds in the games of the Circus. Even several Tigers were exhibited there, as well as the Striped Hyena and the Crocodile of the Nile. In the ancient mosaics preserved at Rome, there are excellent representations of the rarest of these animals. Among others, the striped hyena is seen represented with accuracy in a fragment preserved in the Museum of the Vatican; and, while I was at Rome in 1809, a mosaic pavement, composed of natural stones, arranged in the Florentine manner, was discovered in a garden beside the triumphal arch of Galienus, which represented four Bengal tigers executed in a superior manner.

In the Museum of the Vatican, there is deposited the figure of a crocodile in basalt, which is almost a perfect representation of that animal[58].

It cannot in the least be doubted, that the Hippotigris was the Zebra, which, however, is only found in the southern parts of Africa[59].

It would be easy to shew that almost all the more remarkable species of Apes and Monkeys have been distinctly indicated by the ancients, under the names of Pitheci, Sphinxes, Satyri, Cebi, Cynocephali, and Cercopitheci[60].

They even knew, and have described several species of Glires of inconsiderable size, when these animals presented any thing remarkable in their conformation or properties[61]. But the small species are of no importance with reference to the object in view; and, it is sufficient for our purpose to have shewn, that all the large species, which possess any remarkable character, and which we know to inhabit Europe, Asia, and Africa, at the present day, were known to the ancients; whence we may fairly conclude, that their silence in respect to the small quadrupeds, and their neglect in distinguishing the species which very nearly resemble each other, as the various species of antelopes, and of some other genera, were occasioned by want of attention and ignorance of methodical arrangement, rather than by any difficulty proceeding from climate. We may also conclude, with equal certainty, that, as the lapse of eighteen or twenty centuries, together with the advantages of circumnavigating Africa, and of penetrating into India, have added nothing in this department to the information left us by the ancients, there is no probability that succeeding ages will add much to the knowledge of our posterity.

But perhaps some persons may be disposed to employ an opposite train of argument, and to allege that the ancients were not only acquainted with as many large quadrupeds as we are, as has already been shewn, but that they have described several others which we do not now know,—that we act rashly in considering these animals as fabulous,—that we ought to search for them before concluding that we have exhausted the history of the present animal creation,—and, in fine, that among those animals which we presume to be fabulous, we may, perhaps, discover, when we become better acquainted with them, the originals of those bones of unknown animals which we discover buried in the earth. Some may even conceive, that those various monsters, which constitute the essential ornaments of the history of the heroic ages of almost all countries, are precisely those very species which it was necessary to destroy, in order to allow the establishment of civilization. Thus the Theseuses and Bellerophons of ancient times had been more fortunate than all the nations of our days, which have only been able to drive back the noxious animals, but have never yet succeeded in exterminating a single species.

Inquiry respecting the Fabulous Animals of the Ancients.

It is easy to reply to the foregoing objection, by examining the descriptions of these unknown beings, and by inquiring into their origins. The greater number of them have an origin purely mythological, and of this origin their descriptions bear unequivocal marks; for in almost all of them we see merely parts of known animals united by an unbridled imagination, and in contradiction to all the laws of nature.

Those which were invented or arranged by the Greeks, have at least the merit of possessing elegance in their composition. Like those arabesques which decorate the remains of some ancient buildings, and which have been multiplied by the fertile pencil of Raphael, the forms which they combine, however repugnant to reason they may be, present agreeable contours. They are the fantastic productions of playful genius; perhaps emblematic representations in the oriental taste, in which were supposed to be concealed under mystical images certain propositions in metaphysics or in morals. We may excuse those who employ their time in attempts to discover the wisdom concealed in the sphinx of Thebes, the pegasus of Thessaly, the minotaur of Crete, or the chimera of Epirus; but it would be absurd to expect seriously to find such productions in nature. As well might we search for the animals described in the Book of Daniel, or for the beast of the Apocalypse.

Neither may we look for the mythological animals of the Persians, creatures of a still bolder imagination: the martichore, or man-destroyer, bearing a human head on the body of a lion, terminated by the tail of a scorpion[62]; the griffon, guardian of treasures, half eagle, half lion[63]; the cartazonon, or wild ass, armed with a long horn on its forehead[64].

Ctesias, who has described these as real animals, has been looked upon by many authors as an inventor of fables; whereas he has merely attributed an actual existence to emblematical figures. These imaginary compositions have been seen in modern times sculptured upon the ruins of Persepolis[65]. What they were intended to signify we shall probably never know; but of this much we are certain, that they do not represent actual beings.

Agatharchidas, another fabricator of animals, drew his information in all probability from a similar source. The ancient Egyptian monuments still furnish us with numerous fantastic representations, in which the parts of different species are combined: gods are often figured with a human body and the head of an animal, and animals are seen with human heads; thus giving rise to the cynocephali, sphinxes, and satyrs of ancient naturalists. The custom of representing in the same painting men of very different sizes, of making the king or the conqueror gigantic, the subjects or the conquered three or four times smaller, must have given rise to the fable of the pigmies. It was in some corner of one of these monuments that Agatharchidas must have seen his carnivorous bull, which, with mouth extending from ear to ear, devoured every other animal[66]. Certainly no naturalist would admit the existence of such an animal; for nature never combines either cloven hoofs or horns with teeth adapted for devouring animal food.

There may perhaps have been many other figures equally strange, either among such of these monuments as have not been able to resist the ravages of time, or in the temples of Ethiopia and Arabia, which have been destroyed by the religious zeal of the Mahometans and Abyssinians. The monuments of India teem with such figures; but the combinations in these are too extravagant to have deceived any one. Monsters with a hundred arms, and twenty heads all different from one another, are far too absurd to be believed. Nay, the inhabitants of Japan and China also have their imaginary animals, which they represent as real, and which figure even in their religious books. The Mexicans had them. In short, they are the fashion among all nations, whether at the periods when their idolatry has not yet been refined, or when the import of these emblematical combinations has been lost. But who would dare to affirm that he had found those productions of ignorance and superstition in nature? And yet it may have happened that travellers, influenced by a desire of making themselves famous, might pretend that they had seen those strange beings, or that, deceived by a slight resemblance, into which they were too careless to enquire, they may have taken real animals for them. In the eyes of such people, large baboons or monkeys may have appeared true cynocephali, sphinxes, or men with tails. It is thus that St Augustin may have imagined he had seen a satyr.

Some real animals, inaccurately observed and described, may have given rise to monstrous ideas, which, however, have had their foundation in some reality. Thus, we can have no doubt of the existence of the hyena, although that animal has not its neck supported by a single bone[67], and although it does not change its sex every year, as Pliny alleges[68]. Thus, also, the carnivorous bull is perhaps nothing else than a two-horned rhinoceros erroneously described. M. de Weltheim affirms with probability, that the auriferous ants of Herodotus are corsacs.

One of the most famous amongst these fabulous animals of the ancients, is the unicorn. Even to our own time people have obstinately persisted in searching for it, or, at least, in seeking arguments to prove its existence. Three separate animals are frequently mentioned by the ancients as having only one horn in the middle of the forehead. The African oryx, having cloven hoofs, the hair placed in the contrary direction to that of other animals[69], equal in size to the bull[70] or even the rhinoceros[71], and said to resemble deer and goats in form[72]; the Indian ass, having solid hoofs; and the monoceros, properly so called, whose feet are sometimes compared to those of the lion[73], and sometimes to those of the elephant[74], and which is therefore considered as having divided feet. The one-horned horse[75] and one-horned bull are doubtless both to be referred to the Indian ass, for even the latter is described as having solid hoofs[76]. I would ask, If these animals exist as distinct species, should we not at least have their horns in our collections? And what single horns do we possess, excepting those of the rhinoceros and narwal?

How is it possible, after this, to refer to rude figures traced by savages upon rocks[77]? Ignorant of perspective, and wishing to represent a straight horned antelope in profile, they could only give it a single horn, and thus they produced an oryx. The oryxes, too, that are seen on the Egyptian monuments, are probably nothing more than productions of the stiff style, imposed upon the artists of that country by their religion. Many of their profiles of quadrupeds shew only one fore and one hind leg; and this being the case, why should they have shewn two horns? It may perhaps have chanced that individuals have been taken in the chace, which had accidentally lost one of their horns, as pretty frequently happens to the chamois and saiga: and this would have been sufficient to confirm the error produced by these representations. It is probably in this way that the unicorn has recently been reported to be found in the mountains of Thibet.

All the ancients, however, have not represented the oryx as having only one horn. Oppian expressly gives it several[78], and Ælian mentions oryxes which had four[79]. Finally, if this animal was ruminant and cloven-hoofed, we know assuredly that its frontal bone must have been longitudinally divided into two, and that it could not, as is very justly remarked by Camper, have had a horn placed upon the suture.

But it may be asked, What two-horned animal could have given the idea of the oryx, and presented the characters which it is described as possessing with regard to its conformation, even independent of the notion of a single horn? To this I reply, with Pallas, that it was the straight horned antelope, the Antilope oryx of Gmelin, improperly named pasan by Buffon. It inhabits the deserts of Africa, and must approach the confines of Egypt. It is this animal which the hieroglyphics appear to represent. Its form is nearly that of the stag; its size equals that of the bull; the hair of its back is directed toward the head; its horns form exceedingly formidable weapons, pointed like javelins, and hard as iron; its hair is whitish, and its face is marked with spots and streaks of black. Such is the description given of it by naturalists; and the fables of the Egyptian priests, which have occasioned the insertion of its figure among their hieroglyphics, do not require to have been founded in nature. Supposing, therefore, that an individual of this species had been seen which had lost one of its horns by some accident, it might have been taken as a representative of the whole race, and erroneously adopted by Aristotle, and copied by his successors. All this is possible, and even natural, and yet proves nothing with regard to the existence of a single-horned species.

In regard to the Indian ass, if we attend to the properties ascribed to its horns as an antidote against poison, we shall see that they are precisely the same as those which the eastern nations attribute at the present day to the horn of the rhinoceros. When this horn was first imported into Greece, the animal to which it belonged might still have been unknown. In fact, Aristotle makes no mention of the rhinoceros, and Agatharchides was the first who described it. In the same manner, ivory was in use among the ancients long before they were acquainted with the elephant. It is even possible that some of their travellers might have given to the rhinoceros the name of Indian ass, with as much propriety as the Romans denominated the elephant the bull of Lucania. Every thing, moreover, that is said of the strength, size, and ferocity of this wild ass of theirs, corresponds very well with the rhinoceros. In succeeding times, naturalists, who had now become better acquainted with the rhinoceros, finding this denomination of Indian ass in the writings of authors who had preceded them, might have taken it, from want of proper examination, for that of a distinct animal; and from the name, they would have concluded the animal should have solid hoofs. There is, indeed, a full description of the Indian ass given by Ctesias[80], but we have seen above that it had been taken from the bas-reliefs of Persepolis, and must therefore go for nothing in the real history of the animal.

When there afterwards appeared more exact descriptions of an animal having a single horn only, but with several toes, a third species would have been made out, to which they gave the name of monoceros. These double references applied to the same species, are more frequent among ancient naturalists, because most of their works which have come down to us were mere compilations; even because Aristotle himself has frequently mingled facts borrowed from others with those which he had observed himself; and because the habit of critical examination was then as little known among naturalists as among historians.

From all these reasonings and digressions, it may be fairly concluded, that the large animals of the old continent with which we are now acquainted, were known to the ancients; and that the animals described by the ancients, and which are now unknown, were fabulous. It also follows, that the large animals of the three principal parts of the then discovered world could not have been long in being known to the nations which frequented their coasts.

It may also be concluded, that no large species remains to be discovered in America. If there were any, there can be no reason why we should not be acquainted with it; and in fact none has been discovered there during the last hundred and fifty years. The tapir, the jaguar, the puma, the cabiai, the llama, the vicuna, the red wolf, the buffalo or American bison, the ant-eaters, sloths and armadilloes, are as well described by Margrave and Hernandez as by Buffon; it may even be said that they are better, for Buffon has confused the history of the ant-eaters, mistaken the jaguar and red wolf, and confounded the bison of America with the aurochs of Poland. Pennant, it is true, was the first naturalist who clearly distinguished the small musk ox; but it was long before made mention of by travellers. The cloven-footed horse of Molina, has not been described by the early Spanish travellers; but its existence is more than doubtful, and the authority of Molina is too suspicious to authorise our adopting it. It might be possible to characterise more accurately than has been done the different species of deer belonging to America and India; but the case is with respect to these animals as it was among the ancients with respect to the antelopes; it is the want of a good method for distinguishing them, and not of opportunities of seeing them, that has left them so imperfectly known to us. It may, therefore, be said, that the Mouflon of the Blue Mountains is the only American quadruped of any considerable size of which the discovery is altogether modern; and even it is perhaps only an argali that may have crossed upon the ice from Siberia.

How should it be thought, after this, that the huge mastodons and gigantic megatheria, whose bones have been discovered under ground in North and South America, still exist alive on that continent? How should they have escaped those wandering tribes which continually traverse the country in all directions, and which are themselves aware that these animals no longer exist, since they have invented a fabulous account of their destruction, alleging that they were killed by the Great Spirit, to prevent them from extirpating the human race. But it is evident that this fable has been occasioned by the discovery of the bones, like that of the inhabitants of Siberia with respect to their mammoth, which they pretend to live under ground like the mole, and, like all those of the ancients, about the graves of giants, who were thought by them to have been buried wherever the bones of elephants were discovered.

Thus it may safely be concluded, that if, as we have just said, none of the large species of quadrupeds whose remains are at the present day found in regular mineral strata, bear resemblance to any of the known living species, this is not the effect of mere chance, nor because those species of which we possess nothing but the bones, are still concealed in the deserts, and have hitherto eluded the observation of travellers. On the contrary, this phenomenon must be regarded as resulting from general causes; and its investigation may be considered as affording one of the best means for discovering the nature of these causes.

Difficulty of determining the Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds.

If this study is more satisfactory in its results than that of other fossil remains of animals, it is also beset with more numerous difficulties. Fossil shells usually present themselves in an entire state, and with all the characters requisite for comparing them with their analogous species, preserved in the collections or figured in the works of naturalists. Even fishes present their skeleton more or less entire; the general form of their body is almost always distinguishable, and most commonly, also, their generic and specific characters, which are drawn from their solid parts. In quadrupeds, on the contrary, even should the skeleton be found entire, it would be difficult to apply to it characters derived, for the most part, from the hair, the colours, and other marks which have disappeared previous to their incrustation. It is even excessively rare to find a fossil skeleton approaching in any considerable degree to a complete state. The strata, for the most part, only contain separate bones, scattered confusedly, and almost always broken, and reduced to fragments; and these constitute the only resources of knowledge to the naturalist in this department. It may also be stated, that most observers, deterred by these difficulties, have passed slightly over the fossil bones of quadrupeds; have classed them in a vague manner, according to superficial resemblances, or have not even ventured to assign them a name; so that this part of the history of fossil remains, although the most important and most instructive of all, is, at the same time, that which has been the least cultivated[81].

Principle by which this determination is effected.

Fortunately, comparative anatomy possesses a principle, which, when properly developed, enables us to surmount all the obstacles. This principle consists in the mutual relation of forms in organised beings, by means of which, each species may be determined, with perfect certainty, by any fragment of any of its parts.

Every organised being forms a whole,—a peculiar system of its own, the parts of which mutually correspond, and concur in producing the same definitive action, by a reciprocal reaction. None of these parts can change in form, without the others also changing; and consequently, each of them, taken separately, indicates and ascertains all the others.

Thus, if the intestines of an animal are so organised as to be fitted for the digestion of flesh only, and that flesh recent, it is necessary that its jaws be so constructed as to fit them for devouring live prey; its claws for seizing and tearing it; its teeth for cutting and dividing it; the whole system of its organs of motion, for pursuing and overtaking it; and its organs of sense for discovering it at a distance. It is even requisite that nature have placed in its brain the instinct necessary for teaching it to conceal itself, and to lay snares for its victims.

Such are the general conditions which nature imposes upon the structure of carnivorous animals; and which every animal of this description must indispensably combine in its constitution, for without them its race could not subsist. But subordinate to these general conditions, there exist others, having relation to the size, the species, and the haunts of the prey for which the animal is adapted; and from each of these particular conditions, there result modifications of detail in the forms which arise from the general conditions. Thus not only the class, but the order, the genus, and even the species, are found expressed in the form of each part.

In fact, in order that the jaw may be able to seize, it must have a certain form of condyle; that the resistance, the moving power, and the fulcrum, should have a certain relative position in regard to each other; and that the temporal muscles should be of a certain size; the hollow or depression, too, in which these muscles are lodged, must have a certain depth; and the zygomatic arch, under which they pass, must not only have a certain degree of convexity, but it must be sufficiently strong to support the action of the masseter.

In order that the animal may be able to carry off its prey, it must have a certain degree of vigour in the muscles which elevate the head; whence there results a determinate form in the vertebræ from which these muscles take their rise, and in the occiput into which they are inserted.

In order that the teeth may be able to cut flesh, they must be sharp-edged, and must be so in a greater or less degree, according as they have flesh more or less exclusively to cut. Their base will be solid, according to the quantity and size of the bones which they have to break. The whole of these circumstances must necessarily influence the development and form of all the parts which contribute to move the jaws.

In order that the paws may be able to seize the prey, there must be a certain degree of mobility in the toes, and a certain degree of strength in the claws, from which there will result determinate forms in all the phalanges, and a corresponding distribution of muscles and tendons. The fore-arm, or cubitus, must possess a certain facility of turning, from which there will also result determinate forms in the bones of which it is composed. But the bones of the cubitus being articulated to the humerus, a change in the proportions of the former, will necessarily induce a corresponding change in the latter. The shoulder-bones must have a certain degree of firmness in such animals as make use of their fore-legs for seizing, and from this there must also result a certain peculiarity in their form. The play of all these parts will require certain proportions in all their muscles, and the impressions made by these muscles so proportioned, will determine still more particularly the forms of the bones.

It is easy to see that similar conclusions may be drawn with regard to the posterior extremities which contribute to the rapidity of the general motions; with regard to the composition of the trunk, and the forms of the vertebræ, which exert an influence upon the facility and flexibility of these motions; and, lastly, with regard to the forms of the bones of the nose, of the orbit, and of the ear, the connection of which with the perfection of the senses of smell, sight, and hearing, is evident. In a word, the form of the tooth regulates the forms of the condyle, of the scapula, and of the claws, in the same manner as the equation of a curve regulates all its properties; and as, by taking each property separately for the base of a particular equation, we find both the ordinary equation, and all the other properties whatever; so, the claw, the scapula, the condyle, the femur, and all the other bones taken separately, give the tooth, or are reciprocally given by it; and thus, by commencing with any one of these bones, a person who possesses an accurate knowledge of the laws of organic economy, may reconstruct the whole animal.

This principle seems sufficiently evident, in the general acceptation in which it is here taken, and does not require any fuller demonstration; but when it comes to be applied, there will be found many cases where our theoretical knowledge of the relations of forms will not be sufficient, unless it be supported by observation and experience.

For example, we are well aware, that hoofed animals must all be herbivorous, since they have no means of seizing prey. It is also evident, that, having no other use to make of their fore-legs than to support their body, they do not require a shoulder so vigorously organised as that of carnivorous animals; they have, therefore, no acromion or clavicle, and their shoulder-blades are narrow. Having also no occasion to turn their fore-arm, their radius is united to the ulna by ossification, or at least articulated by a ginglimus or hinge-joint, and not by arthrodia or ball and socket, to the humerus. Their food being herbaceous, will require teeth furnished with flat surfaces, for bruising seeds and plants. The crown of the teeth must also be unequal, and, for this purpose, must be composed of parts alternately consisting of bone and of enamel. Teeth of this structure necessarily require horizontal motions to enable them to triturate the food; and hence the condyle of the jaw cannot be so strictly confined within its articulating cavity as in the carnivorous animals, but must be flattened, and thus correspond with a more or less flattened surface of the temporal bones. Further, the temporal fossa, which will only have a small muscle to contain, will be narrower, and not so shallow, as that of carnivorous animals. All these circumstances are deducible from each other, according to their greater or less generality, and in such a manner, that some of them are essential and exclusively peculiar to hoofed animals, while others, although equally necessary in these animals, are not entirely peculiar to them, but may occur in other animals also, where the rest of the conditions will permit their existence.

If we proceed to consider the orders or subdivisions of the class of hoofed animals, and examine what modifications the general conditions undergo, or rather what particular conditions are conjoined with them, according to the respective characters of these orders, the reasons of these subordinate conditions begin to appear less obvious. We can still easily conceive, in general, the necessity of a more complicated system of digestive organs in those species which have a more imperfect masticatory system; and hence we may presume, that these latter must be rather ruminating animals, in which there is wanting such or such an order of teeth; and may also deduce from the same consideration, the necessity of a certain form of the œsophagus, and of corresponding forms in the vertebræ of the neck, &c. But I doubt whether it would have been discovered, independently of actual observation, that the ruminating animals should all have cloven hoofs, and that they should be the only animals having them; that there should be horns on the fore-head in this class alone; or that such of them as have sharp canine teeth, should, in general, have no horns.

However, since these relations are constant, we may be assured that they have a sufficient cause; but as we are not acquainted with that cause, we must supply the defect of theory by means of observation, and in this way establish empirical laws which become nearly as certain as those deduced from rational principles, when founded upon observations, the authenticity of which is proved by frequent repetition. Hence, at the present day, any one who observes only the print of a cloven foot, may conclude that the animal which left this impression ruminates; and this conclusion is quite as certain as any other in physics, or in moral philosophy. This simple footmark, therefore, indicates at once to the observer the forms of the teeth, of the jaws, of the vertebræ, of all the bones of the legs, thighs, shoulders, and pelvis of the animal which had passed. It is a surer mark than all those of Zadig. That there are secret reasons, however, for all these relations, is what observation alone is sufficient to shew, independently of any general principles of philosophy.

In fact, when we construct a table of these relations, we remark not only a specific constancy, if the expression may be allowed, between a particular form of a particular organ, and some other form of a different organ; but we also perceive a classic constancy of conformation, and a corresponding gradation, in the development of these two organs, which demonstrate their mutual influence, almost as well as the most perfect deduction of reason.

For example, the dentary system of the hoofed animals, which are not ruminant, is in general more perfect than that of the cloven-footed or ruminating animals, because the former have either incisors, or canine teeth, and almost always both in each jaw; and the structure of their foot is in general more complicated, because they have more toes or claws, or their phalanges less enveloped in the hoof,—or a greater number of distinct bones in the metacarpus and metatarsus—or more numerous tarsal bones—or a fibula more distinct from the tibia—or, lastly, that all these circumstances are often united in the same species of animals.

It is impossible to assign reasons for these relations; but we are certain that they are not the effects of chance, because, whenever a cloven-footed animal manifests, in the arrangement of its teeth some tendency to approach the animals we now speak of, it also manifests a similar tendency in the arrangement of its feet. Thus the camels, which have canine teeth, and even two or four incisors in the upper jaw, have an additional bone in the tarsus, because their scaphoid bone is not united to the cuboid, and they have very small hoofs, with corresponding phalanges. The musk animals, whose canine teeth are much developed, have a distinct fibula along the whole length of their tibia; while the other cloven-footed animals have only, in place of a fibula, a small bone articulated at the lower end of the tibia. There is, therefore, a constant harmony between two organs apparently having no connection; and the gradations of their forms preserve an uninterrupted correspondence, even in those cases in which we cannot account for their relations.

