Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth

by John Playfair

Note xxii. § 123.

Fossil Bones.

403. The remains of organized bodies, at present included in the solid parts of the globe, may be divided into three classes. The first consists of the shells, corals,-and even bodies of fish, and amphibious animals, which are now converted into stone, and make integrant parts of the solid rock. All these are parts of animals that existed before the formation of the present land, or even of the rocks whereof it consists. These remains have been already treated of, and the evidence which they furnish must ever be regarded as of the utmost importance in the theory of the earth. The second class consists of remains, which, by the help of stalactitical concretions, are converted into stone. These are the exuviæ of animals, which existed on the very same continents on which we now dwell, and are no doubt the most ancient among their inhabitants, of which any monument is preserved. In comparison of the first class, they must, nevertheless, be considered as of very modern origin.

404. The third class consists of the bones of animals found in the loose earth or soil; these have not acquired a stony character, and their nature appears to be but little changed, except by the progress of decomposition and of mouldering into earth. No decided line can be drawn between the antiquity of this and the preceding class, as there may be between the preceding and the first. In some instances, the objects of this third class may be coeval with those of the second; in general, they must be accounted of later origin, as they are certainly not preserved in a manner so well fitted for long continuance.

405. The animal remains of the second class, are generally found in the neighbourhood of limestone strata, and are either enveloped or penetrated by calcareous, or sometimes ferruginous matter. Of this sort are the bones found in the rock of Gibraltar, and on the coast of Dalmatia. The latter are peculiarly marked for their number, and the extent of the country over which they are scattered, leaving it doubtful whether they are the work of successive ages, or of some sudden catastrophe that has assembled in one place, and overwhelmed with immediate destruction, a vast multitude of the inhabitants of the globe. These remains are found in greatest abundance in the islands of Cherso and Osero ; end always in what the Abbé Fortis calls an ocreo-stalactitic earth. The bones are often in the state of mere splinters, the broken and confused relics of various animals, concreted with fragments of marble and lime, in clefts and chasms of the strata.[211] Sometimes human bones are said to be found in these confused masses.

[211] Travels into Dalmatia, p. 449.

406. A very remarkable collection of bones in this state is found in the caves of Bayreuth in Franconia. Many of these belong, as is inferred with great certainty from the structure of their teeth, to a carnivorous animal of vast size, and having very little affinity to any of those that are now known. The bones are found in different states, some being without any stalactitical concretion, and having the calcareous earth still united to the phosphoric acid, so that they belong to the third, rather than the second, of the preceding divisions. In others, the phosphoric acid has wholly disappeared, and given place to the carbonic.

The number of these bones, accumulated in the same place, is matter of astonishment, when it is considered, that the animals to which they belonged were carnivorous, so that more than two can never have lived in the same cavern at the same time. The caves of Bayreuth seem to have been the den and the tomb of a whole dynasty of unknown monsters, that issued from this central spot to devour the feebler inhabitants of the woods, during a long succession of ages, before man had subdued the earth, and freed it from all domination but his own.

407. The fossil bones of the second and third class, but chiefly of the third, have now afforded matter of conjecture and discussion for more than a century. The facts with respect to them are very numerous and interesting, but can be considered here only very generally.

The remains of this kind, consist of the bones only of large animals, so that they have generally been compared with those of the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, or other animals of great size The bones of smaller animals have also been found, but much more rarely than the other. It is usually remarked, that the bones thus discovered in the earth are larger than those of the similar living animals.

Another general fact concerning these remains, is, that they are found in all countries whatsoever, but always in the loose or travelled earth, and never in the genuine strata. Since the year 1696, when the attention of the curious was called to this subject, by the skeleton of an elephant dug up in Thuringia, and described by Tentzelius,[212] there is hardly a country in Europe which has not afforded instances of the same kind. Fossil bones, particularly grinders and tusks of elephants, have been found in other places of Germany, in Poland, France, Italy, Britain, Ireland, and even Iceland.[213] Two countries, however, afford them in greater abundance by far than any other part of the known world; namely, the plains of Siberia in the old continent, and the flat grounds on the banks of the Ohio in the new.[214]

[212] Phil. Trans. vol. xix. p. 757.