Now, by thus adopting the method of observation as a supplementary means, when theory is no longer able to direct our views, we arrive at astonishing results. The smallest articulating surface of bone, or the smallest apophysis, has a determinate character, relative to the class, the order, the genus, and the species to which it belonged; insomuch, that when one possesses merely a well preserved extremity of a bone, he can, by careful examination, and the aid of a tolerable analogical knowledge, and of accurate comparison, determine all these things with as much certainty as if he had the entire animal before him. I have often made trial of this method upon portions of known animals, before reposing full confidence upon it, in regard to fossil remains; and it has always proved so completely satisfactory, that I have no longer any doubts regarding the certainty of the results which it has afforded me.

It is true, that I have enjoyed all the advantages which were necessary for the undertaking; and that my favourable situation, in the Museum of Natural History at Paris, and assiduous research for nearly thirty years, have procured me skeletons of all the genera and sub-genera of quadrupeds, and even of many species in some genera, and of several varieties of some species. With such means, it was easy for me to multiply my comparisons, and to verify in all their details the applications which I have made of the various laws deducible from such circumstances as have been stated.

We cannot here enter into a more lengthened detail of this method, and must refer to the large work on Comparative Anatomy, in which all its rules will be found. In the mean time, an intelligent reader may gather a great number of these from the work upon Fossil Bones, if he take the trouble of attending to all the applications of them which we have there made. He will see, that it is by this method alone that we are guided, and that it has almost always sufficed for referring each bone to its species, when it was a living species—to its genus, when it was an unknown species—to its order, when it was a new genus—and to its class, when it belonged to an order not hitherto established—and to assign it, in the three last cases, the proper characters for distinguishing it from the nearest resembling orders, genera, and species. Before the commencement of our researches, naturalists had done no more than this with regard to animals, which they had the opportunity of examining in their entire state. Yet, in this manner, we have determined and classed the remains of more than a hundred and fifty mammiferous and oviparous quadrupeds.

View of the General Results of these Researches.

Considered with regard to species, upwards of ninety of these animals are most assuredly hitherto unknown to naturalists; eleven or twelve have so perfect a resemblance to species already known, that the slightest doubt cannot be entertained of their identity; the others exhibit many traits of resemblance to known species, but their comparison has not yet been made with sufficient precision to remove all doubts.

Considered with regard to genera, of the ninety hitherto unknown species, there are nearly sixty that belong to new genera. The other species rank under genera or subgenera already known.

It may not be without use, also, to consider these animals with regard to the classes and orders to which they belong. Of the hundred and fifty species, about a fourth part are oviparous quadrupeds, and all the rest mammifera. Of these last, more than the half belong to non-ruminant hoofed animals.

Notwithstanding what has been done, it would still be premature to establish upon these numbers any conclusion relative to the theory of the earth, because they are not in sufficient proportion to the numbers of genera and species which may be buried in the strata of the earth. Hitherto the bones of the larger species have been chiefly collected, these being more obvious to agricultural labourers; while the bones of the smaller species are usually neglected, unless when they chance to fall into the hands of a naturalist, or when some particular circumstance, such as their excessive abundance in certain places, attracts the attention even of the common people.

Relations of the Species of Fossil Animals with the Strata in which they are found.

The most important consideration, that which, in fact, is the chief object of all my researches, and which establishes their legitimate connection with the Theory of the Earth, is to ascertain in what strata each species is found, and whether there may be some general laws, relative either to the zoological subdivisions, or to the greater or less resemblance of the species to those of the present day.

The laws which have been recognised with respect to these relations are very distinct and satisfactory.

In the first place, it is clearly ascertained that the oviparous quadrupeds appear much more early than the viviparous; that they are even more abundant, larger, and more varied, in the ancient strata than at the surface of the globe, as it exists at present.

The Ichthyosauri, the Plesiosauri, several species of Tortoise, and several species of Crocodile, are found beneath the chalk, in the deposits commonly called Jura formations. The Monitors of Thuringia would be still older, if, according to the Wernerian School, the copper-slate in which they are contained, along with a great variety of fishes supposed to have belonged to fresh-water, is to be placed among the oldest beds of the secondary formations. The enormous crocodiles and the great tortoises of Maestricht, are found in the chalk formation itself; but these are marine animals.

This earliest appearance of fossil bones seems, therefore, already to indicate, that dry lands and fresh waters had existed before the formation of the chalk deposits. But neither at this period, nor while the chalk was forming, nor even long after, have any bones of land-mammifera been encrusted; or, at least, the small number of these, which are alleged to have been found in strata of these dates, forms but a trifling exception.

We begin to find bones of marine mammifera, namely, of lamantins and seals, in the coarse shelly limestone which covers the chalk in the neighbourhood of Paris; but there are still no bones of terrestrial mammifera.

Notwithstanding the most assiduous investigation, I have not been able to discover any distinct trace of this class in any of the deposits preceding those which rest upon the coarse limestone. Certain lignites and molasses do in fact contain them; but I am very doubtful whether these deposits are all, as is commonly supposed, anterior to that limestone. The places where these bones have been found are so limited, both in extent and in number, as to induce us to suppose some irregularity, or some repetition of the formation containing them. On the contrary, the moment we arrive at the deposits which rest upon the coarse limestone, the bones of land-animals present themselves in great abundance.

As it is reasonable to believe that shells and fishes did not exist at the period of the formation of primitive rocks, we are also led to conclude that the oviparous quadrupeds began to exist along with the fishes, and at the commencement of the period during which the secondary rocks were formed; but that the land-quadrupeds did not appear upon the earth, at least in any considerable number, till long after, and until the coarse limestone strata, which contain the greater number of our genera of shells, although of species different from ours, had been deposited.

It is remarkable that those coarse limestone strata which are used at Paris for building, are the last formed strata which indicate a long and quiet continuance of the sea upon our continents. Above them, indeed, there are found formations containing shells and other marine productions; but these consist of collections of transported matters, sand, marls, sandstones, and clays, which rather indicate transportations that have taken place with more or less violence, than strata formed by tranquil deposition; and, if there be some rocky and regular strata of pretty considerable magnitude, beneath or above these transported matters, they generally exhibit indications of having been deposited from fresh water.

Almost all the known bones of viviparous quadrupeds, therefore, have been found either in those fresh-water formations, or in the alluvial formations; and consequently there is every reason to conclude that these quadrupeds have only begun to exist, or, at least, to leave their remains in the strata of our earth, after the last retreat of the sea but one, and during the state of things that preceded its last irruption.

But there is also an order in the disposition of these bones with regard to each other; and this order further announces a very remarkable succession in the appearance of the different species. All the genera which are now unknown, the Palæotheria, Anaplotheria, &c., with the position of which we are thoroughly acquainted, belong to the oldest of the formations of which we are now speaking, those which rest immediately upon the coarse limestone. It is chiefly these genera which occupy the regular beds that have been deposited from fresh-water, or certain alluvial beds of very ancient formation, generally composed of sand and rolled pebbles, and which were perhaps the earliest alluvium of that ancient world. Along with these there are also found some lost species of known genera, but in small numbers, and some oviparous quadrupeds and fishes, which appear to have been all inhabitants of fresh-water. The beds which contain them are always more or less covered by alluvial beds, containing shells, and other marine productions.

The most celebrated of the unknown species, which belong to known genera, or to genera closely allied to those which are known, such as the fossil elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, and mastodons, do not occur along with those more ancient genera. It is in the alluvial formations alone that they are discovered, sometimes accompanied with marine shells, and sometimes with fresh-water shells, but never in regular stony beds. Every thing that is found along with these species is either unknown like themselves, or at least doubtful.

Lastly, the bones of species which are apparently the same as those that are still found alive, are never discovered, except in the last alluvial deposits formed on the sides of rivers, or on the bottoms of ancient pools or marshes now dried up, or in the substance of beds of peat, or in the fissures and caverns of some rocks; or, lastly, at small depths below the surface, in places where they may have been buried by the falling down of debris, or even by the hand of man; and their superficial position renders these bones, although the most recent of all, almost always the worst preserved.

It must not, however, be thought that this classification of the various geological positions of fossil remains, is as certain as that of the species, or that it is equally capable of demonstration. There are numerous reasons which prevent this from being the case.

In the first place, all my determinations of species have been made upon the bones themselves, or by means of good figures; whereas it has been impossible for me personally to examine all the places in which these bones have been discovered. I have very frequently been obliged to content myself with vague and ambiguous accounts, given by people who were not themselves well aware of what it was necessary to observe; and, more frequently still, I have been unable to procure any information whatever on the subject.

Secondly, these repositories of organic remains are subject to infinitely greater doubts, than the bones themselves. The same formation may appear recent in places where it shews itself at the surface, and ancient in those where it is covered by the beds which have succeeded it. Ancient formations may have been transported by partial inundations, and thus have covered recent bones; they may have fallen upon them by crumbling, and thus have enveloped and mingled them with the productions of the ancient sea, which they previously contained. Bones of ancient periods may have been washed out by the waters, and afterwards enveloped in recent alluvial formations. Lastly, recent bones may have fallen into the fissures or caverns of ancient rocks, and been enveloped by stalactites or other incrustations. In every individual instance, therefore, it becomes necessary to analyze and appreciate all those circumstances which might disguise the real origin of fossil remains; and it rarely happens that people who have collected bones have been themselves aware of this necessity, the consequence of which has been, that the true characters of their geological position have been almost always neglected or misunderstood.

Thirdly, there are some doubtful species, which must occasion more or less uncertainty in the results of our researches, until they have been clearly ascertained. Thus the horses and buffaloes that occur along with the elephants, have not yet received appropriate specific characters; and such geologists as are disinclined to adopt the different epochs which I have endeavoured to establish with regard to fossil bones, may, for many years to come, draw from thence an argument against my system, so much the more convenient as it is contained in my own work.

But allowing that these epochs are liable to some objections, from such as may only consider some particular case, I am not the less satisfied, that those who shall take a comprehensive view of the phenomena, will not be checked by such inconsiderable and partial difficulties, and will be led to conclude, as I have done, that there has been at least one, and very probably two, successions in the class of quadrupeds, previous to that which at the present day peoples the surface of the earth.

Proofs that the Extinct Species of Quadrupeds are not varieties of the presently existing Species.

I now proceed to the consideration of another objection, one, in fact, which has already been urged against me.

Why may not the presently existing races of land quadrupeds, it has been asked, be modifications of those ancient races which we find in a fossil state; which modifications may have been produced by local circumstances and change of climate; and carried to the extreme difference which they now present, during a long succession of ages?

This objection must appear strong to those especially who believe in the possibility of indefinite alteration of forms in organised bodies; and who think that, during a succession of ages, and by repeated changes of habitudes, all the species might be changed into one another, or might result from a single species.

Yet to these persons an answer may be given from their own system. If the species have changed by degrees, we ought to find traces of these gradual modifications. Thus, between the palæotheria and our present species, we should be able to discover some intermediate forms; and yet no such discovery has ever been made.

Why have not the bowels of the earth preserved the monuments of so strange a genealogy, if it be not because the species of former times were as constant as ours; or, at least, because the catastrophe which destroyed them, had not left them sufficient time for undergoing the variation alleged?

In order to reply to those naturalists who acknowledge that the varieties of animals are restrained within certain limits fixed by nature, it would be necessary to examine how far these limits extend. This is a very curious inquiry,—highly interesting in itself, under a variety of relations, and yet one that has been hitherto very little attended to.

Before entering upon this inquiry, it is proper to define what is meant by a species, so that the definition may serve to regulate the employment of the term. A species, therefore, may be defined, as comprehending the individuals which descend from each other, or from common parents, and those which resemble them as much as they resemble each other. Thus, we consider as varieties of a species, only the races more or less different which may have sprung from it by generation. Our observations, therefore, regarding the differences between the ancestors and descendants, afford us the only certain rule by which we can judge on this subject; all other considerations leading to hypothetical conclusions destitute of proof. Now, considering the varieties in this view, we observe that the differences which constitute it, depend upon determinate circumstances, and that their extent increases in proportion to the intensity of these circumstances.

Thus, the most superficial characters are the most variable: the colour depends much upon the light; the thickness of the fur upon the heat; the size, upon the abundance of food. But in a wild animal, even these varieties are greatly limited by the natural habits of the animal itself, which does not voluntarily remove far from the places where it finds, in the necessary degree, all that is requisite, for the support of its species, and does not even extend its haunts to any great distance, unless it also finds all these circumstances conjoined. Thus, although the wolf and the fox inhabit all the climates from the torrid to the frigid zone, we hardly find any other difference among them, in the whole of that vast space, than a little more or a little less beauty in their fur. I have compared skulls of foxes from the northern countries and from Egypt, with those of the foxes of France, and have found no difference but such as might be expected in different individuals. Such of the wild animals as are confined within narrower limits, vary still less, especially those which are carnivorous. The only difference between the hyena of Persia and that of Morocco, consists in a thicker or a thinner mane.

The wild herbivorous animals feel the influence of climate somewhat more extensively, because there is added to it in their case, the influence of the food, which may happen to differ both as to quantity and quality. Thus, the elephants of one forest are often larger than those of another; and their tusks are somewhat longer in places where their food may happen to be more favourable for the production of the matter of ivory. The same may take place with regard to the horns of rein-deer and stags. But let us compare two elephants the most dissimilar, and we shall not discover the slightest difference in the number and articulations of the bones, the structure of the teeth, &c.

Besides, the herbivorous species, in the wild state, seem more restrained from dispersing than the carnivorous animals, because the sort of food which they require, combines with the temperature to prevent them.

Nature also takes care to guard against the alteration of the species, which might result from their mixture, by the mutual aversion with which it has inspired them. It requires all the ingenuity and all the power of man to accomplish these unions, even between species that have the nearest resemblances. And, when the individuals produced by these forced conjunctions are fruitful, which is very seldom the case, their fecundity does not continue beyond a few generations; and would not probably proceed so far, without a continuance of the same cares which excited it at first. Thus, we never see in our woods individuals intermediate between the hare and the rabbit; between the stag and the doe; or between the martin and the pole-cat.

But the power of man changes this order; it discloses all those variations, of which the type of each species is susceptible; and from them derives productions which the species, if left to themselves, would never have yielded.

Here the degree of the variations is still proportional to the intensity of their cause, which is slavery. It is not very high in the semi-domesticated species, such as the cat. A softer fur; more brilliant colours; greater or less size; these form the whole extent of the variations in this species; for the skeleton of an Angora cat differs in no regular and constant circumstance from that of a wild cat.

In the domesticated herbivorous animals, which we transport into all kinds of climates, and subject to all kinds of management, both with regard to labour and nourishment, we certainly obtain greater variations; but still they are all merely superficial. Greater or less size; longer or shorter horns, or even the want of these entirely; a hump of fat, larger or smaller, on the shoulder; these form the differences between the various races of the common ox or bull; and these differences continue long, even in such breeds as have been transported from the countries in which they were produced, when proper care is taken to prevent crossing.

Of this nature are also the innumerable varieties of the common sheep, which consist chiefly in differences of their fleeces, as the wool which they produce is an important object of attention. These varieties, although not quite so perceptible, are yet sufficiently marked among horses. In general, the forms of the bones vary little; their connections and articulations, and the forms of the large grinding teeth, never vary at all.

The small size of the tusks in the domestic hog, compared with the wild boar’s, and the junction of its cloven hoofs into one in some races, form the extreme point of the differences which we have produced in the domesticated herbivorous quadrupeds.

The most remarkable effects of the influence of man are manifested in the animal which he has reduced most completely under subjection, the dog,—that species so entirely devoted to ours, that even the individuals of it seem to have sacrificed to us their will, their interest, and inclination. Transported by man into every part of the world, subjected to all the causes capable of influencing their development, regulated in their sexual intercourse by the pleasure of their masters, dogs vary in colour; in the quantity of their hair, which they sometimes even lose altogether, and in its nature; in size, which varies as one to five in the linear dimensions, amounting to more than a hundred fold in bulk; in the form of the ears, nose, and tail; in the proportional length of the legs; in the progressive development of the brain in the domestic varieties, whence results the form of their head, which is sometimes slender, with a lengthened muzzle and flat forehead, and sometimes having a short muzzle and a protuberant forehead; insomuch that the apparent differences between a mastiff and a water-spaniel, and between a greyhound and a pug, are more striking than those that exist between any two species of the same natural genus in a wild state. Finally, and this may be considered as the maximum of variation hitherto known in the animal kingdom, there are races of dogs which have an additional toe on the hind foot, with corresponding tarsal bones; as there are, in the human species, some families that have six fingers on each hand. Yet, in all these varieties, the relations of the bones remain the same, nor does the form of the teeth ever change in any perceptible degree; the only variation in respect to these latter being, that, in some individuals, one additional false grinder appears, sometimes on the one side, and sometimes on the other[82].

Animals, therefore, have natural characters, which resist every kind of influence, whether natural or produced by human interference, and nothing indicates that, with regard to them, time has more effect than climate and domestication.

I am aware that some naturalists lay great stress upon the thousands of ages which they call into action by a dash of the pen; but, in such matters, we can only judge of what a long period of time might produce, by multiplying in idea what a less time produces. With this view, I have endeavoured to collect the most ancient documents relating to the forms of animals; and there are none which equal, either in antiquity or abundance, those that Egypt furnishes. It affords us, not only representations of animals, but even their identical bodies embalmed in its catacombs.

I have examined with the greatest attention the figures of quadrupeds and birds sculptured upon the numerous obelisks brought from Egypt to ancient Rome. All these figures possess, in their general character, which alone could be the object of attention to an artist, a perfect resemblance to the species represented, such as we see them at the present day.

On examining the copies made by Kirker and Zoega, we find that, without preserving every trait of the originals in its perfect purity, they have given figures which are easily recognised. We readily distinguish the ibis, the vulture, the owl, the falcon, the Egyptian goose, the lapwing, the landrail, the aspic, the cerastes, the Egyptian hare with its long ears, and even the hippopotamus; and, among the numerous monuments engraved in the great work on Egypt, we sometimes observe the rarest animals, the algazel, for example, which was not seen in Europe until within these few years[83].

My learned colleague, M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, strongly convinced of the importance of this research, carefully collected in the tombs and temples of Upper and Lower Egypt as many mummies of animals as he could. He has brought home cats, ibises, birds of prey, dogs, monkeys, crocodiles, and the head of an ox, in this state; and there is certainly no more difference to be perceived between these mummies and the species of the same kind now alive, than between the human mummies and the skeletons of men of the present day. A difference may, indeed, be found between the mummies of the ibis and the bird which naturalists have hitherto described under that name; but I have cleared up all doubts on this matter, in a Memoir upon the Ibis, which will be found at the end of this Essay, and in which I have shewn that it is still at the present day the same as it was in the time of the Pharaohs. I am aware that, in these, I only cite the monuments of two or three thousand years; but this is the most remote antiquity to which we can resort in such a case.

There is nothing, therefore, to be derived from all the facts hitherto known, that could, in the slightest degree, give support to the opinion that the new genera which I have discovered or established among the fossil remains of animals, any more than those which have in like manner been discovered or established by other naturalists, the palæotheria, anoplotheria, megalonyces, mastodonta, pterodactyli, ichthyosauri, &c. might have been the sources of the present race of animals, which have only differed from them through the influence of time or climate. Even if it should prove true, which I am far from believing to be the case, that the fossil elephants, rhinoceroses, elks, and bears, differ no more from those at present existing, than the present races of dogs differ from one another, this would not furnish a sufficient reason for inferring the general identity of the species, because the races of dogs have been subjected to the influence of domestication, which these other animals neither did nor could experience.

Farther, when I maintain that the rocky beds contain the bones of several genera, and the alluvial strata those of several species which no longer exist, I do not assert that a new creation was required for producing the species existing at the present day. I only say that they did not originally inhabit the places where we find them at present, and that they must have come from some other part of the globe.

Let us suppose, for instance, that a great irruption of the sea were now to cover the continent of New Holland with a coat of sand or other debris; it would bury the carcases of animals belonging to the genera Kangurus, Phascolomys, Dasyurus, Perameles, flying phalanger, echidna, and ornithorynchus, and it would entirely destroy the species of all these genera, since none of them exist now in any other country.

Were the same revolution to lay dry the numerous narrow straits which separate New Holland from the continent of Asia, it would open a road to the elephants, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, horses, camels, and tigers, and to all the other Asiatic quadrupeds, which would come to people a land where they had been previously unknown.

Were some future naturalist, after having made himself well acquainted with this new race of animals, to search below the surface on which they live, he would find remains of quite a different nature.

What New Holland would be, under the circumstances which we have supposed, Europe, Siberia, and a large portion of America, now actually are. And, perhaps, when other countries shall have been examined, and New Holland among the rest, it will one day be found that they have experienced similar revolutions, I might almost say, mutual changes, of productions. For, if we push the supposition farther, and, after the supply of Asiatic animals to New Holland, admit a second revolution, which destroyed Asia, their original country, those naturalists who might observe them in New Holland, their second country, would be equally at a loss to know whence they had come, as we now are to find out the origin of the races of animals that inhabit our own countries.

I now proceed to apply this manner of reasoning to the human species.

Proofs that there are no Fossil Human Bones.

It is certain that no human bones have yet been found among fossil remains; and this furnishes an additional proof that the fossil races were not mere varieties of known species, since they could not have been subjected to human influence.

When I assert that human bones have never been found among fossil organic remains, (I must be understood to speak of fossils or petrifactions, properly so called), or, in other words, in the regular strata of the surface of the globe; for in peat-bogs (tourbières), and alluvial deposits, as in burying-grounds, human bones might as well be found as bones of horses, or other common species. They might equally be found in fissures of rocks, and in caverns, where they may have been covered over by stalactite; but in the beds which contain the ancient races, among the palæotheria, and even among the elephants and rhinoceroses, the smallest portion of a human bone has never been discovered. Many of the labourers in the gypsum quarries about Paris, believe that the bones which occur so abundantly in them, are in a great part human; but I have seen several thousands of these bones, and I may safely affirm that not one of them has ever belonged to our species. I have examined at Pavia the groups of bones brought by Spallanzani from the Island of Cerigo; and, notwithstanding the assertion of that celebrated observer, I equally affirm, that there is not one among them that could be shewn to be human. The homo diluvii testis of Scheuchzer has been restored, in my first edition, to its true genus, which is that of the salamanders; and, in a more recent examination of it at Haarlem, allowed me by the politeness of Mr Van Marum, who permitted me to uncover the parts enveloped in the stone, I obtained complete proof of what I had before announced. Among the bones found at Canstadt, the fragment of a jaw, and some articles of human manufacture, were found; but it is known that the ground was dug up without any precaution, and that no notes were taken of the different depths at which each article was discovered. Every where else, the fragments of bone alleged to be human, are found, on examination, to belong to some animal, whether these fragments have been examined themselves, or merely through the medium of figures. Very recently, some were pretended to have been discovered at Marseilles, in a quarry that had been long neglected;[84] but they have turned out to be impressions of tuyaux marines.[85] Such real human bones as have been exhibited as fossil, belonged to bodies that had fallen into fissures, or had been left in the old galleries of mines, or that had been incrusted; and I extend this assertion even to the human skeletons discovered at Guadaloupe, in a rock formed of fragments of madrepore, thrown up by the sea, and united by water impregnated with calcareous matter.[86] The human bones found near Kœstriz, and pointed out by M. de Schlotheim, had been announced as taken out of very old beds; but this estimable naturalist is anxious to make known how much this assertion is still subject to doubt.[87] The same has been the case with the articles of human fabrication. The pieces of iron found at Montmartre are fragments of the tools which the workmen use for putting in blasts of gunpowder, and which sometimes break in the stone[88].

Yet human bones preserve equally well with those of animals, when placed in the same circumstances. In Egypt, no difference is remarked between the mummies of men and those of quadrupeds. I picked up, from the excavations made some years ago in the ancient church of St Genevieve, human bones that had been interred below the first race, which may even have belonged to some princes of the family of Clovis, and which still retained their forms very perfectly[89]. We do not find in ancient fields of battle that the skeletons of men are more wasted than those of horses, except in so far as they may have been influenced by size; and we find among fossil remains the bones of animals as small as rats, still perfectly preserved.

Every circumstance, therefore, leads to the conclusion, that the human species did not exist in the countries in which the fossil bones have been discovered, at the epoch of the revolutions by which these bones were covered up; for there cannot be a single reason assigned, why men should have entirely escaped from such general catastrophes, or why their remains should not be now found like those of other animals. I do not presume, however, to conclude that man did not exist at all before this epoch. He might then have inhabited some narrow regions, whence he might have repeopled the earth after those terrible events. Perhaps also, the places which he inhabited may have been entirely swallowed up in the abyss, and his bones buried at the bottom of the present seas, with the exception of a small number of individuals, which have continued the species.

However this may be, the establishment of man in those countries in which we have said that the fossil remains of land animals are found, that is to say, in the greatest part of Europe, Asia, and America, has necessarily been posterior, not only to the revolutions which have covered up these bones, but also to those which have laid bare the strata containing them, and which are the last that the globe has undergone. Hence it clearly appears, that no argument in favour of the antiquity of the human species in these different countries can be derived either from those bones themselves, or from the more or less considerable masses of rocks or of earthy materials by which they are covered.

Physical Proofs of the Newness of the Present Continents.

On the contrary, by a careful examination of what has taken place on the surface of the globe, since it has been laid dry for the last time, and its continents have assumed their present form, at least in the parts that are somewhat elevated, it may be clearly seen that this last revolution, and consequently the establishment of our existing societies, could not have been very ancient. This result is one of the best established, and, at the same time, one of the least attended to in rational geology; and it is so much the more valuable, that it connects natural and civil history in one uninterrupted series.

When we measure the effects produced in a given time by causes still acting, and compare them with those which the same causes have produced since they have begun to act, we are enabled to determine nearly the instant at which their action commenced; which is necessarily the same as that in which our continents assumed their present form, or that of the last sudden retreat of the waters.

It must, in fact, have been since this last retreat of the waters, that our present steep declivities have begun to disintegrate, and to form heaps of debris at their bases; that our present rivers have begun to flow, and to deposit their alluvial matters; that our present vegetation has begun to extend itself, and to produce soil; that our present cliffs have begun to be corroded by the sea; that our present downs have begun to be thrown up by the wind: just as it must have been since this same epoch, that colonies of men have begun, for the first or second time, to spread themselves, and to form establishments in places fitted by nature for their reception. I do not here take the action of volcanoes into account, not only because of the irregularity of their eruptions, but because we have no proofs of their not having been able to exist under the sea; and because, on that account, they cannot serve us as a measure of the time which has elapsed since its last retreat.

Additions of Land by the Action of Rivers.

MM. Deluc and Dolomieu have most carefully examined the progress of the formation of new ground by means of matters washed down by rivers; and although exceedingly opposed to each other on many points of the Theory of the Earth, they agree in this. These formations augment very rapidly; they must have increased still more rapidly at first, when the mountains furnished more materials to the rivers, and yet their extent is still inconsiderable.

Dolomieu’s Memoir respecting Egypt[90] tends to prove, that the tongue of land on which Alexander caused his city to be built, did not exist in the days of Homer; that they were then able to navigate directly from the island of Pharos into the gulf afterwards called Lake Mareotis; and that this gulf was then, as indicated by Menelaus, from fifteen to twenty leagues in length. It had, therefore, only required the nine hundred years that elapsed between the time of Homer and that of Strabo, to bring things to the state in which this latter author describes them, and to reduce the gulf in question to the form of a lake, of six leagues in length. It is more certain, that, since that time, things have changed still more. The sand thrown up by the sea and winds have formed, between the island of Pharos and the site of ancient Alexandria, a tongue of land two hundred fathoms in breadth, upon which the modern city has been built. It has blocked up the nearest mouth of the Nile, and reduced the lake Mareotis to almost nothing; while, during the same period, the alluvial matter carried down by the Nile, has been deposited along the rest of the shore, and has greatly increased its extent.

The ancients were not ignorant of these changes. Herodotus says, that the Egyptian priests regarded their country as a gift of the Nile. It is only in a manner, he adds, within a short period, that the Delta has appeared[91]. Aristotle observes, that Homer speaks of Thebes as if it had been the only great city in Egypt; and nowhere makes mention of Memphis[92]. The Canopian and Pelusian mouths of the Nile were formerly the principal ones; and the coast extended in a straight line from the one to the other; and in this manner it still appears in the charts of Ptolemy. Since then, the water has been directed into the Bolbitian and Phatnitic mouths; and it is at these entrances into the sea that the greatest depositions have been formed, which have given the coast a semicircular outline. The cities of Rosetta and Damieta, which were built upon these mouths, close to the edge of the sea, less than a thousand years ago, are now two leagues distant from it. According to Demaillet[93], it would only have required twenty-six years to form a promontory of half a league in extent before Rosetta.

An elevation is produced in the soil of Egypt, at the same time that this extension of its surface takes place, and the bed of the river rises in the same proportion as the adjacent plains, which makes the inundations of every succeeding century pass far beyond the marks which it had left during the preceding ones. According to Herodotus, a period of nine hundred years was sufficient to establish a difference of level amounting to ten or twelve feet. At Elephantia[94], the inundation at present exceeds by seven feet the greatest heights which it attained under Septimus Severus, at the commencement of the third century. At Cairo, before it is judged sufficient for the purpose of irrigation, it must exceed, by three feet and a half, the height which was necessary in the ninth century. The ancient monuments of this celebrated land have all their bases more or less buried in the soil. The mud left by the river even covers, to a depth of several feet, the artificial mounds on which the ancient towns were built[95].

The delta of the Rhone is not less remarkable for its increase. Astruc gives a detailed account of it in his Natural History of Languedoc; and proves, by a careful comparison of the descriptions of Mela, Strabo and Pliny, with the state of the places as they existed at the commencement of the eighteenth century, taking into account the statements of several writers of the middle age, that the arms of the Rhone have increased three leagues in length in the course of eighteen hundred years; that similar additions of land are made to the west of the Rhone; and that a number of places, which were situated, six or eight hundred years ago, at the edge of the sea or of large pools, are now several miles distant from the water.

Any one may observe in Holland and Italy, with what rapidity the Rhine, the Po, and the Arno, since they have been confined within dikes, raise their beds, advance their mouths into the sea, forming long promontories at their sides; and judge, from these facts, how small a number of ages was required by these rivers to deposit the low plains which they now traverse.

Many cities, which were flourishing sea-ports at well known periods of history, are now some leagues inland; and several have even been ruined, in consequence of this change of position. The inhabitants of Venice find it exceedingly difficult to preserve the lagunes, by which that city is separated from the continent; and notwithstanding all their efforts, it will be inevitably joined to the mainland[96].

We know, from the testimony of Strabo, that Ravenna stood among lagunes in the time of Augustus, as Venice does now; but at present Ravenna is a league distant from the shore. Spina had been built by the Greeks at the edge of the sea; yet in Strabo’s time it was ninety stadia from it, and is now destroyed. Adria in Lombardy, which gave name to the Adriatic sea, and of which it was, somewhat more than twenty centuries ago, the principal port, is now six leagues distant from it. Fortis has even rendered it probable that, at a more remote period, the Euganian Mountains may have been islands.

M. de Prony, a learned member of the Institute, and inspector-general of bridges and roads, has communicated to me some observations which are of the greatest importance, as explaining those changes that have taken place along the shores of the Adriatic[97]. Having been directed by government to investigate the remedies that might be applied to the devastations occasioned by the floods of the Po, he ascertained that this river, since the period when it was shut in by dikes, has so greatly raised the level of its bottom, that the surface of its waters is now higher than the roofs of the houses in Ferrara. At the same time, its alluvial depositions have advanced so rapidly into the sea, that, by comparing old charts with the present state, the shore is found to have gained more than six thousand fathoms since 1604, giving an average of a hundred and fifty or a hundred and eighty, and in some places two hundred feet yearly. The Adige and the Po, are at the present day higher than the whole tract of land that lies between them; and it is only by opening new channels for them in the low grounds, which they have formerly deposited, that the disasters which they now threaten may be averted.

The same causes have produced the same effects along the branches of the Rhine and the Meuse; and thus the richest districts of Holland have continually the frightful view of their rivers held up by embankments at a height of from twenty to thirty feet above the level of the land.

M. Wiebeking, director of bridges and highways in the kingdom of Bavaria, has written a memoir upon this subject, so important as to be worthy of being properly understood, both by the people and the government, in all countries where these changes take place. In this memoir, he shews that the property of raising the level of their beds is common in a greater or less degree to all rivers.

The additions of land that have been made along the shores of the North Sea, have not been less rapid in their progress than in Italy. They can be easily traced in Friesland and in the country of Groningen, where the epoch of the first dikes, constructed by the Spanish governor Gaspar Roblès, is well known to have been in 1570. An hundred years afterwards, land had already been gained, in some places, to the extent of three quarters of a league beyond these dikes; and even the city of Groningen, partly built upon the old land, on a limestone which does not belong to the present sea, and in which the same shells are found as in the coarse limestone of the neighbourhood of Paris, is only six leagues from the sea. Having been upon the spot, I am enabled to adduce my own testimony in confirmation of facts already well known, and which have been so well stated by M. Deluc[98]. The same phenomenon may be as distinctly observed along the coasts of East Friesland, and the countries of Bremen and Holstein, as the period at which the new grounds were inclosed for the first time is known, and the extent that has been gained since can be measured. This new alluvial land, formed by the rivers and the sea, is of astonishing fertility, and is so much the more valuable, as the ancient soil of these countries, being covered with heaths and peat-mosses, is almost everywhere unfit for cultivation. The alluvial lands alone produce subsistence for the many populous cities that have been built along these coasts, since the middle age, and which perhaps would not have attained their present flourishing condition, without the aid of the rich deposits which the rivers had prepared for them, and which they are continually augmenting.

If the size which Herodotus attributes to the Sea of Asoph, which he makes equal to the Euxine[99], had been less vaguely indicated, and if we knew precisely what he meant by the Gerrhus[100], we should there find strong additional proofs of the changes produced by rivers, and the rapidity with which they are made; for the alluvial depositions of rivers alone have, since the time of Herodotus, that is to say, in the course of two thousand and two or three hundred years, reduced the Sea of Asoph[101] to its present comparatively small size, shut up the course of the Gerrhus, or that branch of the Dnieper which had formerly joined the Hypacyris, and discharged its waters along with that river into the gulf called Carcinites, now the Olu-Degnitz, and reduced the Hypacyris itself to almost nothing[102]. We should possess proofs no less strong of the same kind, could we be certain that the Oxus or Sihoun, which at present discharges itself into the lake Aral, formerly reached the Caspian Sea. But we are in possession of facts sufficiently conclusive on the point in question, without adducing such as are doubtful, and without being exposed to the necessity of making the ignorance of the ancients in geography the basis of our physical propositions.[103]

Progress of the Downs.

The downs or hillocks of sand which the sea throws up on low coasts, when its bottom is sandy, have already been mentioned. Wherever human industry has not succeeded in fixing these downs, they advance as irresistibly upon the land as the alluvial depositions of the rivers advance into the sea. In their progress inland, they push before them the large pools formed by the rain which falls upon the neighbouring grounds, and whose communication with the sea is intercepted by them. In many places they proceed with a frightful rapidity, overwhelming forests, buildings, and cultivated fields. Those upon the coast of the Bay of Biscay[104] have already overwhelmed a great number of villages mentioned in the records of the middle age; and at this moment, in the single Department of the Landes, they threaten ten with inevitable destruction. One of these villages, named Mimisan, has been struggling against them these twenty years, with the melancholy prospect of a sand-hill of more than sixty feet perpendicular height visibly approaching it.

In 1802, the pent up pools overwhelmed five fine farming establishments at the village of St Julian[105]. They have long covered up an ancient Roman road leading from Bourdeaux to Bayonne, and which could still be seen forty years ago, when the waters were low[106]. The Adour, which is known to have formerly passed Old Boucaut, to join the sea at Cape Breton, is now turned to the distance of more than two thousand yards.

The late M. Bremontier, inspector of bridges and highways, who conducted extensive operations upon these downs, estimated their progress at sixty feet yearly, and in some places at seventy-two feet. According to this calculation, it will only require two thousand years to enable them to reach Bourdeaux; and, from their present extent, it must have been somewhat more than four thousand years since they began to be formed[107].

The overwhelming of the cultivated lands of Egypt, by the sterile lands of Libya, which are thrown upon them by the west wind, is a phenomenon of the same nature with the downs. These sands have destroyed a number of cities and villages, whose ruins are still to be seen; and this has happened since the conquest of the country by the Mahometans, for the summits of the minarets of some mosques are seen projecting beyond the sand[108]. With a progress so rapid, they would, without doubt, have filled up the narrow parts of the valley, if so many ages had elapsed since they began to be thrown into it[109]; and there would no longer remain any thing between the Libyan chain and the Nile. Here, then, we have another natural chronometer, of which it would be as easy as interesting to obtain the measure.

Peat-Mosses and Slips.

The turbaries, or peat-mosses, which have been found so generally in the northern parts of Europe, by the accumulation of the remains of sphagna and other aquatic mosses, also afford a measure of time. They increase in height in proportions which are determinate with regard to each place. They thus envelope the small knolls of the lands on which they are formed; and several of these knolls have been covered over within the memory of man. In other places the peat-mosses descend along the valleys, advancing like glaciers, but differing from them in this respect, that, while the glaciers melt at their lower part, the progress of the peat is impeded by nothing. By sounding their depth down to the solid ground, we may estimate their age; and we find, with regard to these peat-mosses, as with regard to the downs, that they cannot have derived their origin from an indefinitely remote period. The same observation may be made with regard to the slips or fallings, which take place with wonderful rapidity at the foot of all steep rocks, and which are still very far from having covered them. But as no precise measures have hitherto been applied to these two agents, we shall not insist upon them at greater length[110].

From all that has been said, it may be seen that nature uniformly speaks the same language, everywhere informing us that the present order of things cannot have commenced at a very remote period. And, what is very remarkable, mankind everywhere speaks as nature, whether we consult the received traditions of the various nations, or examine their moral and political state, and the intellectual attainments which they had made at the period when their authentic records commence.

The History of Nations confirms the Newness of the Continents.

In fact, although, at the first glance, the traditions of some ancient nations, which extend their origin to so many thousands of ages, appear strongly to contradict this newness of the world, as it exists at present; yet when we examine these traditions more carefully, we soon perceive that they are not sufficiently authenticated. We are, on the contrary, quickly convinced, that true history, deserving that name, and all that has been preserved of positive documents regarding the first establishment of nations, confirm what has been announced by the natural monuments already mentioned.

The chronology of none of the western nations can be traced in a continuous line farther back than 3000 years. None of them afford us, previous to that period, nor even two or three centuries after, a series of facts connected with any degree of probability. The north of Europe possesses no authentic records which bear a remoter date than that of its conversion to Christianity. The history of Spain, of Gaul, and of England, commences only at the period when these countries were conquered by the Romans; that of northern Italy is, at the present day, almost unknown. The Greeks acknowledge that they did not possess the art of writing, until it was taught them by the Phœnicians, fifteen or sixteen centuries before the Christian era; even for a long time after, their history is full of fables; and they do not assign a more remote date than 300 years farther back, to their uniting into distinct tribes. Of the history of Western Asia, we have only a few contradictory extracts, which do not, with any connection, give a greater antiquity than twenty-five centuries[111]; and even if we admit the few historical details which refer to more remote periods, it can scarcely be extended to forty[112].

Herodotus, the first profane historian whose works have been transmitted to us, has not a greater antiquity than 2300 years[113]. The historians, prior to him, whom he may have consulted, do not date a century before him[114]. We may even judge of what they were by the extravagances handed down to us, extracted from the works of Aristæus of Proconnesus, and some others. Before them we have only poets; and Homer, the most ancient that we possess, Homer the immortal master and model of all the West, flourished only twenty-seven or twenty-eight centuries before the present time.

When these first historians speak of ancient events, whether occurring in their own nation, or in neighbouring countries, they only cite oral traditions, and not public works. It was not until a long time after them, that pretended extracts were given from the Egyptian, Phenician, and Babylonian annals. Berosus wrote only in the reign of Seleucus Nicanor; Hieronymus in that of Antiochus Soter, and Manetho under Ptolemy Philadelphia; the whole three having flourished only in the third century before the Christian era. That Sanconiatho was an author real or supposed, was not known till Philo of Byblos had published a translation of his work in the reign of Adrian, in the second century before Christ; and, when he did become known, there was nothing found in his account of the early ages, as in those of all the authors of this kind, but a puerile theogony, or metaphysical doctrines, so disguised under the form of allegory as to be unintelligible.

One nation alone has preserved annals written in prose before the period of Cyrus, namely, the Jewish people. The part of the Old Testament which is known by the name of the Pentateuch, has existed in its present form, at least since the separation of the ten tribes under Jeroboam, since it was received as authentic by the Samaritans equally as the Jews, which assures us that its actual antiquity is upwards of 2800 years. Besides this, we have no reason to doubt the book of Genesis having been composed by Moses himself, which gives it an antiquity of 500 years more, or of thirty-three centuries; and it is only necessary to read it, to perceive that it has in part been composed of fragments of previously existing works. We cannot, therefore, hesitate to admit, that this is the most ancient writing which has been transmitted to modern times in the West[115].

Now, this work, and all those which have been composed since, whatever strangers their authors might be to Moses and his people, speak of the nations on the shores of the Mediterranean as of recent origin; they represent them as still in a half savage state some ages before. And, further, they all speak of a general catastrophe, an irruption of the waters, which occasioned an almost total regeneration of the human race; and to this epoch they do not assign a very remote antiquity. Those texts of the Pentateuch, which extend this epoch the longest, do not place it farther back than twenty centuries before Moses, and hence not more than 5400 years before the present day[116].

In the poetical traditions of the Greeks, from which is derived the whole of our profane history with reference to those remote ages, there is nothing which contradicts the Jewish annals. On the contrary, they have a wonderful agreement with them, by the epoch which they assign to the Egyptian and Phenician colonies, by which the first germs of civilization were carried into Greece. We find that, about the same period when the Israelites took their departure from Egypt, to carry into Palestine the sublime doctrine of the unity of God, other colonies issued from the same country, to carry into Greece a religion less pure, at least in its external character, whatever might have been the secret doctrines which it reserved for the initiated; while others, again, came from Phenicia, and imparted to the Greeks the art of writing, and whatever was connected with navigation and commerce[117].

It is undoubtedly far from being the case, that we have had since that time a connected history, since we still find, for a long period after these founders of colonies, a multitude of mythological events, and adventures, in which gods and heroes are concerned; and these chiefs are connected with authentic history only by means of genealogies evidently fictitious[118]. And, it is still more certain, that whatever preceded their arrival, could only have been preserved in very imperfect traditions, and supplied by mere fictions, similar to those of our monks of the middle age regarding the origin of the European nations.

Thus, not only should we not be surprised to find, even in ancient times, many doubts and contradictions respecting the epochs of Cecrops, Deucalion, Cadmus and Danaus; and not only would it be childish to attach the smallest importance to any opinion whatever, regarding the precise dates of Inachus[119] or Ogyges[120]; but, if any thing ought to surprise us, it is this,—that an infinitely more remote antiquity had not been assigned to those personages. It is impossible that there has not been in this case some effect of the influence of received traditions, from which the inventors of fables were not able to free themselves. One of the dates assigned to the deluge of Ogyges, even agrees so much with one of those which have been attributed to the deluge of Noah, that it is almost impossible it should not have been derived from some source, where this latter deluge had been the one intended to be spoken of[121].

As to Deucalion, whether this prince be regarded as a real or fictitious personage, however little we enter into the manner in which his deluge has been introduced into the poems of the Greeks, and the various details with which it becomes successively enriched, we perceive that it was nothing else than a tradition of the great cataclysm, altered and placed by the Hellenians in the period which they also assigned to Deucalion, because he was regarded as the founder of their nation, and because his history is confounded with that of all the chiefs of the renewed nations[122].

Each of the different colonies of Greece, that had preserved isolated traditions, commenced them with a particular deluge of its own, because some remembrance of the general deluge common to all the nations, was preserved among each of the tribes; and, when it was afterwards attempted to reduce these various traditions to a common chronology, different events were imagined to have been recorded, from the circumstance that dates, in reality uncertain, or perhaps altogether false, although considered as authentic in the countries where they originated, were not found to agree with each other. Thus, in the same manner that the Hellenes had a deluge of Deucalion, because they regarded him as the founder of their nation, the Autochtones of Attica had one of Ogyges, because it was with him that their history commenced. The Pelasgi of Arcadia had that which, according to later authors, compelled Dardanus to retire towards the Hellespont.[123] The island of Samothracia, one of those in which a succession of priests had been more anciently established, together with a regular worship and connected traditions, had also a deluge, which passed for the most ancient of all[124], and which was attributed to the bursting of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont. Some idea of a similar event was preserved in Asia Minor[125], and in Syria[126], and to this the Greeks would afterwards naturally attach the name of Deucalion[127].

But none of these traditions assign a very remote antiquity to this cataclysm; and there is none of them that does not admit of explanation, in so far as its date and other circumstances are concerned, from the variations to which narratives, that are not fixed by writing, must be continually liable.

The very remote Antiquity attributed to certain Nations is not supported by History.

Those who would attribute to the continents and the establishment of nations, a very remote antiquity, are therefore obliged to have recourse to the Indians, Chaldeans, and Egyptians, three nations, in fact, which appear to have been the most anciently civilized of the Caucasian Race, and having a remarkable similarity, not only in their temperament, and in the climate and nature of the countries which they occupied, but also in their political and religious constitution, but whose testimony this almost identical constitution ought to render equally suspected[128].