[213] A grinder of an elephant found in Iceland, is described by Bartholinus, Acta Hafniens. vol. i. p. 83.

[214] The fossil bones on the Ohio are described in two papers by Mr P. Collinson, Phil. Trans. vol. lvii. p. 464 and 468.

408. When the bones in Siberia were first discovered, they were supposed to belong to an animal that lived under ground, to which they gave the name of the mammouth; and the credit bestowed on this absurd fiction, is a proof of the strong desire which all men feel of reconciling extraordinary appearances with the regular course of nature. Much skill, however, in natural history was not required to discover that many of the bones in question resembled those of the elephant, particularly the grinders and the tusks of that animal. Others resembled the bones of the rhinoceros; and a head of that kind, having the hide preserved upon it, was found in Siberia, and is still in the imperial cabinet at Petersburgh.

Pallas has described the fossil bones which he found in the museum at Petersburgh, on his being appointed to the superintendence of it, and enumerates, not only bones that belong, in his opinion, to the elephant and rhinoceros, but others that belong to a kind of buffalo, very different from any now known, and of a size vastly greater.[215] He has also described, in another very curious memoir, the bones of the same kind that he met with in his travels through the north-east parts of Asia.

[215] Novi Comment Petrop. tom. xiii. (1768,) p. 436, and tom. xvii. p. 576, &c.

The fossil bones found on the banks of the Ohio, resemble in many things those of Siberia; like them they are contained in the soil or alluvial earth, and never in the solid strata; like them too they are no otherwise changed from their natural state, than by being sometimes slightly calcined at the surface; they are also of great size, and in great numbers, being probably the remains of several different species.

409. Two inquiries concerning these bones have excited the curiosity of naturalists; first, to discover among the living tribes at present inhabiting the earth, those to which the fossil remains may with the greatest probability be referred; and, secondly, to find out the cause why these remains exist in such quantities, in countries where the animals to which they belong, whatever they be, are at present unknown. The solution of the first of these questions, is much more within our reach than the second, and at any rate must be first sought for.

On the authority of so eminent a naturalist as Pallas, the bones from Siberia may safely be referred to the elephant, the rhinoceros, and buffalo, as mentioned above, though perhaps to varieties of them with which we are not now acquainted. With respect to the bones of North America, the question is more doubtful, for they have this particular circumstance attending them, viz. that along with the thighbones, tusks, &c. which might be supposed to belong to the elephant, grinders are always found of a structure and form entirely different from the grinders of that animal.[216] Some naturalists, particularly M. Daubenton, referred these grinders to the hippopotamus; but Dr W. Hunter appears to have proved, in a very satisfactory manner, that they cannot have belonged to either of the animals just mentioned, but to a carnivorous animal of enormous size, the race of which, fortunately for the present inhabitants of the earth, seems now to be entirely extinct.[217] The foundation of Dr Hunter's opinion is, that in these grinders the enamel is merely an external covering; whereas, in the elephant, and other animals destined to live on vegetable food, the enamel is intermixed with the substance of the tooth.[218]

[216] See Mr Collinson's papers, above referred to. Phil. Trans. vol. lvii.

[217] Phil. Trans. vol. lviii. p. 3, &c.

[218] A fossil grinder in the collection of John Macgowan, Esq. of Edinburgh, answers nearly to Mr Collinson's description, and is very well represented by the figure which accompanies it. This grinder weighs four pounds one-fourth avoirdupois; the circumference of the corona is eighteen inches; the coat of enamel is one-fourth of an inch thick; there are five double teeth; in Mr Collinson's specimen there are only four.