These three nations agreed in having each a hereditary caste, to which the care of religion, laws, and science, was exclusively consigned. In all of them, this caste had its allegorical language and secret doctrines; and in all it reserved to itself the privilege of reading and explaining the sacred books, the whole doctrines of which had been revealed by the gods themselves.

We can easily conceive what history would necessarily come to in such hands; but, without having recourse to any great efforts of reason, we may learn it from the fact itself, by examining what it has come to in the only one of these three nations which still exists, namely, the Indians.

The truth is, that history does not exist at all among them. In the midst of that infinity of books on mystical theology and abstract metaphysics which the Brahmins possess, and many of which have been made known to us by the ingenious perseverance of the English, we find no connected account of the origin of their nation, or of the vicissitudes of their society. They even pretend that their religion prohibits them from recording the events of the present time, their age of misfortune[129].

According to the Vedas, the first revealed works, on which are founded the whole religious opinions of the Hindoos, the literature of this people, like that of the Greeks, had its origin at two great epochs; the Ramaian and the Mahabarat,—a thousand times more monstrous in their wonders than the Iliad and Odyssey, but in which we also perceive some traces of a metaphysical doctrine of that description generally termed sublime. The other poems, which, together with the two mentioned, compose the great body of the Pouranas, are nothing else than metrical legends or romances, written at different periods, and by different authors, and not less extravagant in their fictions than the great poems. It has been imagined that, in some of these writings, events and names of men bearing some resemblance to those spoken of by the Greeks and Latins, might be discovered; and it is chiefly from these resemblances of names that Mr Wilfort has attempted to extract from the Pouranas a kind of concordance with our ancient chronology of the west; a concordance which, in every line, betrays the hypothetical nature of its basis, and which, moreover, can only be admitted by absolutely rejecting the dates given in the Pouranas themselves[130].

The list of kings which the Indian pundits or doctors pretend to have compiled according to these Pouranas, are nothing but mere catalogues without any details, or adorned with absurd ones, like those of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, and like those which Trithemus and Saxo Grammaticus have made up for the northern nations[131]. These lists are far from corresponding; none of them supposes a history, or registers, or records; the very basis on which they rest may have been purely imagined by the poets from whose works they have been extracted. One of the pundits who furnished Mr Wilfort with them, acknowledged that he had arbitrarily filled up the spaces between the celebrated kings with imaginary names[132], and avowed that his predecessors had done the same. If this be true of the lists obtained by the English at the present day, how should it not be so of those given by Abou-Fazel, as extracts from the annals of Cachmere[133], and which, besides, full of fables as they are, do not extend farther back than 4300 years, of which more than 1200 are occupied with names of princes whose reigns, in as far as regards their duration, remain undetermined.

Even the era, accordingly, from which the Indians count their years at the present day, which commences fifty-seven years before Christ, and which bears the name of a prince called Vicramaditjia, or Bickermadjit, bears it only by a sort of convention; for we find, according to the synchronisms attributed to Vicramaditjia, that there may have been at least three, and perhaps so many as eight or nine, princes of this name, who have all similar legends, and who have all waged war with a prince named Saliwahanna; and, further, we cannot well make out whether this period, the fifty-seventh year before the Christian era, is that of the birth, reign, or death of the hero whose name it bears.[134]

Lastly, the most authentic books of the Indians, contradict, by intrinsic and very obvious characters, the antiquity attributed to them by the pundits. Their vedas, or sacred books, alleged by them to have been revealed by Brama himself from the beginning of the world, and arranged by Viasa (a name which signifies nothing else than collector), at the commencement of the present age, if we judge of them by the calendar which is found annexed, and to which they refer, as well as by the position of the colures indicated by this calendar, may extend to 3200 years, or about the epoch of Moses.[135] Nay, perhaps those who give credit to the assertion of Megasthenes[136], that in his time the Indians were not acquainted with the art of writing, who reflect that none of the ancients has made mention of their superb temples, those immense pagodas, the remarkable monuments of the religion of the Brahmins, and who are aware that the epochs of their astronomical tables have been calculated backwards, and ill calculated, and that their treatises of astronomy are modern and antedated, will be inclined still farther to reduce the pretended antiquity of the Vedas.

Yet even in the midst of all the Brahminical fictions, circumstances occur, whose agreement with the result of the historical monuments of more western countries cannot but astonish us. Thus, their mythology consecrates the successive devastations which the surface of the globe has already undergone, or is yet destined to undergo; and it is only to a period somewhat less than 5000 years, that they refer the last catastrophe.[137] One of these revolutions, which is in reality placed much farther from us, is described in terms nearly corresponding with those of Moses[138]. Mr Wilfort even assures us, that, in another event of the same mythology, a conspicuous place is held by a personage who resembles Deucalion, in his origin, name, and adventures, and even in the name and adventures of his father[139]. It is a circumstance equally worthy of remark, that, in the lists of their kings, imperfect and unauthentic as they are, they date the commencement of their first human sovereigns (those of the race of the sun and moon), at an epoch which is nearly the same as that from which Ctesias, in his singularly constructed list, commences the reign of his Assyrian kings[140].

This deplorable state of historical knowledge was necessarily the result of the system of a people, among whom the exclusive privilege of writing, of preserving, and of explaining the books, was given to the hereditary priests of a religion monstrous in its ritual, and cruel in its maxims. Some legend made up for the purpose of establishing a place of pilgrimage, inventions adapted to impress more deeply a respect for their caste, must have interested these priests more than any historical truths. Of the sciences, they might have cultivated astronomy, which would give them credit as astrologers; mechanics, which would assist them in raising their monuments, those signs of their power, and objects of the superstitious veneration of the people; geometry, the basis of astronomy, as well as of mechanics, and an important auxiliary to agriculture in those vast plains of alluvial formation, which could only be rendered healthy and fertile by the aid of numerous canals. They might have encouraged the mechanical or chemical arts, which supported their commerce, and contributed to their luxury, and the magnificence of their temples. But history, which informs men of their mutual relations, would be regarded by them with dread.

What we see in India, we might therefore expect to find in general, wherever sacerdotal races, constituted like those of the Brahmins, and established in similar countries, assumed the same empire over the mass of the people. The same causes produce the same effects; and, in fact, we have only to glance over the fragments of Egyptian and Chaldean traditions which have been preserved, to be convinced that there is no more historical authenticity in them than in those of the Indians.

In order to judge of the nature of the chronicles which the Egyptian priests pretended to possess, it is only necessary to review the extracts which have been given by themselves at different periods, and to different individuals.

Those of Sais, for example, informed Solon, about 550 years before Christ, that, as Egypt was not subject to deluges, they had preserved not only their own annals, but those of other nations also; that the cities of Athens and Sais had been built by Minerva, the former 9000 years before, the latter only 8000; and to these dates they added the well known fables respecting the Atlantes, and the resistance which the ancient Athenians opposed to their conquests, together with the whole romantic description of the Atlantis[141], a description in which we find events and genealogies similar to those of all mythological romances.

A century later, about 450 years before Christ, the priests of Memphis gave entirely different accounts to Herodotus[142]. Menes, the first king of Egypt, according to them, had built Memphis, and inclosed the Nile within dikes, as if it were possible that the first king of a country could perform operations of this kind. Between this prince and Mœris, who, according to them, reigned 900 years before the period at which this account was given (1350 years before Christ), they had a succession of three hundred and thirty other kings.

After these kings came Sesostris, who extended his conquests as far as Colchis[143]; and altogether, there were, to the time of Sethos, three hundred and forty-one kings, and three hundred and forty-one chief priests, in three hundred and forty-one generations, during a space of 11,340 years. And, in this interval, as if to insure the authenticity of their chronology, these priests asserted that the sun had risen twice where he sets, without any change having taken place in the climate or productions of the country, and without any of the gods having at that time, or before, made their appearance and reigned in Egypt.

To this fable, which, despite of all the pretended explanations that have been given of it, evinces so gross an ignorance of astronomy, they added, regarding Sesostris, Phero, Helenius, and Rhampsinitus, the kings who built the pyramids, and an Ethiopian conqueror named Sabacos, a set of tales equally absurd.

The priests of Thebes did better: they shewed Herodotus, and they had before shewn to Hecatæus, three hundred and forty-five colossal figures of wood, which represented three hundred and forty-five high priests, who had succeeded to each other from father to son, all men, all born the one of the other, but who had been preceded by gods[144]. Other Egyptians told him that they had exact registers, not only of the reign of men, but also of that of gods. They reckoned 17,000 years from Hercules to Amases, and 15,000 from Bacchus. Pan had even been prior to Hercules[145]. These people evidently took for history some allegories relating to pantheistic metaphysics, which formed, unknown to them, the basis of their mythology.

It is only from the time of Sethos that Herodotus commences the part of his history which is somewhat rational; and it is worthy of remark, that this part begins with an event which agrees with the Hebrew annals, the destruction of the army of the King of Assyria, Sennacherib[146]; and this agreement continues under Necho[147], and under Hophra or Apries.

Two centuries after Herodotus (about 260 years before Christ) Ptolemy Philadelphus, a prince of a foreign race, wished to become acquainted with the history of the country which events had called him to govern. A priest, called Manetho, was employed to write it for him. It was not from registers or archives that he pretended to compile this work, but from the sacred books of Agathodæmon, the son of the second Hermes, and the father of Tat, who had copied it upon pillars erected before the flood by Tot or the first Hermes, in the Seriadic land[148]. And this second Hermes, this Agathodæmon, this Tat, are personages of whom nothing had ever been said before, any more than of the Seriadic land, or of its pillars. The deluge itself was an event entirely unknown to the Egyptians of preceding times, and concerning which Manetho says nothing in what remains of his dynasties. The product resembles its source; not only is the whole full of absurdities, but they are absurdities peculiar to the work, and utterly irreconcilable with those which the priests of older times had related to Solon and Herodotus.

It is Vulcan who commences the series of divine kings. He reigns 9000 years; the gods and demi-gods reign 1985 years. The names, and successions, and dates of Manetho are utterly unlike any thing that was published before or after him; and from the discrepancy of the extracts given by Josephus, Julius Africanus, and Eusebius, we may infer that his narratives were as obscure and confused in themselves, as they were discordant with those of other authors. Even the duration of the respective reigns of his human kings is not settled. According to Julius Africanus, it extended to 5101; according to Eusebius, to 4723; and according to Syncellus, to 3555 years. It might be thought that the differences in the names and cyphers arose from the inaccuracy of copyists; but Josephus quotes a passage at length, the details of which are manifestly in contradiction with the extracts of his successors.

A chronicle, named the ancient[149], and which some consider anterior, others posterior, to Manetho, gives still different calculations. The total duration of its kings is 36,525 years, of which the sun reigned 30,000, the other gods 3984, and the demi-gods 217; there remaining for those of the human race only 2339 years. There are thus also but 113 generations, in place of the 340 of Herodotus.

A learned man of an order different from that of Manetho, the astronomer Eratosthenes, discovered and published, in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, about 240 years before Christ, a particular list of thirty-eight kings of Thebes, commencing with Menes, and continuing for a space of 1024 years; of which we have an extract that Syncellus has copied from Apollodorus[150]. Scarcely any of the names found in this list correspond with those of the others.

Diodorus went to Egypt in the reign of Ptolemy Auletes, about sixty years before Christ, consequently two centuries after Manetho, and four after Herodotus. He also collected from the narratives of the priests a history of the country, and his account is again quite different from those of his predecessors[151]. It is no longer Menes who built Memphis, but Uchoræus; and long before his time Busiris the second had built Thebes. The eighth ancestor of Uchoræus, Osymandyas, possessed himself of Bactria, and crushed rebellions in it. Long after him, Sesoosis made still more extensive conquests, having proceeded as far as the Ganges, and returned by Scythia and the Tanais. Unfortunately these names of kings are unknown to all the preceding historians, and none of the nations which they conquered have preserved the slightest traces of them. As to the gods and heroes, their reign, according to Diodorus, extended through a space of 18,000 years, while that of the human sovereigns was 15,000. Four hundred and seventy of the kings were Egyptians, and four Ethiopians, without reckoning the Persians and Macedonians. The fables, besides, with which the whole is intermingled, do not yield in childishness to those of Herodotus.

In the eighteenth year of the Christian era, Germanicus, the nephew of Tiberius, led by the desire of becoming acquainted with the antiquities of this celebrated land, went over to Egypt, at the risk of incurring the displeasure of a prince so suspicious as his uncle, and proceeded up the Nile as far as Thebes. It was no more Sesostris or Osymandyas, of whom the priests spoke to him as a conqueror, but Rhamses, who, at the head of 700,000 men, had invaded Libya, Ethiopia, Media, Persia, Bactria, Scythia, Asia-Minor, and Syria[152].

Lastly, in the celebrated article of Pliny upon the obelisks[153], we find names of kings which are not to be seen elsewhere; Sothies, Mnevis, Zmarreus, Eraphius, Mestires, a Semenpserteus, contemporary of Pythagoras, &c. A Ramises, who might be thought the same as Rhamses, is there made to live at the time of the siege of Troy.

I am not sure whether it has been attempted to reconcile these discordant lists by the supposition that the kings have borne several names. For my own part, when I consider not only the discrepancy of these various accounts, but, above all, the mixture of authentic facts, attested by vast monuments, and of puerile extravagancies, it appears to me much more natural to conclude, that the Egyptian priests possessed no real history whatever; that, inferior still to those of India, they had not even suitable and connected fables; that they preserved only lists more or less defective of their kings, and some remembrances of the more distinguished among them, of those especially who had taken care to have their names inscribed upon the temples and other great edifices which adorned their country; but that these remembrances were confused, that they rested merely upon the traditional explanation which was given to the representations painted or sculptured upon the monuments; explanations founded solely upon hieroglyphical inscriptions, conceived, like that which has been handed down to us[154], in very general terms, and which, passing from mouth to mouth, were altered, as to their details, at the pleasure of those who communicated them to strangers; and that it is consequently impossible to rest any proposition relative to the antiquity of the presently existing continents, upon the shreds of these traditions, so incomplete even in their own times, and become utterly unintelligible under the pen of those who have been the means of transmitting them to us.

Should this assertion require other proofs, they would be found in the list of the sacred works of Hermes, which were carried by the Egyptian priests in their solemn processions. Clement of Alexandria[155] names them all to the number of forty-two, and there is not even found among them, as is the case with the Brahmins, one epic poem, or one book, which has the pretension to be a narrative, or to fix in any way a single great action or a single event.

The interesting researches of M. Champollion the younger, and his astonishing discoveries regarding the language of the hieroglyphics[156], far from overturning these conjectures, on the contrary, confirm them. This ingenious antiquary has read, in a series of hieroglyphic paintings in the temple of Abydos[157], the prenomens of a certain number of kings placed in regular succession one after another; and a part of these prenomens (the last ten) recurring on various other monuments, accompanied with proper names, he has concluded that they are those of kings who bore those proper names, and this has afforded him nearly the same kings, and in the same order, as those of which Manetho composes his eighteenth dynasty, that which expelled the shepherds. The concordance, however, is not complete: in the painting of Abydos, six of the names that appear in Manetho’s list are wanting; there are some, again, which bear no resemblance; and, lastly, there unfortunately occurs a blank before the most remarkable of all, the Rhamses, who appears the same as the king represented on many of the finest monuments, with the attributes of a great conqueror. It would be, according to M. Champollion, in the list of Manetho, the Sethos, the chief of the nineteenth dynasty, who, in fact, is indicated as powerful in ships and in cavalry, and as having carried his arms into Cyprus, Media and Persia. M. Champollion thinks, with Marsham and many others, that it is this Rhamses, or this Sethos, who is the Sesostris, or the Sesoosis of the Greeks; and this opinion possesses some probability, in this respect, that the representations of the victories of Rhamses, probably carried over the wandering tribes in the vicinity of Egypt, or at the most into Syria, have given rise to those fabulous ideas of vast conquests attributed, by some other confusion, to a Sesostris. But, in Manetho, it is in the twelfth dynasty, and not in the eighteenth, that a prince bearing the name of Sesostris is inscribed, who is noted as having conquered Asia and Thrace[158]. Marsham also asserts, that this twelfth dynasty and the eighteenth make but one[159]. Manetho could not himself, therefore, have understood the lists which he copied. Lastly, if we admit in their full degree, both the historical truth of this bas-relief of Abydos, and its accordance, whether with the part of Manetho’s lists that seems to correspond to it, or with the other hieroglyphic inscriptions, this consequence would result, that the pretended eighteenth dynasty, the first regarding which the ancient chronologists begin to manifest some agreement, is also the first which has left traces of its existence upon monuments. Manetho may have consulted this document and others of a like nature; but it is not the less obvious, that a mere list, a series of names or of portraits, as he has throughout, is far from being a history.

Ought not this, then, which is proved and demonstrated with respect to the Indians, and which I have rendered so probable with respect to the inhabitants of the valley of the Nile, be presumed also to be the case with those of the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris? Established, like the Indians[160] and Egyptians, upon a much frequented route of commerce, in vast plains, which they had been obliged to intersect with numerous canals; instructed, like them, by hereditary priests, the pretended depositaries of secret books, the privileged possessors of the sciences, astrologers, builders of pyramids, and other great monuments[161]; should they not also resemble them in other essential points? Should not their history be equally a mere collection of legendary tales? I venture almost to assert, that not only is this probable, but that it is actually demonstrated.

Up to this period neither Moses nor Homer speak of any great empire in Upper Asia. Herodotus[162] gives to the supremacy of the Assyrians a duration of only 520 years, and does not attribute to their origin a greater antiquity than about eight centuries before his own time. After having been at Babylon, where he consulted the priests, he had not even learnt the name of Ninus as king of the Assyrians, and does not mention him otherwise than as the father of Agro[163], the first Lydian king of the family of the Heraclides. Notwithstanding, he makes him the son of Belus: so much confusion had there been in the traditions. Though he speaks of Semiramis as one of the queens who left great monuments in Babylon, he only places her seven generations before Cyrus.

Hellanicus, who was cotemporary with Herodotus, far from allowing that Semiramis had built any thing at Babylon, attributes the foundation of that city to Chaldæus, the fourteenth successor of Ninus[164]. Berosus, a Babylonian and a priest, who wrote scarcely a hundred and twenty years after Herodotus, gives an astounding antiquity to Babylon; but it is to Nabuchodonosor, a prince comparatively very modern, that he attributes the principal monuments[165]. Regarding even Cyrus, a prince so remarkable, and whose history must have been so well known and so popular, Herodotus, who only lived a hundred years after him, owns that, in his time, there already existed three different opinions; and, in fact, sixty years later, Xenophon gives a biography of this prince quite at variance with that of Herodotus.

Ctesias, who was nearly cotemporary with Xenophon, pretends to have extracted from the royal archives of the Medes, a chronology which carries back the origin of the Assyrian monarchy upwards of 800 years, putting at the head of their kings, that same Ninus, the son of Belus, whom Herodotus had made one of the Heraclides; and, at the same time, he attributes to Ninus and Semiramis conquests towards the west, of an extent absolutely incompatible with the Jewish and Egyptian history of the times in question[166].

According to Megasthenes, it was Nabuchodonosor who made these incredible conquests. He pushed them by way of Libya, as far as Spain[167]. We find that, in the time of Alexander, Nabuchodonosor had completely usurped the reputation which Semiramis had possessed in the time of Artaxerxes. But we must suppose, without doubt, that Semiramis and Nabuchodonosor had conquered Ethiopia and Libya, much in the same way as the Egyptians made India and Bactria to be subdued by Sesostris or Osymandias.

It would lead to no result were we now to examine the different accounts respecting Sardanapalus, in which a celebrated writer imagined he had found proofs of the existence of three princes of that name, who were all victims of similar misfortunes[168]; much in the same way as another writer found in the Indian Vicramaditjia, at least three princes, who were equally the heroes of similar adventures.

It is apparently from the want of agreement in all these accounts, that Strabo thought himself justified in saying, that the authority of Herodotus and Ctesias was not equal to that of Homer or Hesiod[169]. Nor has Ctesias been more happy in transcribers than Manetho; and it is very difficult, at the present day, to harmonize the extracts made from his writings by Diodorus, Eusebius, and the Syncelle.

Since there existed such a state of uncertainty in the fifth century before the Christian era, how should it be imagined that Berosus had been able to clear it up in the third century before that era; or how should we repose more confidence in the 430,000 years which he puts before the deluge, or the 35,000 years which he places between the deluge and Semiramis, than in the registers of 150,000 years, which he boasts of having consulted[170].

Structures raised in remote provinces, and bearing the name of Semiramis, have been spoken of; and columns erected by Sesostris[171] have been pretended to have been seen in Asia Minor, in Thrace. But, in the same way, in Persia, at the present day, the ancient monuments, perhaps even some of the above, bear the name of Roustan; and in Egypt or Arabia, they bear the names of Joseph or Solomon. This is an ancient custom among the eastern nations, and probably among all ignorant people. The peasants of our own country give the name of Cæsar’s Camp to all the remains of Roman entrenchments.

In a word, the more I consider the subject, the more I am persuaded that there existed no ancient history at Babylon or Ecbatan, more than in Egypt and India. And, in place of reducing mythology to history, with Evhemere and Bannier, I am of opinion that a great part of history should be referred to mythology.

It is only at the epoch of what is commonly called the Second Kingdom of Assyria, that the history of the Assyrians and Chaldeans begins to become more intelligible; and this epoch is also that at which the history of the Egyptians undergoes a similar change, when the kings of Nineveh, of Babylon, and of Egypt, commence their conflicts on the theatre of Syria and Palestine.

It appears, nevertheless, that the authors of these countries, or those who had consulted the traditions regarding them, Berosus, and Hieronymus, and Nicholas de Damas, agreed in speaking of a deluge. Berosus has even described it with circumstances so similar to those detailed in the book of Genesis, that it is almost impossible what he says of it should not have been derived from the same sources, even although he removes its epoch a great number of ages back,—insomuch, at least, as we may judge of it, by the confused extracts which Josephus, Eusebius, and Syncellus, have preserved of his writings. But we must remark, and with this observation we shall conclude what we have to say with regard to the Babylonians, that these numerous ages, and this long series of kings, placed between the deluge and Semiramis, are a new thing, entirely peculiar to Berosus, and of which Ctesias, and those who have followed him, had no idea, and which has not even been adopted by any of the profane authors posterior to Berosus. Justin and Velleius consider Ninus as the first of the conquerors, and those who, contrary to all probability, place him highest, only refer him to a period of forty centuries before the present time[172].

The Armenian authors of the middle age nearly agree with one of the texts of Genesis, when they refer the deluge to a period of 4916 years from their own time; and it might be thought that having collected the old traditions, and perhaps extracted the old chronicles of their country, they form an additional authority in favour of the newness of the nations. But when we reflect that their historical literature commences only in the fifth century, and that they were acquainted with Eusebius, we perceive that they must have accommodated themselves to his authority, and to that of the Bible. Moses of Chorene expressly professes to have followed the Greeks, and we see that his ancient history is moulded after Ctesias[173].

However, it is certain, that the tradition of the deluge existed in Armenia long before the conversion of its inhabitants to Christianity; and the city, which, according to Josephus, was called the Place of the Descent, still exists at the foot of Mount Ararat, and bears the name of Nachid-chevan, which, in fact, has the same signification.[174]

Along with the Armenians, we include the Arabians, Persians, Turks, Mongolians, and Abyssinians, of the present day. Their ancient books, if they ever had any, no longer exist. They have no ancient history, but that which they have recently made up, and which they have modelled after the Bible; hence, what they say of the deluge is borrowed from Genesis, and adds nothing to the authority of that book.

It were curious to inquire what had been the opinion of the ancient Persians upon this subject, before it was modified by the Christian and Mahomedan creeds. We find it deposited in their Boundehesh, or Cosmogony, a work of the time of Sassanides, (but evidently extracted or translated from more ancient works), and which was discovered by Anquetil du Perron, among the Parsis of India. According to it, the total duration of the world could only be 12,000 years; hence it cannot still be very old. The appearance of Cayoumortz (the bull-man, the first of the human race), is preceded by the creation of a great water.[175]

For the rest, it would be as useless to expect a regular history of ancient times from the Parsis, as from the other eastern nations. The Magi have left none, any more than the Brahmins or Chaldeans. Of this there is nothing more required for proof than the uncertainty which exists regarding the epoch of Zoroaster. It is even asserted, that the little history they may have possessed, that which relates to the Achemenides, the successors of Cyrus to Alexander, had been expressly altered, and this in consequence of an official order to that purpose from a monarch named Sassanides[176].

In order to discover authentic dates of the commencement of empires, and traces of a general deluge, we must therefore go beyond the great deserts of Tartary. Toward the east and north we find another race of men, who differ from us as much in their institutions and manners as in their form and temperament. Their language consists of monosyllables, and they make use of arbitrary hieroglyphics in writing. They have only a political system of morals, without religion; for the superstitions of Fo were imported among them from India. Their yellow skin, their prominent cheeks, their narrow and oblique eyes, and their scanty beard, render them so different from us, that one is tempted to believe that their ancestors and ours had escaped the great catastrophe on two different sides. But however this may be, the epoch which they assign to their deluge is nearly the same as ours.

The Chou-king is the most ancient of the Chinese books[177]; it is said to have been compiled by Confucius, about 2255 years ago, from fragments of more ancient works. Two hundred years afterwards, a general persecution of the men of letters, and destruction of the books, is said to have taken place under the emperor Chi-Hoang-ti, whose object in this was to destroy the traces of the feudal government established under the dynasty which preceded his. Forty years after, under the dynasty which had overturned that to which Chi-Hoang-ti belonged, a portion of the Chou-king was restored from memory by an old literatus, and another was discovered in a tomb; but nearly the half of it was for ever lost. Now, this book, the most authentic which the Chinese possess, commences the history of their country with the reign of an emperor named Yao, whom it represents to us as occupied in removing the waters, which, having risen to the skies, still bathed the foot of the higher mountains, covered the less elevated hills, and rendered the plains impassable[178]. According to some, the reign of Yao was 4163 years before the present time; according to others, 3943. The discrepancy in the opinions regarding this epoch even amounts to 284 years.

A few pages farther on we find one Yu, a minister and engineer, re-establishing the courses of the waters, raising embankments, digging canals, and regulating the taxes of all the provinces in China, that is to say, in an empire extending 600 leagues in all directions. But the impossibility of such operations, after such events, shews clearly that the whole is nothing else than a moral and political romance[179].

More modern Chinese historians have added a series of emperors before Yao, but with a multitude of fabulous circumstances, without venturing to assign them fixed epochs. These writers are at perpetual variance with each other, even regarding the number and names of their emperors, and are not universally approved by their countrymen. Fouhi, with the body of a serpent, the head of an ox, and the teeth of a tortoise, together with his successors, who are not less monstrous, are altogether absurd, and have no more existed than Enceladon and Briareus.

Is it possible that mere chance could have produced so striking a result, as to make the traditional origin of the Assyrian, Indian, and Chinese monarchies agree in being referred to an epoch of nearly 4000 years from the present period? Would the ideas of nations which have had so little communication with each other, and whose language, religion, and laws are altogether different, have corresponded upon this point, had they not been founded upon truth?

We could not expect precise dates from the natives of America, who had no real writings, and whose oldest traditions extended only to a few centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards. And yet, even among them, traces of a deluge are imagined to be found in their rude hieroglyphics. They have their Noah, or Deucalion, as well as the Indians, Babylonians, and Greeks[180].

The Negroes, the most degraded race among men, whose forms approach the nearest to the brutes, and whose intellect has not yet arrived at the institution of regular governments, or at any thing having the least appearance of systematic knowledge, have preserved no sort of annals or traditions. They cannot, therefore, afford us any information on the subject of our present researches, though all their characters clearly shew us that they have escaped from the great catastrophe, at another point than the Caucasian and Altaic races, from which they had perhaps been separated for a long time previous to the occurrence of that catastrophe.

But if the ancients, it is argued, have left no history, their long existence as nations is not the less attested by the advances which they have made in astronomy, by observations whose date is easily determined, and even by monuments which still remain, and which themselves bear their dates. Thus, the length of the year, such as the Egyptians are supposed to have determined it, according to the heliacal rising of Sirius, proves correct for a period comprised between the year 3000 and the year 1000 before Christ, a period to which the traditions of their conquests and of the great prosperity of their empire also refer. This accuracy proves to what perfection they had carried their observations, and shews that they had for many ages applied themselves to such investigations.

In order to determine the force of this argument, it is necessary that we should here enter upon some explanations.

The solstice is the moment of the year at which the rise of the Nile commences, and that which the Egyptians must have observed with most attention. Having, at the beginning, made, from imperfect observations, a civil or sacred year of three hundred and sixty-five days complete, they would preserve it from superstitious motives, even after they had perceived that it did not agree with the natural or tropical year, and did not bring back the seasons to the same days[181]. However, it was this tropical year which it behoved them to mark for the purpose of directing them in their agricultural operations.

They would, therefore, have to search in the heavens for an apparent sign of its return, and they imagined they had found this sign when the sun returned to the same position, relatively to some remarkable star. Thus they applied themselves, like almost all nations who are beginning this inquiry, to observe the heliacal risings and settings of the stars. We know that they chose particularly the heliacal rising of Sirius, at first, doubtless, on account of the beauty of the star; and, especially, because, in those ancient times, this rising of Sirius being nearly coincident with the solstice, and indicative of the inundation, was to them the most important phenomenon of this kind. Hence it was that Sirius, under the name of Sothis, occupied so conspicuous a place in their mythology, and in their religious ceremonies. Supposing, therefore, that the return of the heliacal rising of Sirius and the tropical year were of the same duration, and believing, at length, that this duration was 365 days and a quarter, they would imagine a period after which the tropical year and the old year, the sacred year of 365 days only, would return to the same day; a period which, according to these incorrect data, was necessarily 1461 sacred years, and 1460 of those improved years to which they gave the name of years of Sirius.

They took for the point of departure of this period, which they named the Sothiac or great year, a civil year, the first day of which was, or had been, also that of a heliacal rising of Sirius; and it is known, from the positive testimony of Censorinus, that one of these great years had ended in the 138th year of the Christian era[182]. It had consequently commenced in the 1322d before Christ, and that which preceded it in the 2782d. In fact, the calculations of M. Ideler shew, that Sirius was heliacally risen on the 20th July of the Julian year 139, a day which corresponded that year to the first of Thot, or the first day of the Egyptian sacred year[183].

But not only is the position of the sun, with relation to the stars of the ecliptic, or the sidereal year different from the tropical year, on account of the precession of the equinoxes. The heliacal year of a star, or the period of its heliacal rising, especially when it is distant from the ecliptic, differs still from the sidereal year, and differs in various degrees according to the latitudes of the places where it is observed. What is very singular, however, and the observation has already been made by Bainbridge[184] and Father Petau[185], it happens, by a remarkable concurrence in the positions, that, in the latitude of Upper Egypt, at a certain epoch, and during a certain number of ages, the year of Sirius was really within very little of 365 days and a quarter; so that the heliacal rising of this star returned in fact to the same day of the Julian year, the 20th July, in the year 1322 before, and the year 138 after Christ[186].

From this actual coincidence, at this remote period, M. Fourier, who has confirmed all these accounts by new calculations, concludes, that, since the length of the year of Sirius was so perfectly known to the Egyptians, they must have determined it by observations made during a long series of years, and conducted with great accuracy; observations which must be referred to at least 2500 years before the present time, and which could not have been made long before or long after this interval of time[187].

This result would assuredly be very striking, had it been directly, and by observations, made upon Sirius itself, that they had fixed the length of the year of Sirius. But experienced astronomers affirm it to be impossible that the heliacal rising of a star could afford a sufficient foundation for exact observations on such a subject, especially in a climate where the circumference of the horizon is constantly so much loaded with vapours, that, in clear nights, stars of the second or third magnitude can never be seen within some degrees of the verge of the horizon, and that the sun itself is completely obscured at its rising and setting.[188] They maintain, that, if the length of the year had not been otherwise ascertained, there would have been a mistake of one or two days.[189] They have no doubt, therefore, that this duration of 365 days and a quarter, is that of the tropical year inaccurately determined by the observation of the shadow, or by that of the point where the sun rose each day, and through ignorance identified with the heliacal year of Sirius; so that it would be mere chance which had fixed with so much accuracy the duration of this latter for the period of which we speak.[190]

Perhaps it will also be judged, that men capable of making observations so exact, and which they had continued during so long a period, would not have attributed so much importance to Sirius, as to pay him religious homage; for they would have seen that the relations of the rising of this star with the tropical year, and with the inundation of the Nile, were merely temporary, and took place only in a determinate latitude. In fact, according to M. Ideler’s calculations, in the year 2782 before Christ, Sirius appeared in Upper Egypt, on the second day after the solstice; in 1322, on the third; and in the year 139 after Christ, on the twenty-sixth.[191] At the present day, its heliacal rising is more than a month after the solstice. The Egyptians would therefore set themselves by preference to finding the period, which would bring about the coincidence of the commencement of the sacred year, with that of the true tropical year, and then they would discover that their great period must have been 1508 sacred years, and not 1461.[192] Now, we assuredly do not find any traces of this period of 1508 years in antiquity.

In general, we may defend ourselves with the idea, that, if the Egyptians had possessed so long a series of observations, and of accurate observations too, their disciple Eudoxus, who studied among them for thirteen years, would, on his return, have brought into Greece a system of astronomy more perfect, and maps of the heavens less erroneous, and more coherent in their different parts.[193] How should it happen that the precession of the equinoxes was not known to the Greeks, but through the works of Hipparchus, if it had been marked in the registers of the Egyptians, and inscribed in characters so manifest upon the ceilings of their temples? And how comes it that Ptolemy, who wrote in Egypt, should not have deigned to avail himself of any of the observations of the Egyptians?[194]

Farther, Herodotus, who lived so long with them, says nothing of those six hours which they added to the sacred year, nor of that great Sothian period which resulted. On the contrary, he says expressly that the Egyptians, making their year of 365 days, the seasons returned to the same point, so that in his time the necessity of this quarter of a day does not appear to have been suspected.[195] Thalles, who had visited the priests of Egypt, less than a century before Herodotus, did not, in like manner, make known to his countrymen, any other than a year of 365 days only.[196] And, if we reflect that all the colonies which migrated from Egypt, fourteen or fifteen centuries before Christ, the Jews and the Athenians, carried with them the lunar year, it will perhaps be inferred that the year of 365 days itself had not existed in Egypt in these remote ages.

I am aware that Macrobius[197] gives the Egyptians a solar year of 365¼ days; but this author, who is comparatively modern, and who lived at a long period after the establishment of the fixed year of Alexandria, must have confounded the epochs. Diodorus[198] and Strabo[199] only attribute such a year to the Thebans; they do not say that it was in general use, and they themselves did not live till long after Herodotus.

Thus the Sothian or great year must have been a comparatively recent invention, since it results from the comparison of the civil year with this pretended heliacal year of Sirius; and it is for this reason that it is only spoken of in the works of the second and third century after Christ[200], and that Syncellus alone, in the ninth, seems to cite Manetho as having made mention of it.

Notwithstanding all that is said to the contrary, the same opinion must be formed of the astronomical knowledge of the Chaldeans. It is natural enough to think, that a people who inhabited vast plains, under a sky perpetually serene, must have been led to observe the course of the stars, even at a period when they still led a wandering life, and when the stars alone could direct their courses during the night; but since what period were they astronomers, and to what perfection did they carry the science? Here rests the question. It is generally allowed that Callisthenes sent to Aristotle observations made by them, and which referred to a period of 2200 years before Christ; but this fact is related only by Simplicius[201], as stated upon the authority of Porphyry, and 600 years after Aristotle. Aristotle himself says nothing on the subject, nor has any creditable astronomer spoken of it. Ptolemy mentions and makes use of ten observations of eclipses really made by the Chaldeans; but they do not refer to an earlier period than that of Nabonassar (721 years before Christ); they are inaccurate also; the time is expressed only in hours and half-hours, and the shadow only in halves or fourths of the diameter. Notwithstanding, as they had fixed dates, the Chaldeans must have had some knowledge of the true length of the year, and some means of measuring time. They appear to have known the period of eighteen years, which brings back the eclipses of the moon in the same order; a piece of knowledge which the mere inspection of their registers would promptly afford them; but it is certain that they could neither explain nor predict eclipses of the sun.

It is from not having sufficiently understood a passage of Josephus, that Cassini, and after him Bailly, have imagined that they discovered in it a luni-solar period of 600 years, which had been known from the time of the first patriarchs[202].

Thus every thing leads us to believe that the great reputation of the Chaldeans was given them at a more recent period, by their unworthy successors, who, under the same name, sold their horoscopes and predictions throughout the whole Roman empire, and who, in order to procure themselves more credit, attributed to their rude ancestors the honour of the discoveries of the Greeks.

With regard to the Indians, every body knows that Bailly, believing that the epoch which is used as a period of departure in some of their astronomical tables had been actually observed, has attempted to draw from thence a proof of the great antiquity of the science among this people, or at least among the nation which had bequeathed them its knowledge. But the whole of this system, invented with so much labour, falls to the ground of itself, now that it is proved that this epoch has been adopted but of late, from calculations made backwards, and even false in their results.[203]

Mr Bentley has discovered that the tables of Tirvalour, on which the assertion of Bailley especially rested, must have been calculated about 1281 of the Christian era, or 540 years ago, and that the Surya-Siddhanta, which the Brahmins regard as their oldest scientific treatise on astronomy, and which they pretend to have been revealed upwards of 20,000,000 of years ago, could not have been composed at an earlier period than about 760 years from the present day[204].

Solstices and equinoxes indicated in the Pouranas, and calculated according to the positions which seem to be attributed to them by the signs of the Indian zodiac, such as they are supposed to be, have acquired the character of an enormous antiquity. A more attentive examination of these signs or nacchatras has lately convinced M. de Paravey that reference is only made to solstices of 1200 years before the Christian era. This author at the same time admits, that the place of the solstices is so inaccurately fixed, that this determination of their date must be received with a latitude of 200 or 300 years. They are in the same predicament as those of Eudoxus and of Tcheoukong[205].

It is ascertained that the Indians do not make observations, and that they are not in possession of any of the instruments necessary for that purpose. M. Delambre indeed admits, with Bailly and Legentil, that they have processes of calculation, which, without proving the antiquity of their astronomy, shew at least its originality[206]; and yet this conclusion can by no means be extended to their sphere; for, independently of their twenty-seven nacchatras or lunar houses, which strongly resemble those of the Arabians, they have the same twelve constellations in the zodiac as the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks[207]; and, if we refer to Mr Wilfort’s assertions, their extra-zodiacal constellations are also the same as those of the Greeks, and bear names which are merely slight alterations of their Greek names[208].

It is to Yao that the introduction of astronomy into China is attributed. He is represented, in the Chou-king, as sending astronomers toward the four cardinal points of his empire, to examine what stars presided over the four seasons, and to regulate the operations to be carried on at each period of the year[209], as if their dispersion was necessary for such an undertaking. About 200 years later, the Chou-king speaks of an eclipse of the sun, but accompanied with ridiculous circumstances, as in all the fables of this kind; for the whole Chinese army, headed by a general, is made to march against two astronomers, because they had not properly predicted it[210]; and it is well known that, more than 2000 years after, the Chinese astronomers possessed no means of accurately predicting the eclipses of the sun. In 1629 of our era, at the time of their dispute with the Jesuits, they did not even know how to calculate the shadows.

The real eclipses, recorded by Confucius in his Chronicle of the kingdom of Lou, commence only 1400 years after this, in the 776th before Christ, and scarcely half a century earlier than those of the Chaldeans related by Ptolemy. So true is it, that the nations which escaped at the same time from the general catastrophe, also arrived about the same period, when their circumstances have been similar, at the same degree of civilization. Now, it might be thought, from the identity of the names of the Chinese astronomers in different reigns (they appear, according to the Chou-king, to have all been named Hi and Ho), that, at this remote epoch, their profession was hereditary in China, as it was in India, Egypt, and Babylon.

The only Chinese observation of any antiquity, which has nothing in itself to prove its want of authenticity, is that of the shadow made by Tcheou-kong about 1100 years before Christ; and even it is far from being correct[211].

Hence our readers may conclude, that the inferences drawn from the alleged perfection of astronomical science among ancient nations, is not more conclusive in favour of the excessive antiquity of those nations, than the testimonies which they have adduced in reference to themselves.

But had this astronomy been more perfect, what would it prove? Has the progress been calculated which this science ought to make among nations who were not in any degree in possession of others; to whom the serenity of the sky, the necessities of the pastoral or agricultural life, and their superstitious ideas, would render the stars an object of general attention; where colleges, or societies of the most respectable men among them, were charged with keeping a register of interesting phenomena, and transmitting their memory; and where, from the hereditary nature of the profession, the children were brought up from the cradle in the knowledge of facts ascertained by their parents? Supposing that, among the numerous individuals of whom the cultivation of astronomy was the sole occupation, there should happen to be one or two possessed of extraordinary talents for geometry, all the knowledge acquired by these nations might be attained in a few centuries.

Since the time of the Chaldeans, real astronomy has only had two eras, that of the Alexandrian school, which lasted 400 years, and that of our own times, which has not existed so long. The learned period of the Arabians scarcely added any thing to it; and the other ages have been mere blanks with regard to it. Three hundred years did not intervene between Copernicus and the author of the Mecanique Céleste; and can it be believed that the Indians required thousands of years to arrive at their crude theories?

The Astronomical Monuments left by the Ancients do not bear the excessively remote dates which have been attributed to them.

Recourse has therefore been had to arguments of another kind. It has been pretended that, independently of the knowledge which these nations may have acquired, they have left monuments which bear a date fixed by the state of the heavens which they represent, and one that refers to a very remote antiquity. The zodiacs sculptured in two temples of Upper Egypt, are adduced as furnishing proofs perfectly demonstrative of this assertion. They present the same figures of the zodiacal constellations as are employed at the present day, but distributed in a manner peculiar to themselves. The state of the heavens at the period when these monuments were delineated, is imagined to have been represented by this distribution, and it has been thought that it would be possible from it to infer the precise period at which the edifices containing them were erected[212].

But to arrive at the high antiquity which is supposed to be deducible from this, it must, in the first place, be supposed, that their division has a determinate relation to a certain state of the heavens, dependent upon the precession of the equinoxes, which causes the colures to make the tour of the zodiac in 26,000 years; that it indicated, for example, the position of the solstitial point; and, secondly, that the state of the heavens represented was precisely that which took place at the period when the monument was erected,—two suppositions which themselves, as is evident, suppose a great number of others.

In point of fact, are the figures of these zodiacs the constellations,—the true groups of stars which at present bear the same names, or merely what astronomers call signs, that is to say, divisions of the zodiac proceeding from one of the colures, whatever place this colure occupies? Is the point at which these zodiacs have been divided into two bands, necessarily that of a solstice? Is the division of the side next the entrance, necessarily that of the summer solstice? Does this division indicate, even in general, a phenomenon dependent upon the precession of the equinoxes? Does it not refer to some period the rotation of which would be less; for example, to the moment of the tropical year when such or such sacred years of the Egyptians commenced, which, being shorter than the true tropical year by nearly six hours, would make the tour of the zodiac in 1508 years? Lastly, whatever signification it may have had, has it been intended by it to mark the time when the zodiac was sculptured, or that when the temple was built? Has not the object been to record a previous state of the heavens at some period which was interesting in a religious point of view, whether it had been actually observed, or inferred from a retrograde calculation?

From the mere announcement of such questions, it will be perceived how complicated they necessarily are, how much subject to controversy any solution that might be adopted on this subject would be, and how little qualified to serve as a solid proof, for the solution of another problem, such as the antiquity of the Egyptian nation. And it may be said, with regard to those who have attempted to infer a date from these data, that there have arisen as many opinions as there have been authors.

The learned astronomer Mr Burkhard, from a first examination, judged that, at Dendera, the solstice is marked by the Lion; which would make it two signs less remote than at the present day, and the temple at least 4000 years old[213]. He gave, at the same time an antiquity of 7000 years to that of Esne, although it is not known how he had purposed to reconcile these numbers with what we know of the precession of the equinoxes. The late M. Lalande, seeing that the Cancer was repeated on the two bands, imagined that the solstice passed to the middle of that constellation; but as this was the case also in the sphere of Eudoxus, he concluded that some Grecian artist might have represented this sphere on the ceiling of an Egyptian temple, without knowing that it represented a state of the heavens which no longer existed[214]. This, as is seen, was a conclusion very different from that of Mr Burkhard. Dupuis was the first who thought it necessary to search for proofs of the idea, in some measure confidently adopted, that it was the solstice that was denoted. He found them, with reference to the great zodiac of Dendera, in the globe on the top of the pyramid, and in several emblems placed near different signs, and which he imagined, sometimes according to the opinion of ancient authors, such as Plutarch, Horus Apollo, or Clement of Alexandria, sometimes according to his own conjectures, ought to be regarded as representing phenomena which had been really those of the seasons affected at each sign. As for the rest, he maintained that this state of the heavens affords the date of the monument, and that it is the original, and not a copy, of the sphere of Eudoxus, that was represented at Dendera, which would refer it to a period of 1468 years before Christ, or to the reign of Sesostris. The number of nineteen boats, however, placed under each band, furnished him with the idea that the solstice might probably have been at the nineteenth degree of the sign, which would make it 288 years older[215].

Mr Hamilton[216] having remarked, that, at Dendera, the Scarabæus belonging to the side of the ascending signs is smaller than that of the other side, an English author[217] has concluded from this that the solstice may have been nearer its actual point than the middle of the Cancer, which would carry us back to a period of 1000 or 1200 years before Christ.

The late M. Nouet, judging that the globe, the rays, and the horned head, or head of Isis, represent the heliacal rising of Sirius, supposed that it was intended to mark an epoch of the Sothian period, but that it was intended to mark it by the place which the solstice occupied. Now, in the last but one of these periods, that which elapsed between 2782 and 1322 before Christ, the solstice had passed from 30° 48′ of the constellation of the Lion to 13° 34′ of Cancer. At the middle of this period, it was therefore at 23° 34′ of cancer. The heliacal rising of Sirius happened then some days after the solstice; and this is nearly what has been indicated, according to M. Nouet, by the repetition of the Scarabæus, and by the figure of Sirius with the rays of the sun placed at the commencement of the band to the right. Calculating upon this basis, he concludes that the temple of Dendera was built 2052 years before Christ, and that of Esne 4600[218].