410. Though this argument appears to be of considerable weight, yet Camper, who was greatly skilled in comparative anatomy, and who had studied this subject with particular attention, was of opinion, that these grinders belong to a species of elephant. This opinion he states in a letter to Pallas, who had found grinders and other bones of this same animal, on the western declivity of the Ural mountains.[219] Camper denies that the animal is carnivorous, because the incisores, or canine teeth, are wanting; and he argues farther, from the weight of the head, which may be inferred from the weight of the grinders, that the neck must have been short, and the animal must have been furnished with a proboscis. He afterwards abandoned the latter hypothesis, and gave it as his opinion that the incognitum was neither carnivorous, nor a species of the elephant.[220]

[219] Acta Acad. Petrop. tom. i. (1777,) pars posterior, p. 213, &c.

[220] Ibid. tom. ii. (1784,) p. 262.

411. Nevertheless, Cuvier, in a mémoire read before the National Institute of Paris, maintains, that the fossil bones of the new Continent, as well as most of those of the old, belong to certain species of the elephant; of which, at least, two do not now exist, and are only known from remains preserved in the ground. He distinguishes them thus:[221]

[221] Mémoires de l'Institut National, Sciences Physiques, tom. ii. p. 19, &c.

Elephas mammonteus,—maxillâ obtusiore, lamellis molarium tenuibus, rectis.

Elephas Americanus,—molarities multicuspidibus, lamellis post detritionem quadric-lobatis.

The latter species, which is meant to include the animal incognitum, is said to have lived, not only in America, but in many parts of the old Continent. Yet some late inquiries into the structure of the teeth of graminivorous animals, and particularly of the elephant, make it very improbable that the incognitum has belonged to this genus.[222] The grinders of the elephant have been found to consist of three substances, enamel, bone, and what is called the crusta petrosa, applied in layers, or folds contiguous to one another; and no vestige of this structure appears in the grinders of the unknown animal of the Ohio.[223] At the same time, Dr Hunter's assertion, that this animal was carnivorous, is rendered doubtful, not only by the want of canine teeth, but also from the resemblance between its grinders and those of the wild boar, which Mr Home has observed to be considerable.[224] The grinder of the boar is similar to that of the elephant, in the extent of the masticating surface, but not at all in the internal structure; and the same is true of the tooth of the animal incognitum, so that a considerable probability is established, that it and the boar are of the same genus, and both destined to live occasionally either on animal or vegetable food.

[222] See Mr Home's Observations on the Teeth of Graminivorous Animals, Phil. Trans. 1799. Also, an Essay on the Structure of the Teeth, by Dr Blake.

[223] In a paper inserted in the fourth volume of the American Philosophical Transactions, an account is given of two different grinders that are found at the Salt Licks near the Ohio. One of them resembles the grinder of the elephant, and may have belonged to the Elephas Americanus of Cuvier; the other agrees pretty nearly with the grinder of Dr Hunter's animal incognitum. The author of the paper thinks that the animal incognitum was not wholly carnivorous, as the incisores, or canine teeth, are never found. At the Great Bone Lick, bones of smaller animals, particularly of the buffalo kind, have been discovered. The saline impregnation of the earth at these Licks must no doubt have contributed to the preservation of the bones. Trans. American Phil. Soc. vol. iv. (1799,) p. 510, &c.

[224] Observations on the Grinding Teeth of the wild boar and animal incognitum. Phil. Trans. 1801, p. 319.

412. Another animal incognitum found in South America has been described by Cuvier, and appears to be of a different genus from the incognitum of the North. Thus, if we include the two incognita of America, the elephas mammonteus, the unknown buffalo of Pallas, and the great animal of Bayreuth, we have at least five distinct genera, or species of the animal kingdom, which existed on our continents formerly, but do not exist on them now. The number is probably much greater: Pallas mentions fossil horns of a gazelle, of an unknown species; and horns of deer are often found, that cannot be referred to any species now existing. Those extinct races have been remarkable for their size: some of the ancient elephants appear to have been three times as large as any of the present.[225]

[225] Camper, Nov. Acta Petrop. tom. ii. (1784) p. 257.