All these calculations, even admitting that the division marks the solstice, would still be susceptible of many modifications; and, at first, it appears that their authors have supposed the constellations all of thirty degrees like the signs, and have not reflected that it is far from being the case that they are thus equal, at least as they are represented at the present day, and as the Greeks have transmitted them to us. In reality, the solstice, which is at present on this side of the first stars of the constellation of Gemini, could only have left the first stars of the constellation of Cancer forty-five years before Christ, and had left the constellation of Leo only 1260 years before the same era.

My distinguished and learned colleague, M. Delambre, has favoured me with the following table and remarks, which illustrate what has been above said.

TABLE of the Extent of the Zodiacal Constellations, as they are designed upon our Globes, and of the Times required by the Colures to traverse them.

Aries.
Stars.	Longitudes in 1800.				Year of the Equinox.	Year of the Solstice.
γ	1s	0°	23′	40″	-389	6869
β	1	1	10	40	-441	6921
α	1	4	52	0	-710	7190
η	1	5	18	50	-742	7222
2 θ	1	6	14	16	-810	7290
ζ	1	19	8	50	-1739	8219
τ tail.	1	20	51	0	-1862	8342
Dur.		20	27	20	1473	1473
Taurus.
ξ	1s	19°	6′	0″	-1735	-8215
η	1	27	12	0	-2318	-8798
α	2	6	59	40	-3024	-9504
β	2	19	47	0	-3944	-10424
ζ	2	22	0	0	-4104	-10584
a Coch.	2	24	42	40	-4300	-10780
Dur.		35	36	40	2565	2565
Gemini.
Propus.	2s	28°	9′	20″	-4547	-11027
η	3	0	39	0	-4727	-11207
γ	3	6	18	40	-5134	-11614
δ	3	15	44	0	-5813	-12293
Castor.	3	17	27	30	-5937	-12417
Pollux.	3	20	28	9	-6154	-12634
φ	3	22	27	10	-6926	-12776
Dur.		24	17	40	1749	1749

Cancer.
Stars.	Longitudes in 1800.				Year of the Equinox.	Year of the Solstice.
1 ω	3s	24°	21′	55″	6475	+45
ζ	3	28	32	0	6734	-254
β	4	1	28	20	6906	-426
γ	4	4	45	0	7182	-702
1 α	4	10	18	50	7583	-1103
2 α	4	10	50	36	7621	-1141
χ	4	13	23	0	7804	-1324
Dur.		19	1	5	1369	1369
Leo.
χ	4s	12°	30′	0″	-7740	-1260
α	4	27	3	10	-8788	-1908
δ	5	8	30	0	-9612	-3132
β	5	18	50	55	-10357	-3877
...	..	...	...	...	.....	.....
...	..	...	...	...	.....	.....
Dur.		36	20	55	2617	2617
Virgo.
ω	5s	19°	2′	22″	-10371	-3891
β	5	24	19	0	-10750	-4271
η	6	2	2	40	-11307	-4827
δ	6	8	41	40	-11786	-5306
α	6	21	3	15	-12676	-6196
λ	7	4	9	50	-13620	-7140
μ	7	7	17	40	-13845	-7365
Dur.		48	15	18	3474	3474
Mean Dur.		30	0	0	2160

Libra.
Stars.	Longitudes in 1800.				Year of the Equinox.	Year of the Solstice.
1 α	7s	11°	0′	44″	-14113	-7633
2 α	7	12	18	0	-14246	-7926
β	7	16	35	0	-14514	-8034
γ	7	22	20	34	-14929	-8449
γ Scorp.	7	27	41	0	-15312	-8832
ξ	7	28	30	15	-15372	-8892
...	..	...	...	...	.....	.....
Dur.		17	29	31	1259	1259
Scorpio.
1 Α	7s	28°	50′	6″	-15396	-8916
β	8	0	23	48	-15508	-9028
α	8	6	57	38	-15980	-9500
ζ	8	12	35	30	-16387	-9907
λ	8	21	47	27	-17049	-105569
...	..	...	...	...	.....	.....
Dur.		22	57	21	1653	1653
Sagittarius.
γ	7s	28°	28′	20″	-17530	-11050
λ	9	3	32	56	-17895	-11415
ζ	9	10	50	28	-18421	-11941
ψ	9	14	15	15	-18667	-12187
ω	9	23	2	19	-19299	-12819
g	9	25	39	25	-19487	-13007
...	..	...	...	...	.....	.....
Dur.		27	11	50	1957	1957

Capricorn.
Stars.	Longitudes in 1800.				Year of the Equinox.	Year of the Solstice.
1er	9s	29°	39′	15″	-19775	-13295
2 α	10	1	3	58	-19877	-13397
β	10	1	15	30	-19891	-13411
ι	10	14	53	30	-20872	-14392
γ	10	18	59	28	-21166	-14586
μ	10	23	1	12	-21458	-14978
ν	..	...	...	...	.....	.....
Dur.		23	21	17	1683	1683
Aquarius.
ε	10s	8°	56′	0″	-20444	-13964
β	10	20	36	30	-21285	-14805
α	11	0	34	0	-22001	-15521
ζ	11	6	7	0	-22400	-15920
2 ψ	11	13	56	12	-22963	-16483
5 Α	11	18	3	28	-23260	-16780
Dur.		39	7	28	2816	2816
Pisces.
β	11s	15°	49′	0″	23095	16615
λ	11	23	49	0	23675	17195
δ	12	11	22	0	24939	18459
σ	12	24	26	0	25879	19399
α	12	26	34	58	26034	19554
	...	...	...	...	.....	.....
	...	...	...	...	.....	.....
Dur.		40	45	58	2939	2939
					0°	270s
Sirius	3	11	20	10	-5487	-18447

Construction and Use of the Table.

“The longitudes of the stars, for 1800, have been taken from the Berlin Tables, and are those of Lacaille, Bradley, or Flamstead. The first and the last of each constellation have been taken, as well as some of the brightest of the intermediate stars. The third column indicates the year in which the longitude of the star was 0′, that is to say, that in which the star was in the equinoxial colure of spring. The last column indicates the year when the star was in the solstitial colure, whether of winter or of summer.

“For Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, the winter solstice has been chosen; for the other constellations the summer solstice has been chosen, for the sake of not receding into too remote antiquity, and of not approaching too near modern times. It will be easy to find the opposite solstice, by adding the semiperiod of 12,960 years. The same rule will serve for finding the time when the star has been, or will be, at the autumnal equinox.

“The sign - indicates the years before our era, the sign + the year of our era; and the last line, at the end of each sign under the title of duration, gives the extent of the constellation in degrees, and the time which the equinox, or the solstice, occupies in traversing the constellation from one end to the other.

“The precession of 50″ yearly has been supposed, this being the result of the comparison of the catalogue of Hipparchus with the modern catalogues. We have thus the advantage of round numbers, and a general accuracy that may be relied upon. The entire period is thus 25,920 years; the semiperiod, 12,960 years; the quarter period, 6480 years; the twelfth, or a sign, 2160 years.

“It is to be remarked, that the constellations leave empty spaces between them, and that sometimes they encroach upon each other. Thus, between the last star of Scorpio, and the first of Sagittarius, there is an interval of 6⅔ degrees. On the other hand, the last of Capricorn is more advanced by 14° in longitude, than the first of Aquarius. Hence, even independently of the inequality of the sun’s motion, the constellations would afford a very unequal and very erroneous measure of the year and its months. The signs of 30° furnish a more convenient and less defective one. But the signs are merely a geometrical conception; they can neither be distinguished nor observed; and they are continually changing place from the retrogradation of the equinoxial point.

“We have at all times been able to determine, in a rough manner, the equinoxes and solstices; at the long run it has been remarked, that the appearance of the heavens was no longer exactly the same that it anciently was at the times of the equinoxes and solstices. But we have never been able to observe exactly the heliacal rising of a star, being always necessarily some days wide of it; and people frequently speak of it, without possessing a fixed datum on which to count. Before Hipparchus, we find nothing, either in books or in traditions, that can be submitted to calculation; and it is this which has given rise to so many systems. Controversies have arisen without a sufficient knowledge of the subject. Those who are not astronomers may form ideas as beautiful as they please of the knowledge of the Chaldeans, Egyptians, &c.; no real inconvenience will result. The enterprise and knowledge of the moderns may be lent to these nations, but nothing can be borrowed from them; for they have either had nothing, or they have left nothing. Astronomers will never derive from the ancients any thing that can be of the slightest utility. Let us leave to the learned their vain conjectures, and confess our utter ignorance respecting things of little use in themselves, and of which no monument remains.

“The limits of the constellations vary according to the authors which we consult. We find these limits extend or contract, as we pass from Hipparchus to Tycho, from Tycho to Hevelius, from Hevelius to Flamstead, Lacaille, Bradley, or Piazzi.

“I have said elsewhere, the constellations are good for nothing, unless at the most to enable us to mark the stars with more ease; whereas the stars in particular afford fixed points to which we can refer the motions, whether of the colures or of the planets. Astronomy commenced only at the period when Hipparchus made the first catalogue of the stars, measured the revolution of the sun, that of the moon, and their principal inequalities. The rest presents nothing but darkness, uncertainty, and gross error. The time would be lost that were occupied in attempting to reduce this chaos to order.

“I have given, with the exception of a few particulars, the whole of my opinion on this subject. I am nowise anxious about making converts, for it gives me little concern whether my ideas be adopted or not; but, if my reasons be compared with the reveries of Newton, Herschell, Bailly, and so many others, it is not impossible but that, in time, these more or less brilliant chimeras will no longer be relished.

“I have attempted to determine the extent of the constellations, according to the catasterisms of Eratosthenes; but the thing is really impossible. The matter would be still worse were we to consult Hygin, and especially Firmicus. The following is what I have made out from Eratosthenes.

CONSTELLATIONS.	DURATIONS.	CONSTELLATIONS.	DURATIONS.
	Years.		Years.
Aries,	1747	The Talons,	1089[219]
Taurus,	1826	Scorpio,	1823
Gemini,	1636	Sagittarius,	2138
Cancer,	1204	Capricorn,	1416
Leo,	2617	Aquarius,	1196
Virgo,	3307	Pisces,	2936

“As to the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Chinese, and Indians, there is no want of reveries among them. One can absolutely make nothing of them. My opinion with regard to them may be seen in the preliminary discourse of my History of the Astronomy of the Middle Age, p. xvii and xviii. See also the note affixed to the Report on the Memoirs of M. de Paravey, vol. viii. of the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, and republished by M. de Paravey in his Summary of his Memoirs upon the Origin of the Sphere, p. 24, 31-36. See further the Analysis of the Mathematical Labours of the Academy in 1820, p. 78 and 79.

“Delambre.”

It would still have to be ascertained at what period the observers ceased to place the constellation in which the sun entered after the solstice, at the head of the descending signs, and whether this was done as soon as the solstice had retrograded sufficiently to touch the preceding constellation.

Thus MM. Jollois and Devilliers,—to whose unremitting zeal we are indebted for an accurate knowledge of these famous monuments, always considering the division towards the entrance of the porch as the solstice, and judging that the Virgin must have been regarded as the first of the descending constellations, insomuch as the solstice had not receded at least so far as the middle of the constellation of the Lion; and, believing that they saw farther, as we have mentioned, that the Lion is divided in the great zodiac of Esne, have not given to that zodiac a more remote antiquity than 2160 years before Christ.[220]

Mr Hamilton, who was the first that observed this division of the sign of the Lion, in the zodiac of Esne, reduced the distance of the period at which the solstice occurred there, to 1400 years before Christ. A great many other opinions have appeared on the same subject. M. Rhode, for example, has proposed two. The first refers the zodiac of the portico of Dendera to a period of 591 years before Christ; the second, to 1290[221]. M. Latreille has fixed the period of this zodiac at 670 years before Christ; that of the planisphere at 550; that of the zodiac of the great temple of Esne at 2550; and that of the small one at 1760.

But a difficulty inherent in all the dates, which proceed on the double supposition, that the division marks the solstice, and that the position of the solstice marks the epoch of the monument, is the unavoidable consequence that the zodiac of Esne must have been at least 2000, and perhaps 3000, years[222] older than that of Dendera, a consequence which evidently involves the supposition in ruin; for no one, in any degree acquainted with the history of the arts, could believe, that two edifices, so similar in their style of architecture, could have been erected at periods so remote from each other.

The feeling of this impossibility, joined always to the belief that this division of the zodiacs indicates a date, has given rise to another conjecture, namely, that the intention had been to mark the particular sacred year of the Egyptians, in which the monument had been erected. As these sacred years consisted only of 365 days, if the sun, at the commencement of one occupied the commencement of a constellation, he would be nearly six hours later in returning to the commencement of the following year, and, after 121 years, he would only be at the commencement of the preceding sign. It seems natural enough that the builders of a temple might wish to indicate about what period of the great, or Sothian year, it had been erected; and the indications of the sign, by which the sacred year then commenced, was a good enough means. It will be perceived, that, calculating upon this assumption, there will be an interval of from 120 to 150 years between the temple of Esne and that of Dendera. But, in his mode of solving the problem, there remained to be determined in which of the great years these buildings had been erected, whether in that which ended in the year 138 after, or in that which ended in 1322 before Christ, or in some other.

The late Visconti, who was the first author of this hypothesis, taking the sacred year, whose commencement corresponded with the sign of the Lion, and judging from the resemblance of the signs, that they had been represented at a period when the opinions of the Greeks were not unknown to the Egyptians, was naturally led to make choice of the end of the last great year, or the space that elapsed between the year 12 and the year 138 after Christ[223], which appeared to him to accord with the Greek inscription, of which, however, he knew little more than that it was said to make mention of one of the Cæsars.

M. Testa, seeking the date of the monument in another order of ideas, went so far as to suppose that since the Virgin is seen at Esne, at the head of the zodiac, it was meant thereby to represent the era of the battle of Actium, such as it had been established with regard to Egypt, by a decree of the senate, mentioned by Dion Cassius, and which commenced in the month of September, the day on which Alexandria was taken by Augustus.[224]

M. de Paravey considered these zodiacs in a new point of view, which embraced at once both the revolution of the equinoxes, and that of the great year. Supposing that the circular planisphere of Dendera must have been set to the east, and that the axis from north to south is the line of the solstices, he found the summer solstice at the second of the Twins, and that of winter at the buttock of the Sagittary, while the line of the equinoxes would have passed through the Fishes and the Virgin, from which he obtained for date the first century of our era.

According to this method, the division of the zodiac of the portico could no longer refer to the colures, and the mark of the solstice must be sought for elsewhere. M. de Paravey having remarked that there are between all the signs figures of women bearing a star upon their heads, and marching in the same direction, and observing that the one which comes after the twins, is alone turned in a direction contrary to the others, judged that it indicates the conversion of the sun or the tropic, and that this zodiac corresponds in this way with the planisphere.

By applying the idea of easting to the small zodiac of Esne, the solstices would be found between the Twins and the Bull, and between the Scorpion and Sagittary; they would even be marked by the change of direction of the Bull, and by the winged Rams placed across at these two places. In the great zodiac of the same city, the marks would be the cross position of the Bull, and the reversed one of the Sagittary. There would thus be but a portion of a constellation traversed between the dates of Esne and those of Dendera, but even this would be still too long for buildings so closely resembling each other.

An operation of the late M. Delambre upon the circular planisphere appears to confirm these conjectures, detracting from its remote antiquity; for, on placing the stars upon Hipparchus’s projection, according to the theory of that astronomer, and according to the positions which he has given them in his catalogue; and augmenting all the longitudes, so that the solstice might pass through the second of the Twins, he nearly reproduced this planisphere; and “the resemblance,” says he, “would have been still greater, had the longitudes been adopted such as they are in the catalogue of Ptolemy, for the year 123 of our era. On the contrary, by referring to twenty-five or twenty-six centuries back, the right ascensions and the declinations will be considerably changed, and the projection will assume quite a different figure[225]. All our calculations,” adds this great astronomer, “lead us to this conclusion, that the sculptures are posterior to the epoch of Alexander.”

In reality, the circular planisphere having been brought to Paris by the care of MM. Saunier and Lelorrain, M. Biot, in a work founded upon precise measurements and calculations full of ingenuity, has determined that it represents, according to an exact geometrical projection, the state of the heavens, such as it was 700 years before Christ; but he by no means concludes that it had been sculptured at that period [226].

In fact, all these efforts of intellect and science, in so far as they concern the epoch of the monuments, have become superfluous, since finishing where they should naturally have begun, if the first observers had not been blinded by prejudice, people have taken the trouble of copying and restoring the Greek inscriptions engraved upon these monuments, and especially since M. Champollion has discovered the method of decyphering those which are expressed in hieroglyphics.

It is now certain, and the Greek inscriptions agree with the hieroglyphical inscriptions in proving it, it is certain, we say, that the temples in which zodiacs have been sculptured, were built during the time when Egypt was subject to the Romans. The portico of the temple of Dendera, according to the Greek inscription of its frontispiece, is consecrated to the safety of Tiberius[227]. On the planisphere of the same temple we read the title of Autocrator in hieroglyphical characters[228]; and it is probable that it refers to Nero. The small temple of Esne, that of which the origin has been placed on the lowest calculation between 2700 and 3000 years before Christ, has a column sculptured and painted in the sixth year of Antonine, 147 years after Christ, and it is painted and sculptured in the same style as the zodiac which is near it[229].

Further, we have a proof that this division of the zodiac, in such or such sign, has no reference to the precession of the equinoxes, or to the displacement of the solstice. A mummy case, lately brought from Thebes by M. Caillaud, and containing, according to the very legible Greek inscription upon it, the body of a young man who died in the ninth year of Trajan, 116 years after Christ[230], presents a zodiac divided at the same point as those of Dendera[231]; and all the appearances indicate that this division marks some astrological theme relative to the individual, a conclusion which may probably be equally applied to the division of the zodiacs contained in the temples. It may mark either the astrological theme of the time of their erection, or that of the prince to whose safety they had been consecrated, or such another epoch with relation to which the position of the sun would have appeared of importance to be noticed.

Thus are dissipated for ever the conclusions which people had drawn from some ill explained monuments, against the newness of the continents and nations; and we might have dispensed with treating of them so much in detail had they not been so recent, and had they not made sufficient impression still to retain their influence over the minds of some individuals.

The Zodiac is far from bearing in itself a certain and excessively remote date.

But there are writers who have maintained that the zodiac bears in itself the date of its invention, because the names and figures given to its constellations are an index of the position of the colures at the time when it was invented; and this date, according to several, is so evident and so remote, that it is quite a matter of indifference whether the representations which we possess of this circle are more or less ancient.

They do not attend to the circumstance that, in this sort of argument, there is a complication of three suppositions equally uncertain: the country in which the zodiac is presumed to have been invented, the signification which is supposed to have been given to the constellations which occupy it, and the position in which the colures were with relation to each constellation, when this signification was attributed to it. According as other allegories have been imagined, or as these allegories are admitted to have referred to the constellation of which the sun occupied the first degrees, or to that of which it occupied the middle, or to that into which it began to enter, that is to say, of which it occupied the last degrees; or, lastly, to that which was opposite to him, and which rose at night; or according as the invention of these allegories is placed in a different climate, must the date of the zodiac also be changed. The possible variations in this respect might comprehend so much as the half of the revolution of the fixed stars, that is to say, 13,000 years, and even more.

In this manner Pluche, generalizing some indications of the ancients, has imagined, that the Ram announces the commencement of the sun’s elevation, and the vernal equinox; that the Cancer indicates his retrogradation to the summer solstice; that the Balance, the sign of equality, marks the autumnal equinox[232]; and that the Capricorn, a climbing animal, indicates the winter solstice, after which the sun returns to us. According to this method, by placing the inventors of the zodiac in a temperate climate, we should have rains under Aquarius, the dropping of lambs and kids under the Gemini, violent heats under the Lion, gathering of the harvest under the Virgin, the time of hunting under the Sagittary, &c.; and the emblems would be appropriate enough. If we should then place the colures at the commencement of the constellations, or at least the equinox at the first stars of Aries, we should, in the first instance, arrive at a period of only 389 years before Christ, an epoch evidently too modern, and which would render it necessary to recur to a complete equinoxial period, or 26,000 years. But if the equinox be supposed to pass through the middle of the constellation, a period of about 1000 or 1200 years higher is obtained, 1600 or 1700 years before Christ; and this is what several celebrated men have believed to be the true epoch of the invention of the zodiac, the honour of which they have, for other reasons not sufficiently weighty, conferred upon Chiron.

But Dupuis, who required for the origin which he endeavoured to attribute to all religions, that astronomy, and, in particular, the figures of the zodiac should in some measure have preceded all other human institutions, has sought another climate for the purpose of finding other explanations for the emblems, and for that of deducing another epoch from them. If, assuming the Balance as an equinoxial sign, but supposing it at the vernal equinox, it be presumed that the zodiac has been invented in Egypt, other sufficiently plausible explanations might in fact be found for the climate of that country.[233] The Capricorn, an animal with the tail of a fish, would mark the commencement of the rise of the Nile at the summer solstice; the Aquarius and Fishes, the progress and diminution of the inundation; the Bull, the time of labouring; the Virgin, the time of reaping; and they would mark them at the periods when these operations actually took place. In this system, the zodiac would have 15,000 years[234] for a sun supposed at the first degree of each sign, more than 16,000 for the middle, and 4000 only, on supposing that the emblem has been given to the sign at the opposite of which the sun was[235]. It is to the 15,000 years that Dupuis has attached himself; and it is upon this date that he has founded the whole system of his celebrated work.

There are not wanting those, however, who, admitting that the zodiac has been invented in Egypt, have imagined allegories applicable to later times. Thus, according to Mr Hamilton, the Virgin would represent the land of Egypt when not yet fecundated by the inundation; the Lion, the season when that country is most liable to be overrun by ferocious animals, and so on[236].

The high antiquity of 15,000 years would besides induce this absurd consequence, that the Egyptians, those men who represented every thing by emblems, and who must have attached a great importance to the circumstance that these emblems were conformable to the ideas which they were intended to represent, had preserved the signs of the zodiac thousands of years after they no longer in any way corresponded with their original signification.

The late M. Remi Raige endeavoured to support the opinion of Dupuis by an argument of an entirely new kind[237]. Having remarked that significations more or less analogous to the figures of the signs of the zodiac, might be found for the Egyptian names of the months, on explaining them by the oriental languages, and finding in Ptolemy that epifi, which signifies capricorn, commences at the 20th of June, and therefore comes immediately after the summer solstice, he concluded from thence, that, at the beginning, Capricorn itself was at the summer solstice, and so of the other signs, as Dupuis had supposed.

But, independently of all that there is merely conjectural in these etymologies, Raige did not perceive that it was simply by chance that, five years after the battle of Actium, in the year 25 before Christ, at the establishment of the fixed year of Alexandria, the first day of Thoth was found to correspond with the 29th of the Julian August, and continued to correspond since that time. It is only from this epoch that the Egyptian months commenced at fixed days of the Julian year, and only at Alexandria: even Ptolemy did not the less continue to employ in his Almagest the ancient Egyptian year with its vague months[238].

Why might not the names of the signs have been given to the months at some epoch, or the names of the months to the signs, in the same arbitrary manner in which the Indians have given to their twenty-seven months twelve names, selected from among those of their lunar houses, for reasons which it is impossible at the present day to determine[239]? The absurdity which there would have been in preserving for the constellations, during 15,000 years, figures and symbolical names which no longer presented any relation with their position, would have been more evident had it been carried so far as to preserve to the months those same names which were incessantly in the mouths of the people, and whose inaptitude would be every moment perceived.

And what, besides, would all these systems come to, had the figures and the names of the zodiacal constellations been given to them without any relation to the course of the sun; as their inequality, the extension of several of them beyond the zodiac, and their manifest connection with the neighbouring constellations, seem to demonstrate was the case[240].

What would still happen, if, as Macrobius expressly says[241], each sign must have been an emblem of the sun, considered in some one of its effects or of its general phenomena, and without reference to the months when it passes, whether into the sign, or to its opposite?

Lastly, What if the names had been given in an abstract manner to the divisions of space or time, as they are now given by astronomers to what they call the signs, and had not been applied to the constellations or groups of stars, but at a period determined by chance, so that nothing could be concluded from their signification[242]?

In these suggestions there is, without doubt, enough to give an ingenuous mind a distaste for seeking to find in astronomy proofs of the antiquity of the nations. But were these alleged proofs as certain as they are vague and destitute of any satisfactory result, what could be concluded from them against the great catastrophe, which has left monuments amply demonstrative in other respects of its existence? All that can be admitted in this matter is, what some moderns have thought, that astronomy was among the number of the sciences preserved by those whom this catastrophe dispersed.

Exaggerations relative to the Antiquity of certain Mining Operations.

The antiquity of certain mining operations has also been much exaggerated. A very late writer has imagined, that the mines of the island of Elba, judging from the rubbish carried out of them, must have been wrought for more than 40,000 years; but another author, who has also examined this rubbish with attention, has reduced the period in question to a little more than 5000 years,[243] and this even on the supposition that the ancients did not extract annually more than a fourth part of the quantity of ore now wrought. But what reason could there be to suppose that the Romans, for example, who consumed so much iron in their armies, derived so little advantage from these mines? Moreover, if these mines had been wrought for even 4000 years only, how should iron have been so little known in the times of remote antiquity?

General Conclusion relative to the Period of the last Revolution.

I agree, therefore, with MM. Deluc and Dolomieu, in thinking, that if any thing in geology be established, it is, that the surface of our globe has undergone a great and sudden revolution, the date of which cannot be referred to a much earlier period than five or six thousand years ago; that this revolution overwhelmed and caused to disappear the countries which were previously inhabited by man, and the species of animals now best known; that, on the other hand, it laid dry the bottom of the last sea, and formed of it the countries which are at the present day inhabited; that it is since the occurrence of this revolution that the small number of individuals dispersed by it have spread and propagated over the newly exposed lands, and, consequently, that it is since this epoch only, that human societies have assumed a progressive march, that they have formed establishments, raised monuments, collected natural facts, and invented scientific systems.

But the countries which are at present inhabited, and which the last revolution laid dry, had already been previously inhabited, if not by men, at least by land animals, and, therefore, one preceding revolution at least had put them under water; and if we may judge by the different orders of animals the remains of which are observed in them, they had perhaps been subjected to two or three irruptions of the sea.

Further Researches to be made in Geology.

These alternations now appear to me to form the problem in geology that it is of most importance to solve, or rather to define and circumscribe within due limits; for, in order to resolve it satisfactorily, it would be necessary to discover the cause of these events,—an undertaking which presents a difficulty of quite a different kind.

I repeat it, we see pretty clearly what is going on at the surface of the continents in their present state; we have formed a tolerable conception of the uniform progress and regular succession of the primitive formations, but the study of the secondary formations has been little more than merely commenced. That wonderful series of unknown zoophytes and marine mollusca, succeeded by reptiles and fresh-water fishes equally unknown; and these again replaced, in their turn, by other zoophytes and mollusca, more nearly related to those of the present day; those land animals, and those equally unknown fresh water mollusca and other animals which next occupied the surface, to be again displaced but by mollusca and other animals similar to those of our present seas; the relations of these diversified beings to the plants the remains of which accompany theirs, the connection of these two kingdoms with the mineral strata in which they are deposited; the greater or less uniformity existing between these different orders of beings in the different basins;—these are phenomena which appear to me imperiously to demand the attention of philosophers.

Rendered interesting by the variety of the products of the partial or general revolutions of this epoch, and by the abundance of the various species that figure alternately on the stage, this study is divested of the dryness of that of the primordial formations, and does not, like it, almost necessarily launch into hypotheses. The facts are so direct, so curious, and so evident, that they are sufficient, so to speak, to satisfy the most ardent imagination; and the conclusions to which they lead from time to time, however scrupulous the observer may be, having nothing vague in them, are equally free of any thing arbitrary. In fine, it is in those events that approach nearer to our own times, that we may hope to find some traces of more ancient events, and of their causes; if, indeed, after so many fruitless attempts as have been already made, one may be permitted to flatter himself with such a hope.

These ideas have haunted, I may almost say have tormented me, during my researches among fossil bones, the results of which I have lately presented to the public; researches which embrace but a very small part of those phenomena of the age preceding the last general revolution of the globe, and which are yet intimately connected with all the others. It was almost impossible that the desire should not arise of investigating the general mass of these phenomena, at least as they occur in a limited space around us. My excellent friend, M. Brongniart, in whose mind other studies excited the same desire, had the complaisance to associate me with himself in the task; and it is thus that we have laid the first foundations of our labours upon the environs of Paris. But this work, while it still bears my name, has become almost entirely that of my friend, from the infinite attention which he has bestowed, since the first conception of our plan, and since our journeys, upon the profound investigation of the objects, and the perfecting and arranging of the whole. I have placed it, with M. Brongniart’s consent, in the second part of my “Recherches,” in that in which I treat of the fossil bones of our neighbourhood. Although apparently relating only to a rather limited extent of country, it affords numerous results, which are applicable to geology in general, and, in this point of view, it may be considered as intimately connected with the present discourse; at the same time, that it is, without a doubt, one of the best ornaments of my work[244].

In it there is presented the history of the most recent changes that have taken place in a particular basin, and it descends so far as the Chalk formation, the extent of which over the globe is vastly more considerable than that of the materials of the basin of Paris. The chalk, which has been considered so modern, is thus found to be advanced in antiquity among the ages of the great period preceding the last catastrophe. It forms a sort of limit between the most recent formations, those to which the name of Tertiary may be reserved, and the formations which are named Secondary, which have been deposited before the Chalk, but after the Primitive and Transition formations.

Recapitulation of the Observations upon the Succession of the Tertiary Formations.

The most superficial strata, those deposits of mud and clayey sand, mixed with rolled pebbles, that have been transported from distant countries, and filled with bones of land animals, the species of which are for the most part unknown, or at least foreign to the country in which they are found, seem especially to have covered all the plains, filled the bottom of all the caverns, and choked up all the fissures of rocks that have come in their way. Described with particular care by Mr Buckland, under the name of diluvium, and very different from those other beds equally consisting of transported matters, continually deposited by torrents and rivers, which contain only bones of animals that still live in the country, and distinguished by the name of alluvium, the former are now considered by all geologists as exhibiting the most obvious proof of the immense inundation which has been the last of the catastrophes of our globe[245].

Between this diluvium and the chalk, are the formations alternately filled with fresh water and salt water productions, which mark the irruptions and retreatings of the sea, to which this part of the globe has been subjected, since the deposition of the chalk-strata: first, marls and buhrstones, or cavernous quartz, filled with fresh-water shells, similar to those of our marshes and pools; under them marls, sandstones, and limestones, all the shells of which are marine, such as oysters, &c.

At a greater depth are found fresh water formations of an older date, and particularly those famous gypsum deposits of the neighbourhood of Paris, which have afforded so much facility in ornamenting the buildings of that great city, and in which we have discovered whole genera of land-animals, of which no traces had been elsewhere perceived.

They rest upon those not less remarkable beds of limestone, of which our capital is built, in the more or less compact texture of which the patience and sagacity of our naturalists, and of several ardent collectors, have already detected more than 800 species of shells, all of them marine, but the greater part unknown in the presently-existing sea. They also contain only bones of fishes, and of cetacea and other marine mammifera.

Under this marine limestone there is another fresh water deposit, formed of clay, in which there are interposed large beds of lignite (brown coal), or that sort of fossil-coal which is of more recent origin than the common or black coal. Among shells, which are always of fresh water origin, there are also found bones in the deposit; but, what is remarkable, bones of reptiles, and not of mammifera. It is filled with crocodiles and tortoises, but the genera of extinct mammifera which the gypsum contains, are not found in it: they evidently did not exist in the country when these clays and lignites were formed.

This fresh water formation, the oldest which has been distinguished in our neighbourhood, and which supports all the formations which we have just enumerated, is itself supported and embraced on all sides by the chalk, an immense formation, both as to thickness and extent, which shews itself in very distant countries, such as Pomerania and Poland; but which, in our vicinity, reigns with a sort of continuity in Berri, Champagne, Picardy, Upper Normandy, and a part of England, and thus forms a great circle, or rather a great basin, in which the deposits of which we have been speaking are contained, but of which they also cover the edges in the places where they were less elevated.

In fact, it is not in our basin only that these various formations have been deposited. In the other countries where the surface of the chalk presented similar cavities for them; in those even where there was no chalk, and where the older formations alone presented themselves as supports, circumstances often led to the formation of deposits more or less similar to ours, and containing the same organic bodies.

Our formations containing fresh-water shells, have been seen in England, in Spain, and even so far as the confines of Poland.

The marine shells interposed between them, have been found along the whole course of the Appenines.

Some of the quadrupeds of our gypsum deposits, our palæotheria, for example, have also left their bones in certain gypseous formations of the Velai, and in the molasse quarries of the south of France.

Thus the partial revolutions which have taken place in our neighbourhood, between the period of the chalk and that of the great inundation, and during which the sea threw itself upon our districts or retired from them, had also taken place in a multitude of other countries. It seems as if the globe had undergone a long series of changes by which variations were produced, probably in close succession, as the deposits which they have left nowhere shew much thickness or solidity. The chalk has been produced by a more tranquil and more continuous sea; it contains only marine productions, among which there are, however, some very remarkable vertebrate animals, but all of the class of reptiles and fishes; large tortoises, vast lizards, and other similar animals.

The formations anterior to the chalk, and in the hollows of which the chalk is itself deposited, as the formations of our neighbourhood are in its hollows, form a great part of Germany and England; and the efforts which the naturalists of these two countries have recently made according with ours, and proceeding upon the same principles, combined with those which had been previously tried by the school of Werner, will soon leave nothing to be desired with respect to our knowledge of them. Messrs de Humboldt and de Bonnard in France and Germany, and Messrs Buckland and Conybeare in England, have furnished the most complete and most instructive accounts of them.

The subjoined table, in which not only the secondary formations have been arranged, but the whole series of strata, from the oldest known to the most modern and most superficial, has been politely furnished me by M. de Humboldt, to adorn my work. It may be considered as an epitome of the labours of geologists up to the present period[246].

TABLE of Geological Formations in the order of their superposition. By M. Al. de Humboldt.

Alluvial Deposits.			Tertiary Formations.
Lacustrine Formation with Buhrstones.
Fountainbleau sandstone and sand.
Gypsum with bones. Siliceous Limestone.
Coarse Limestone. (London Clay.)
Tertiary sandstone with lignites.
(Plastic clay,—Molasse,—Nagelfluhe.)
Chalk.	white. tufaceous. chloritic.	Ananchites.
Green sand. Weald clay. Iron Sand.	(Secondary Sandstone with lignites.)		Secondary Formations.
Ammonites. Planulites.	Jura Limestone.	Slaty beds with fishes and crustacea.
Quadersandstein, or white sandstone, sometimes above the lias.		Coral rag. Dive clay. Oolites and Caen limestone.
Muschelkalk. Ammonites nodosus.		Marly or calcareous lias with Gryphæa arcuata.
Marls with fibrous gypsum. Arenaceous beds.		Saliferous variegated sandstone.
Productus aculeatus. Magnesian limestone.	Zechstein. Copper slate.	(Alpine limestone.)
Quartziferous Porphyry.	Co-ordinate formations of porphyry, red sandstone, and coal.
Transition Formations.
Slates with Lydian-stone, greywacke, diorites, euphotides. Limestones with orthoceratis, trilobites and euomphalites.
Primitive Formations.
Clayslates (Thonschiefer). Micaslates. Gneiss. Granites.

Under the chalk are found deposits of green sand, of which its lower strata contains some organic remains. Beneath this are ferruginous sands. In many countries both of these deposits are agglutinated into beds of sandstone, in which lignites, amber, and remains of reptiles, are also observed.

Under this, we find the great mass of strata which compose the Jura chain, and that of the mountains by which it is continued into Suabia and Franconia, the principal ridges of the Apennines, and multitudes of beds in France and England. It consists of limestone-schists, rich in fishes and crustacea; vast beds of oolites, or of a granular limestone; grey marly limestones, with pyrites, characterised by the presence of ammonites, of oysters with recurvate valves, named Gryphææ, and of reptiles, which are remarkable on account of their forms and structures.

Large beds of sand and sandstone, often presenting vegetable impressions, support all these Jura deposits, and are themselves supported by a limestone, the innumerable shells and zoophytes contained in which induced Werner to give it the much too general name of Shell-limestone, and which is separated by other beds of sandstone, of the kind denominated variegated sandstone, from a still older limestone, which has been not less improperly called Alpine limestone, because it composes the High Alps of the Tyrol; but which also shews itself at the surface in the eastern provinces of France, and in the whole southern part of Germany.

In this shell-limestone are deposited great masses of gypsum and rich beds of salt; and under it are found the thin beds of copper-slates so rich in fishes, among which there are also fresh-water reptiles. The copper-slate rests upon a red sandstone, to the epoch of which belong those famous deposits of coal, which supply the present inhabitants of the civilized countries of Europe with fuel, and are the remains of the first vegetable productions with which the face of the globe was adorned. We learn from the trunks of ferns, whose impressions they have preserved, how different these ancient forests have been from ours.

We then quickly come to those transition formations, in which primeval nature, nature dead and purely mineral, seems to have disputed the empire with organising nature. Black limestones, and schists which present only crustacea and shells of kinds now extinct, alternate with remains of primitive formations, and announce our having arrived at those formations, the oldest with which we are acquainted, those ancient foundations of the present envelop of the globe, the marbles and primitive slates, the gneisses, and, lastly, the granites.

Such is the precise enumeration of the successive masses with which nature has enveloped the globe. The positive geological information presented by it, has been obtained, by combining the knowledge furnished by mineralogy with that presented by the sciences connected with organic existence. This order, so new and so interesting in facts, has only been acquired by geology, since it preferred positive knowledge, furnished by observation, to fanciful systems, contradictory conjectures regarding the first origin of the globe, and all those phenomena, which, having no resemblance to what actually takes place in nature, could neither find in it, for their explanation, materials nor touchstone. A few years ago, the greater number of geologists might have been compared to historians, who, in writing the history of France, should have interested themselves only about the events which had taken place among the Gauls before the time of Julius Cesar. In composing their romances, however, these historians would have taken advantage of their knowledge of posterior facts; and the geologists of whom I speak, absolutely neglected the posterior facts, which could alone have reflected some light upon the darkness of preceding times.

Enumeration of the Fossil Animals recognised by the Author.

In concluding this discourse, there only remains for me now to present the result of my own researches, or, in other words, a general account of my great work. I shall enumerate the animals which I have discovered, in the inverse order of that which I have followed in my enumeration of the formations. By proceeding deeper and deeper into the series of strata, I there rose in the series of epochs. I shall now take the oldest formations,—make known the animals which they contain,—and, passing from one epoch to another, point out those which successively make their appearance in proportion as we approach the present time.

We have seen that zoophytes, mollusca, and certain crustacea, begin to appear in the Transition formations; perhaps there may even at that period be bones and skeletons of fishes; but we do not by any means observe at so early a period remains of animals which live on land, and respire air in its ordinary state.

The great beds of coal, and the trunks of palms and ferns of which they preserve the impressions, although they afford evidence of the existence of dry land, and of a vegetation no longer confined to the waters, do not yet shew bones of quadrupeds, not even of oviparous quadrupeds.

It is only a little above this, in the bituminous copper-slates, that we see the first traces of them; and, what is very remarkable, the first quadrupeds are reptiles of the family of lizards, very much resembling the large monitors which live at the present day in the torrid zone. Several individuals of this kind have been found in the mines of Thuringia[247], among innumerable fishes of a genus now unknown, but which, from its relations to the genera of our days, appears to have lived in fresh water. Every body knows that the monitors are also fresh water animals.

A little higher is the limestone called Alpine, and resting upon it the shell-limestone, so rich in entrochites and encrinites, which forms the basis of a great part of Germany and Lorraine.

In it have been found skeletons of a very large sea-tortoise, the shells of which might have been from six to eight feet in length; and those of another oviparous quadruped of the family of lizards, of a large size, and with a very sharp muzzle[248].

Rising still through sandstones, which present only vegetable impressions of large arundinaceæ, bamboos, palms, and other monocotyledonous plants, we come to the different strata of the deposit which has been named the Jura limestone, on account of its forming the principal nucleus of that chain of mountains.

It is here that the class of Reptiles assumes its full development, and shews itself under the most varied forms and gigantic sizes.

The middle part, which is composed of oolites and lias, or of grey sandstone containing gryphites, contains the remains of two genera, the most extraordinary of all, which have combined the characters of the class of oviparous quadrupeds with organs of motion similar to those of the cetacea.

The ichthyosaurus[249], discovered by Sir Everard Home, has the head of a lizard, but prolonged into an attenuated muzzle, armed with conical and pointed teeth; enormous eyes, the sclerotica of which is strengthened by a frame consisting of bony pieces; a spine composed of flat vertebræ, of a depressed circular form, and concave on both surfaces like those of fishes; slender ribs; a sternum and clavicles like those of lizards and ornithorynchi; a small and weak pelvis; and four limbs, of which the humeri and femurs are short and thick, while the other bones are flattened, and closely set like the stones in a pavement, so as to form, when enveloped with the skin, fins of a single piece, almost incapable of bending; analogous, in short, both as to use and organization, to those of cetacea. These reptiles have lived in the sea; on shore, they could only at most have crept in the hobbling manner of seals; at the same time after they have respired elastic air.

The remains of four species have been found:

The most extensively distributed (I. communis) has blunt conical teeth; its length sometimes exceeds twenty feet.

The second (I. platyodon), which is at least as large as the former, has compressed teeth, with round and bulging roots.

The third (I. tenuirostris), has slender and pointed teeth, and the muzzle thin and elongated.

The fourth (I. intermedius), is, as its name implies, intermediate between the last species and the common, with respect to the form of its teeth. The two latter species do not attain half the size of the two first.

The plesiosaurus, discovered by Mr Conybeare, must have appeared still more monstrous than the ichthyosaurus. It had the same limbs, but somewhat more elongated and more flexible; its shoulder and pelvis were more robust; its vertebræ had more of the forms and articulations of the lizards; but what distinguished it from all oviparous and viviparous quadrupeds, was a slender neck as long as its body, composed of thirty and odd vertebræ, a number greater than that of the neck of any other animal, rising from the trunk like the body of a serpent, and terminating in a very small head, in which all the essential characters of that of the lizard family are observed.

If any thing could justify those hydras and other monsters, the figures of which are so often presented in the monuments of the middle ages, it would incontestibly be this plesiosaurus.[250]

Five species are already known, of which the most generally distributed (P. dolichodeirus) attains a length of more than twenty feet.

A second species (P. recentior), found in more modern strata, has the vertebræ flatter.

A third (P. carinatus) shews a ridge on the under surface of its vertebræ.

A fourth, and lastly a fifth (P. pentagonus and P. trigonus), have the ribs marked with five and three ridges.[251]

These two genera are found everywhere in the lias: they were discovered in England, where this rock is exposed in cliffs of great extent; but they have also been found since in France and Germany.

Along with these had lived two species of Crocodiles, the bones of which are also found deposited in the lias, among ammonites, terebratulæ, and other shells of that ancient sea. We have skeletons of them in our cliffs at Honfleur, where the remains are found, from which I have drawn up their characters.[252]

One of these species, the Long-beaked Gavial, has the muzzle longer, and the head more narrow, than the gavial or long-beaked crocodile of the Ganges; the bodies of its vertebræ are convex before, while in our crocodiles of the present day they are so behind. It has been found in the lias deposits of Franconia, as well as in those of France.

A second species, the Short-beaked Gavial, has the muzzle of ordinary length, less attenuated than the gavial of the Ganges, but more so than our crocodiles of St Domingo. Its vertebræ are slightly concave at each of their extremities.

But these crocodiles are not the only ones which have been deposited in the strata of these secondary limestones.

The beautiful oolite quarries of Caen have presented a very remarkable one, the muzzle of which is as long and more pointed than that of the long-beaked gavial, and its head more dilated behind, with wider temporal fossæ. Its stony scales, marked with small round cavities, must have rendered it the best defended of all the crocodiles.[253] Its lower teeth are alternately longer and shorter.

There is still another in the oolite of England; but there have only been found some portions of its cranium, which do not suffice to afford a complete idea of it.[254]

Another very remarkable genus of reptiles, the remains of which, although they are also found beyond the limits of the lias concretion, are especially abundant in the oolite and upper sands, is the megalosaurus, justly so named, for, along with the forms of the lizards, and particularly of the monitors, of which it has also the sharp-edged and dentated teeth, it presents so enormous a size, that if we suppose it to have possessed the proportions of the monitors, it must have exceeded seventy feet in length. It was, in fact, a lizard of the size of a whale.[255] It was discovered by Mr Buckland in England; but we have it also in France; and in Germany there are found bones, if not of the same species, at least of a species which can be referred to no other genus. It is to M. Sœmmering that we owe the first description of this last. He discovered the bones in strata lying above the oolite, in those limestone-schists of Franconia, long celebrated for the numerous fossil remains which they furnished to the cabinets of the curious, and which will be still more celebrated for the services which their employment in lithography render to the arts and sciences.

The crocodiles continue to make their appearance in these schists, and always of the long-muzzled or rostrated kind. M. de Sœmmering has described one (the Crocodilus priscus), the entire skeleton of a small individual of which was found nearly in as good a state of preservation, as it could have been in our cabinets.[256] It is one of those which most resemble the present gavial of the Ganges; the anterior or united part of its lower jaw, however, is less elongated; its lower teeth are alternately and regularly longer and shorter. It has ten vertebræ in the tail.

But the most remarkable animals which these limestone slates contain, are the flying lizards, which I have named Pterodactyli.