413. The inhabitants of the globe, then, like all the other parts of it, are subject to change. It is not only the individual that perishes, but whole species, and even perhaps genera, are extinguished. It is not unnatural to consider some part of this change as the operation of man. The extension of his power would necessary subvert the balance that had before been established between the inhabitants of the earth, and the means of their subsistence. Some of the larger and fiercer animals might indeed dispute with him, for a long time, the empire of the globe; and it may have required the arm of a Hercules to subdue the monsters which lurked in the caves of Bayreuth, or roamed on the banks of the Ohio. But these, with others of the same character, were at length exterminated: the more innocent species fled to a distance from man; and being forced to retire into the most inaccessible parts, where their food was scanty, and their migration checked, they may have degenerated from, the size and strength of their ancestors, and some species may have been entirely extinguished.

But besides this, a change in the animal kingdom seems to be a part of the order of nature, and is visible in instances to which human power cannot have extended. If we look to the most ancient inhabitants of the globe, of which the remains are preserved in the strata themselves, we find in the shells and corals of a former world hardly any that resemble exactly those which exist in the present. The species, except in a few instances, ate the same, but subject to great varieties. The vegetable impressions on slate, and other argillaceous stones, can seldom be exactly recognised; and even the insects included in amber are different from those of the countries in which the amber is found.

414. Supposing, then, the changes which have taken place in the qualities and habits of the animal creation, to be as great as those in their structure and external form, we can have no reason to wonder if it should appear that some have formerly dwelt in countries from which the similar races are now entirely banished. The power of living in a different climate, of enduring greater degrees of cold or of heat, or of subsisting on different kinds of food, may very well have accompanied the other changes. Though one species of elephant may now be confined to the southern parts of Asia, another may have been able to endure the severer climates of the north; and the same may be true of the buffalo or the rhinoceros. In all this no physical impossibility is involved; though whether it is a probable solution of the difficulty concerning the origin of these animal remains, can only be judged of from other circumstances.

415. If we consider attentively the facts that respect the Siberian fossil bones, there will appear insurmountable objections to every theory that supposes them to be exotic, and to have been brought into their present situation from a distant country.

The extent of the tract through which these bones are scattered, is a circumstance truly wonderful. Pallas assures us,[226] that there is not a river of considerable size in all the north of Asia, from the Tanais, which runs into the Black Sea, to the Anadyr, which falls into the Gulf of Kamtchatka, in the sides or bottom of which bones of elephants and other large animals have not been found. This is especially the case where the rivers run in plains through gravel, sand, clay, &c.; among the mountains, the bones are rarely discovered. The extent of the tract just mentioned exceeds four thousand miles; and how the bones could be distributed over all that extent, by any means but by the animals having lived there, it seems impossible to conceive. No torrent nor inundation could have produced this effect, nor could the bones brought in that way have been laid together so as to form complete skeletons.

[226] De Reliquiis Animalium exoticorum, per Asiam Borealem repertis.—"Nov. Comment Petrop. tom. xvii. (1772,) p. 576.

416. One fact recorded by the same author, seems calculated to remove all uncertainty. It is that of the carcase of a rhinoceros, almost entire, and covered with the hide, found in the earth in the banks of the river Wilui, which falls into the Lena below Jakutsk.[227] Some of the muscles and tendons were actually adhering to the head when Pallas received it. The head, after being dried in an oven, is still preserved in the museum at Petersburgh. The preservation of the skin and muscles of this natural mummy, as Pallas calls it, was no doubt brought about by its being buried in earth that was in a state of perpetual congelation; for the place is in the parallel of 64°, where the ground is never thawed but to a very small depth below the surface.

[227] Pallas ubi supra, p. 586. Also, Voyages de Pallas, tom. iv. p. 131.