They are reptiles whose principal characters are, a very short tail, a very long neck, the muzzle much elongated, and armed with sharp teeth; the legs also long, and one of the toes of the anterior extremity excessively elongated, having probably served for the attachment of a membrane adapted for supporting them in the air, accompanied with four other toes of ordinary size, terminated by hooked claws. One of these strange animals, whose appearance would be frightful did they occur alive at the present day, may have been of the size of a thrush[257], the other of that of a common bat[258]; but it would appear from some fragments that larger species had existed[259].

A little above the limestone slates is found the nearly homogeneous limestone of the Jura ridges. It also contains bones, but always of reptiles, crocodiles, and fresh-water tortoises, of which a vast quantity is found in particular in the neighbourhood of Soleure. They have been very carefully searched for by M. Hugi; and, from the fragments which he has already collected, it is easy to recognise a considerable number of Fresh-water Tortoises, or Emydes, which further discoveries can alone determine, but of which several are already distinguished by their size and peculiar forms, from all the species hitherto known[260].

It is among these innumerable oviparous quadrupeds, of all sizes and forms; in the midst of these crocodiles, tortoises, flying reptiles, huge megalosauri, and monstrous plesiosauri, that some small Mammifera are said to make their appearance for the first time; and the assertion is so far authenticated by the occurrence of jaws, and some other bones discovered in England, which undoubtedly belong to this class of animals, and particularly to the family of Didelphides, or to that of the Insectivora.

It may, however, be supposed, that the stoney matters which encrust these bones, owe their origin to some local recomposition, posterior to the original formation of the strata. However this may be, it is still found for a long time that the class of Reptiles predominates.

The ferruginous sands, placed in England above the chalk, contain abundance of crocodiles, tortoises, megalosauri, and especially a reptile which presents a character quite peculiar, in as much as its teeth appear worn, like those of our herbivorous mammifera.

To Mr Mantell of Lewes, in Sussex, we are indebted for the discovery of this latter animal, as well as of other large reptiles belonging to the sands lying beneath the chalk. He has named it Iguanodon [261].

In the chalk itself there are only reptiles to be seen: there are found in it remains of tortoises and crocodiles. The famous tufaceous quarries of the mountain of St Peter, near Maestricht, which belong to the chalk formation, along with very large sea tortoises, and a multitude of marine shells and zoophytes, have afforded a genus of lizards not less gigantic than the megalosaurus, which has become celebrated by the researches of Camper, and the figures which Faujas has given of its bones, in his history of that mountain.

It was upwards of five and twenty feet long; its large jaws were armed with very strong conical teeth, a little arcuate, and marked with a ridge, and it had also some of these teeth in the palate. Upwards of a hundred and thirty vertebræ were counted in its spine; they were convex before, and concave behind. Its tail was deep and flat, and formed a large vertical oar (or organ of swimming).[262] Mr Conybeare has recently proposed to name it Mosasaurus.

The clays and lignites which cover the upper part of the chalk, I have only found to contain crocodiles[263]; and I have every reason to think that the lignites which in Switzerland have afforded beaver and mastodon bones, belong to a later epoch. Nor has it been at an earlier period than that of the coarse limestone which rests upon these clays that I have begun to find bones of mammifera; and still do they all belong to marine mammifera, to dolphins of unknown species, lamantins and morses.

Among the dolphins, there is one, the muzzle of which, more elongated than that of any known species, has the lower jaw united in a considerable part of its length, nearly as in a gavial. It was found near Dax by the late president of Borda[264].

Another species, from the cliffs of the Department de l’Orne, has the muzzle also long, but somewhat differently shaped[265].

The entire genus of lamantins is at the present day confined to the seas of the torrid zone; and that of the morses, of which only a single living species is known to exist, is limited to the frozen ocean. Yet we find skeletons of these two genera side by side in the coarse limestone strata of the middle of France; and this association of species, the nearest allied to which are, at the present day, found in opposite zones, will again make its appearance more than once as we proceed.

Our fossil lamantins differ from those known to exist at present, in having the head more elongated, and of a different form[266]. Their ribs, which are easily recognised by their being of a thick and rounded form, and of dense texture, are not of rare occurrence in our different provinces.

With regard to the fossil morse, small fragments only have as yet been found of it, which are insufficient for characterising the species[267].

It is only in the strata that have succeeded the coarse limestone, or, at most, those which may have been of contemporaneous formation with it, but deposited in fresh-water lakes, that the class of land mammifera begins to shew itself in any quantity.

I consider as belonging to the same period, and as having lived together, but perhaps in different spots, the animals whose bones are deposited in the molasse and old gravel beds of the south of France; in the gypsums mixed with limestone, such as those of Paris and Aix; and in the fresh-water marly deposits covered with marine beds, of Alsace, the country of Orleans and of Berry.

This animal population possesses a very remarkable character in the abundance and variety of certain genera of pachydermata, which are entirely awanting among the quadrupeds of our days, and whose characters have more or less resemblance to those of the tapirs, the rhinoceroses, and camels.

These genera, the entire discovery of which is my own, are the palæotheria, lophiodonta, anaplotheria, anthracotheria, cheropotami, and adapis.

The Palæotheria have resembled the tapirs in their general form, and in that of the head, particularly in the shortness of the bones of the nose, which announces that they have had a small proboscis like the tapirs, and, lastly, in their having six incisors and two canine teeth in each jaw; but they have resembled the rhinoceros in their grinders, of which those of the upper jaw have been square, with prominent ridges of various configuration, and those of the lower jaw in the form of double crescents, as well as in their feet, all of which have been divided into three toes, while in the tapirs the fore feet have four.

It is one of the most extensively diffused genera and most numerous in species that occur in the deposits of this period.

Our gypsum quarries in the neighbourhood of Paris are full of them. Bones of seven distinct species are found there. The first (P. magnum) is as large as a horse. The three next are of the size of a hog, but one of them (P. medium) has narrow and long feet, another (P. crassum) has the feet broader, and a third (P. latum) has them still broader, and especially shorter. The fifth species (P. curtum), which is of the size of a sheep, is much lower, and has the feet still broader and shorter in proportion than the last. The sixth (P. minus) is of the size of a small sheep, and has long and slender feet, the lateral toes of which are shorter than the rest. The seventh (P. minimum), which is not larger than a hare, has also the feet slender[268].

Palæotheria have also been found in other districts of France: at Puy in Valey, in strata of gypseous marl, a species (P. velaunum)[269], much resembling (P. medium), but differing from it in the form of its lower jaw; in the neighbourhood of Orleans, in strata of marly rock, a species (P. aurelianense)[270], which is distinguished from the others by having the re-entering angle of the crescent of its lower grinders split into a double point, and by some differences in the necks of the upper grinders; near Issel, in a bed of gravel or molasse, along the declivities of the Black Mountain, a species (P. isselanum)[271], which has the same characters as the Orleans species, but is of smaller size. It is more particularly, however, in the molasse of the Department of the Dordogne, that the palæotherium occurs not less abundantly than in our gypsum deposits in the neighbourhood of Paris.

The Duke Decaze has discovered in the quarries of a single field, bones of three species which appear different from all those of our neighbourhood[272].

The Lophiodons approach still somewhat nearer to the tapirs than the palæotheria do, inasmuch as their lower false grinders have transverse necks like those of the tapirs.

They differ, however, from these latter, in having the fore ones more simple, the backmost of all with three necks, and the upper ones rhomboidal, and marked with ridges very much resembling those of the rhinoceros.

We are still ignorant what the form of their snout, and the number of their toes, may have been. I have discovered not less than twelve species of this genus, all in France, deposited in marly rocks of fresh-water formation, and filled with lymneæ and planorbes, which are shells peculiar to pools and marshes.

The largest species is found near Orleans, in the same quarry as the palæotheria; it approaches the rhinoceros.

There is a smaller species in the same place; a third occurs at Montpellier; a fourth near Laon; two near Buchsweiler in Alsace; five near Argenton in Berry; and one of the three occurs again near Issel, where there are also two others. There is also a large one near Gannat[273].

These species differ from each other in size, the smallest being scarcely so large as a lamb of three months, and in various circumstances connected with the form of their teeth, which it would be too tedious and minute to detail here.

The Anoplotheria have hitherto been discovered nowhere but in the gypsum quarries of the neighbourhood of Paris. They have two characters which are observed in no other animal; feet with two toes, the metacarpal and metatarsal bones of which are separate in their whole length, and do not unite into a single piece, as in the ruminantia; and teeth placed in a continuous series without any interruption. Man alone has the teeth so placed in mutual contiguity, without any interval. Those of the anaplotheria consist of six incisors in each jaw, a canine tooth and six grinders on each side, both above and below; their canine teeth are short and similar to the outer incisors. The three first grinders are compressed; the four others are, in the upper jaw, square, with transverse ridges, and a small cone between them; and, in the lower jaw, in the form of a double crescent, but without neck at the base. The last has three crescents. Their head is of an oblong form, and does not indicate that the muzzle has terminated either in a proboscis or a snout.

This extraordinary genus, which can be compared to nothing in living nature, is subdivided into three subgenera: the Anaplotheria, properly so called, the anterior molares of which are still pretty thick, and the posterior ones of the lower jaw have their crescents with a simple ridge; the Xiphodons, of which the anterior molares are thin and sharp on the edges, and the under posterior, have, directly opposite the concavity of each of their crescents, a point, which, on being worn, also assumes the form of a crescent, so that then the crescents are double as in the ruminantia; lastly, the Dichobunes, the outer crescents of which are also pointed at the beginning, and which have thus points disposed in pairs upon their lower posterior grinders.

The most common species in our gypsum quarries (An. commune), is an animal of the height of a boar, but much more elongated, and furnished with a very long and very thick tail, so that altogether it has nearly the proportion of the otter, but larger. It is probable that it was well fitted for swimming, and frequented the lakes in the bottom of which its bones have been incrusted by the gypsum which was deposited there. We have one a little smaller, but in other respects pretty similar (An. secundarium.)

We are as yet acquainted with only one xiphodon, which, however, is a very remarkable animal: it is that which I have named An. gracile. It is slender, and delicately formed, like the prettiest gazelle.

There is one dichobune, nearly of the size of a hare, to which I have given the name of An. leporinum. Besides its subgeneric characters, it differs from the anaplotheria and xiphodons, in having two small and slender toes on each foot, at the sides of the two large toes.

We do not know if these lateral toes exist in the two other dichobunes, which are small, and scarcely exceed in size the common Guinea pig[274].

The genus of Anthracotheria is in some degree intermediate between the palæotheria, anaplotheria, and hogs. I have named it so, because two of its species have been found in the lignites of Cadibona, near Savone. The first approached the rhinoceros in size; the second was much smaller. They have also been found in Alsace, and in the Vélay. Their grinders are similar to those of the anaplotheria; but they have projecting canine teeth[275].

The genus Cheropotamus is found in our gypsum deposits, where it accompanies the palæotheria and anaplotheria, but where it is of much rarer occurrence. Its posterior grinders are square above, rectangular below, and have four large conical eminences surrounded with smaller ones. The anterior molares are short cones, slightly compressed, and with two roots. Its canine teeth are small. Neither its incisors nor its feet are yet known. I possess only one species, which is of the size of a Siam hog[276].

The genus Adapis has also but one species, which is at most of the size of a rabbit: it is also from our gypsum quarries, and must have been nearly allied to the anaplotheria[277].

We have thus nearly forty species of pachydermata belonging to genera now entirely extinct, and presenting forms and proportions to which there is nothing that can be compared in the present animal kingdom, excepting two tapirs and a daman.

This large number of pachydermata is so much the more remarkable, that the ruminantia, which are at present so numerous in the genera of deer and antelopes, and which attain so great a size in those of the oxen, giraffes, and camels, scarcely make their appearance in the deposits of which we are speaking.

I have not seen the slightest trace of them in our gypsum quarries; and all that has come to my hands consists of some fragments of a deer, of the size of the roe, but of a different species, collected among the palæotheria of Orleans[278]; and of one or two other small fragments, from Switzerland, which, however, are perhaps of doubtful origin.

But our pachydermata have not for all this been the only inhabitants of the countries in which they lived. In our gypsum deposits, at least, we find along with them carnivora, glires, several sorts of birds, crocodiles, and tortoises; and these two latter genera also accompany them in the molasse sandstones and marly deposits of the middle and south of France.

At the head of the carnivora, I place a Bat, very recently discovered at Montmartre, and which belongs to the proper genus Vespertilio[279]. The existence of this genus, at an epoch so remote, is so much the more surprising, that, neither in this formation, nor in those which have succeeded it, have I seen any other trace, either of cheiroptera or of quadrumana: no bone or tooth of either monkey or maki has ever presented itself to me, in the course of my long researches.

Montmartre has also furnished the bones of a fox different from ours, and which also differs from the jackals, isatises, and the various species of foxes peculiar to America[280]; those of a carnivorous animal allied to the raccoons and coaties, but larger than any known species[281]; those of a particular species of civet[282]; and of two or three other carnivora, which it has not been possible to determine, from the want of tolerably complete portions.

What is still more remarkable, is, that there are skeletons of a small sarigue, allied to the marmose, but different, and consequently of an animal belonging to a genus which is at the present day confined to the New World[283]. Skeletons of two small glires, of the genus myoxus[284], and a skull belonging to the genus sciurus[285], have also been collected.

Our gypsum deposits are more fertile in bones of birds than any of the other strata either anterior or posterior to it. Entire skeletons, and parts of at least ten species belonging to all the orders, are found there[286].

The crocodiles of the period in question approach our common crocodiles in the form of the head, while, in the deposits of the Jura period, we find only species allied to the gavial.

A species has been found at Argenton, which is remarkable for its compressed, sharp teeth, having their edges dentated like those of certain monitors[287]. Some remains of it also occur in our gypsum quarries[288].

The tortoises of this period are all fresh-water ones: some of them belong to the subgenus Emys; and there are species, both at Montmartre[289], and still more especially in the molasse sandstones of the Dordogne[290], which are larger than any living species known; the others are Trionyces or soft tortoises[291]. This genus, which is easily distinguished by the vermiculate surface of the bones of its shell, and which at present exists only in the rivers of warm countries, such as the Nile, the Ganges, and the Orinoko, has been very abundant in the places where the palæotheria lived. Vast quantities of its remains are found at Montmartre[292], and in the molasse sandstones of the Dordogne, and the other gravel deposits of the south of France.

The fresh-water lakes, around which these various animals have lived, and which had received their bones, nourished, besides the tortoises and crocodiles, some fishes and testaceous mollusca. All that have been collected of these two classes of animals, are as foreign to our climate, and even as much unknown in our present waters, as the palæotheria, and other quadrupeds which were coeval with them[293].

The fishes have even in part belonged to unknown genera.

Hence, it cannot be doubted that this race of inhabitants, which might be termed the population of the middle age, this first great production of mammifera, has been entirely destroyed; and, in fact, in all places where remains of them have been discovered, there are great deposits of marine formation above them, so that the sea has overwhelmed the countries which these races inhabited, and has rested upon them during a long period of time.

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[294].

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[295], and a whale very like our rorquals[296], both discovered in Lombardy by M. Cortesi; a large head of a whale found within the very precincts of Paris[297], 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[298].

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[299]. 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[300].

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[301].

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[302].

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[303].

Another species, of rarer occurrence, and peculiar to more temperate climates (Rh. incisivus)[304], had incisors like our present rhinoceroses of the East Indies, and, in particular, resembled that of Sumatra[305]; 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[306]. 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[307]. 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[308]. 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[309].

The Horse genus also existed in those times[310]. 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[311].

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[312].

There also occur, in certain places, along with bones of rhinoceroses, and other quadrupeds of this period, those of a deer so much resembling the reindeer, that it would be difficult to assign distinctive characters to it; a circumstance which is so much the more extraordinary, that the reindeer is at the present day confined to the coldest regions of the north, while the whole genus of rhinoceroses belongs to the torrid zone.[313]

There exist in the strata of which we speak, remains of a species very similar to the fallow-deer, but a third larger,[314] and prodigious quantities of horns, very much resembling those of our present stag[315], as well as bones, very like those of the aurochs[316] and domestic ox[317], two very distinct species, which had been erroneously confounded by the naturalists who preceded us. The entire heads, however, resembling those of these two animals, as well as that of the musk-ox of Canada[318], which have often been extracted from the earth, do not come from localities sufficiently well determined to enable us to assert that these species had been contemporaries of the great pachydermata, of which we have made mention above.

The osseous brecciæ of the shores of the Mediterranean have also afforded two species of Lagomys,[319] animals, the genus of which exists at the present day only in Siberia; two species of rabbits[320], lemmings, and rats of the size of the water-rat and domestic mouse[321]. In the caves of England two species are also found[322].

The osseous brecciæ even contain bones of shrew-mice and lizards[323].

In certain sandy strata of Tuscany, there are teeth of a porcupine[324], and in those of Russia heads of a species of beaver, larger than ours, which M. Fischer has named Trogontherium[325].

But it is more particularly in the class Edentata that these races of animals belonging to the period before the last assume a size much superior to that of their present congeners, and even rise to a magnitude altogether gigantic.

The Megatherium unites a part of the generic characters of the armadilloes, with some of those of the sloths, and is in size equal to the largest rhinoceros. Its claws must have been of a monstrous length, and prodigious strength; its whole skeleton possesses an excessive solidity. It has only as yet been found in the sandy strata of North America[326].

The Megalonyx has been very similar to it in its characters, but has been somewhat less; its claws much longer and sharper in the edges. Some bones and entire toes of it have been found in certain caves in Virginia, and in an island on the coast of Georgia[327].

These two enormous edentata have only hitherto presented their remains in America; but Europe possesses one of the same class which does not yield to them in magnitude. It is only known by a single terminal joint of a toe, but this fragment is sufficient to assure us that it was very similar to a pangolin or manis, but to a pangolin of nearly twenty-four feet in length. It lived in the same districts as the elephants, rhinoceroses, and gigantic tapirs; for its bones have been found along with theirs in a sandy deposit in the county of Darmstadt, not far from the Rhine[328].

The osseous brecciæ also contain, but very rarely, bones of carnivora[329], which are much more numerous in caverns, that is to say, in cavities wider and more complicated than the fissures or veins containing osseous brecciæ. The Jura chain in particular, is celebrated for them in the part of it which extends into Germany, where, for ages past, incredible quantities have been removed and destroyed, on account of certain medical virtues which had been attributed to them, and yet there still remains enough to fill the mind with astonishment. The principal part of these remains consists of bones of a very large species of bear (Ursus spelæus), which is characterised by a more prominent forehead than that of any of our living bears[330]. Along with these bones are found those of two other species of bear (U. arctoideus and U. priscus)[331]; those of a hyena (H. fossilis), allied to the spotted hyena of the Cape, but differing from it in the form of its teeth and head[332]; those of two tigers or panthers[333], of a wolf[334], a fox[335], a glutton[336], as well as of weasels, viverræ, and other small carnivora[337].

Here, also, may be observed that singular association of animals, the species resembling which live at the present day in climates so widely separated from each other as the Cape, the country of the spotted hyena, and Lapland, the country of our present gluttons. In like manner we have seen in a cave in France, a rhinoceros and a reindeer by the side of each other.

Bears are of rare occurrence in alluvial strata. Remains of the large species of the caves (U. spelæus), are said, however, to have been found in Austria and Hainaut; and in Tuscany there are bones of a particular species, remarkable for its compressed canine teeth (U. cultridens)[338]. The hyenas are more frequently met with. We have remains of them in France, found along with bones of elephants and rhinoceroses. A cave has lately been discovered in England, which contained prodigious quantities of them, where they were found of every age, and of which the soil presented even their excrements in a sufficient state of preservation to be easily recognised. It would appear that they had long lived there, and that it had been by them that the bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, horses, oxen, deer, and various animals of the class of glires, which are found along with them, and which bear evident marks of their teeth, had been dragged into the cave. But what must have been the soil of England, when these enormous animals lived upon it, and constituted the prey of ferocious beasts! These caves contain also bones of tigers, wolves and foxes; but the remains of bears are of excessively rare occurrence in them[339].

However this may be, we see that, at the epoch of the animal population which we are now passing under review, the class of carnivora was numerous and powerful. It reckoned three bears with round canine teeth, one with compressed canini, a large tiger or lion, another feline animal, of the size of the panther, a hyena, a wolf, a fox, a glutton, a martin or pole-cat, and a weasel.

The class of glires, composed in general of weak and small species, has been little observed by the collectors of fossil remains; and, in all cases, where the bones of these animals have been found in the strata or deposits of which we speak, they also have presented unknown species. Such, in particular, is a species of Lagomys found in the osseous brecciæ of Corsica and Sardinia, somewhat resembling the Lagomys alpinus of the high mountains of Siberia: so true is it that it is not always in the torrid zone only, that we are to seek for the animals which resemble those of this period.

These are the principal animals, the remains of which have been found in that mass of earth, sand, and mud,—that Diluvium, which everywhere covers our large plains, fills our caverns, and chokes up the fissures in many of our rocks. They incontestibly formed the population of the continents, at the epoch of the great catastrophe which has destroyed their races, and which has prepared the soil, on which the animals of the present day subsist.

Whatever resemblance certain of these species bear to those of our days, it cannot be disputed that the general mass of this population had a very different character, and that the greater part of the races which composed it have been utterly destroyed.

What astonishes us is, that, among all these mammifera, the greater number of which have their congeners at the present day in the warm parts of the globe, there has not been a single quadrumanous animal,—that there has not been collected a single bone or a single tooth of an ape or monkey, not so much even as a bone or a tooth belonging to an extinct species of these animals.

Nor is there any trace of man. All the bones of our species that have been found along with those of which we have been speaking, have occurred accidentally[340], and their number besides is exceedingly small, which assuredly would not have been the case, if men had then been settled in the countries which these animals inhabited.

Where, then, was the human race at this period? Did the last and most perfect of the works of the Creator nowhere exist? Did the animals which now accompany him upon the globe, and of which there are no traces among these fossil remains, surround him? Were the countries in which he lived with them swallowed up, when those which he now inhabits, and whose former population may have been destroyed by a great inundation, were laid dry again? These are questions which the study of fossil remains does not enable us to solve, and in this discourse we must not apply for information to other sources.

This much is certain, that we are now at least in the midst of a fourth succession of land animals,—that, after the age of reptiles, the age of palæotheria, the age of mammoths, and that of mastodons and megatheria, has come the age in which the human species, aided by some domestic animals, peaceably governs and fertilizes the earth, and that it is only in the deposits formed since the commencement of this age, in alluvial matters, peat-bogs, and recent concretions, that bones are found in the fossil state, which belong all of them to known and still living animals.

Such are the human skeletons of Guadaloupe, imbedded in a species of travertine formed of land shells, slate, and fragments of shells and madrepores of the neighbouring sea; the bones of oxen, deer, roes, and beavers, common in peat-bogs, and all the bones of men and domestic animals found in the mud and sand deposited by rivers, in burying grounds, and upon ancient fields of battle.

None of these remains belong either to the great deposit formed at the time of the last catastrophe, nor to those of preceding ages.

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APPENDIX.

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