But by what means can we account for the carcase of a rhinoceros being buried in the earth, on the confines of the polar circle? Shall we ascribe it to some immense torrent, which, sweeping across the deserts of Tartary, and the mountains of Altai, transported the productions of India to the plains of Siberia, and interred in the mud of the Lena the animals that had fed on the banks of the Barampooter or the Ganges? Were all other objections to so extraordinary a supposition removed, the preservation of the hide and muscles of a dead animal, and the adhesion of the parts, while it was dragged for 2000 miles over some of the highest and most rugged mountains in the world, is too absurd to be for a moment admitted. Or shall we suppose that this carcase has been floated in by an inundation of the sea, from some tropical country now swallowed up, and of which the numerous islands of the Indian Archipelago are the remains? The heat of a tropical climate, and the putrescence naturally arising from it, would soon, independently of all other accidents, have stripped the bones of their covering. Indeed this instantia singularis, as in every sense it may properly be called, seems calculated for the express purpose of excluding every hypothesis but one from being employed to explain the origin of fossil bones. It not only excludes the two which have just been mentioned, but it excludes also that of Buffon, viz. that these bones are the remains of animals which lived in Siberia, when the arctic regions enjoyed a fine climate, and a temperature like that which southern Asia now possesses. From the preservation of the flesh and hide of this rhinoceros, it is plain, that when the body was buried in the earth, the climate was much the same that it is now, and the cold sufficient to resist the progress of putrefaction.

Pallas takes notice of the inconsistency of the state of this skeleton, with the hypothesis of Buffon; but he does not observe that the inconsistency is equally great between it and his own hypothesis, the importation of the fossil bones by an inundation of the sea, and that flesh or muscle must have been entirely consumed long before it could be carried by the waves to the parallel of 64°, from any climate which the rhinoceros at present inhabits.

417. The presence of petrified marine objects in places where some of the fossil bones are found, is no proof that the latter have come from the sea, though it is produced as such both by Pallas himself, and afterwards by Kirwan. These marine bodies are the shells and corals that have been parts of calcareous rocks, from which being detached by the ordinary progress of disintegration, they are now contained in the beds of sand or gravel where the animal remains are buried. They have nothing in common with these remains; they are real stones, and belong to another, and a far more remote epochs. Such objects being found in the same place where the bones lie, argues only that the strata in the higher grounds, from which the gravel has come, are calcareous; and nothing can show in a stronger light the necessity of distinguishing the different condition of fossil bodies, united by the mere circumstance of contiguity, before we draw any inference as to their having a common origin. If the marine remains were in the same condition with the bones; if they were in no respect mineralized; then the conclusion, that both had been imported by the sea, would have great probability; but without that, their present union must be held as casual, and can give no insight into the origin of either.

418. On the whole, therefore, no conclusion remains, but that these bones have belonged to species of elephants, rhinoceros, &c. which inhabited the very countries where their remains are now buried, and which could endure the severity of the Siberian climate. The rhinoceros of the Wilui certainly lived on the confines of the Polar Circle, and was exposed to the same cold while alive, by which, when dead, its body has been so long, and so curiously preserved.

These animals may also have lived occasionally farther to the south, among the valleys between the great ranges of mountains that bound Siberia on that side. Fossil bones are but rarely found in these valleys, probably because they have been washed down from thence into the plains. We must observe, too, that those animals may have migrated with the seasons, and by that means avoided the rigorous winter of the high latitudes. The dominion of man, by rendering such migration to the larger animals difficult or impossible, must have greatly changed the economy of all those tribes, and narrowed the circle of their enjoyments and existence. The heaps in which the fossil bones appear to be accumulated in particular places, especially in North America, have a great appearance of being connected with the migrations of animals, and the accidents that might bring multitudes of them into the same spot.

What holds of Siberia and of North America, is applicable, a fortiori, to all the other places where animal remains are found in the same condition. Thus we are carried back to a time when many larger species of animals, now entirely extinct, inhabited the earth, and when varieties of those that are at present confined to particular situations, were, either by the liberty of migration, or by their natural constitution, accommodated to all the diversities of climate. This period, though beyond the limits of ordinary chronology, is posterior to the great revolutions on the earth's surface, and the latest among geological epochs.