Post-Pliocene Period.
In the days of Cuvier the Tertiary formations were considered as a mere chaos of superficial deposits, having no distinct relations to each other. It was reserved for the English geologists, with Sir Charles Lyell at their head, to throw light upon this obscure page of the earth’s history; from the study of fossils, science has not only re-animated the animals, it has re-constructed the theatre of their existence. We see the British Islands now a straggling archipelago, and then the mouth of a vast river, of which the continent is lost; for, says Professor Ramsay, “We are not of necessity to consider Great Britain as having always been an island; it is an accident that it is an island now, and it has been an island many times before.” In the Tertiary epoch we see it surrounded, then, by shallow seas swarming with numerous forms of animal life; islands covered with bushy Palms; banks on which Turtles basked in the sun; vast basins of fresh or brackish water, in which the tide made itself felt, and which abounded with various species of sharks; rivers in which Crocodiles increased and multiplied; woods which sheltered numerous Mammals and some Serpents of large size; fresh-water lakes which received the spoils of numerous shells. Dry land had increased immensely. Groups of ancient isles we have seen united and become continents, with lakes, bays, and perhaps inland seas. Gigantic Elephants, vastly larger than any now existing, close the epoch, and probably usher in the succeeding one; for we are not to suppose any sudden break to distinguish one period from another in Nature, although it is convenient to arrange them so for the purposes of description. If we may judge from their remains, these animals must have existed in great numbers, for it is stated that on the coast of Norfolk alone the fishermen, in trawling for oysters, dredged up between 1820 and 1833, no less than 2,000 molar teeth of Elephants. If we consider how slowly these animals multiply, these quarries of ivory, as we may call them, must have required many centuries for their production and accumulation.
Fig. 179.—a, Tooth of Machairodus, imperfect below, natural size; b, outline of cast of tooth, perfect, half natural size; c, tooth of Megalosaurus, natural size.
The same lakes and rivers were at this time occupied, also, by the Hippopotamus, as large and as formidably armed as that now inhabiting the African solitudes; also the two-horned Rhinoceros; and three species of Bos, one of which was hairy and bore a mane. Some Deer of gigantic size, as compared with living species, bounded over the plains. In the same savannahs lived the Reindeer, the Stag, a Horse of small size, the Ass, the Bear, and the Roe, for Mammals had succeeded the Ichthyosauri of a former age. Nevertheless, the epoch had its tyrants also. A Lion, as large as the largest of the Lions of Africa, hunted its prey in the British jungles. Another animal of the feline race, the Machairodus ([Fig. 179]), was probably the most ferocious and destructive of Carnivora; bands of Hyænas and a terrible Bear, surpassing in size that of the Rocky Mountains, had established themselves in the caverns; two species of Beaver made their appearance on the scene.
The finding of the remains of most of these animals in caverns was perhaps among the most interesting discoveries of geology. The discovery was first made in the celebrated Kirkdale Cave in Yorkshire, which has been described by Dr. Buckland; and afterwards at Kent’s Hole, near Torquay. This latter pleasant Devonshire town is built in a creek, shut out from exposure on all sides except the south. In this creek, hollowed out of the rocks, is the great fissure or cavern known as Kent’s Hole; like that of Kirkdale, it has been under water, from whence, after a longer or shorter interval, it emerged, but remained entirely closed till the moment when chance led to its discovery. The principal cavern is 600 feet in length, with many crevices or fissures of smaller extent traversing the rock in various directions. A bed of hard stalagmite of very ancient formation, which has been again covered with a thin layer of soil, forms the floor of the cavern, which is a red sandy clay. From this bed of red loam or clay was disinterred a mass of fossil bones belonging to extinct species of Bear, Lion, Rhinoceros, Reindeer, Beaver, and Hyæna.
Such an assemblage gave rise to all sorts of conjectures. It was generally thought that the dwelling of some beasts of prey had been discovered, which had dragged the carcases of elephants, deer, and others into these caves, to devour them at leisure. Others asked if, in some cases, instinct did not impel sick animals, or animals broken down by old age, to seek such places for the purpose of dying in quiet; while others, again, suggested that these bones might have been engulfed pell-mell in the hole during some ancient inundation. However that may be, the remains discovered in these caves show that all these Mammals existed at the close of the Tertiary epoch, and that they all lived in England. What were the causes which led to their extinction?
It was the opinion of Cuvier and the early geologists that the ancient species were destroyed in some great and sudden catastrophe, from which none made their escape. But recent geologists trace their extinction to slow, successive, and determinative action due to local causes, the chief one being the gradual lowering of the temperature. We have seen that at the beginning of the Tertiary epoch, in the older Eocene age, palms, cocoa-nuts, and acacias, resembling those now met with in countries more favoured by the sun, grew in our island. The Miocene flora presents indications of a climate still warm, but less tropical; and the Pliocene period, which follows, contains remains which announce an approach to our present climate. In following the vegetable productions of the Tertiary epoch, the botanist meets with the floras of Africa, South America, and Australia, and finally settles in the flora of temperate Europe. Many circumstances demonstrate this decreasing temperature, until we arrive at what geologists call the glacial period—one of the winters of the ancient world.
But before entering on the evidences which exist of the glacial era we shall glance at the picture presented by the animals of the period; the vegetable products we need not dwell on—it is, in fact, that of our own era, the flora of temperate regions in our own epoch. The same remark would apply to the animals, but for some signal exceptions. In this epoch Man appears, and some of the Mammals of the last epoch, but of larger dimensions, have long disappeared. The more remarkable of these extinct animals we shall describe, as we have those belonging to anterior ages. They are not numerous; those of our hemisphere being the Mammoth, Elephas primigenius; the Bear, Ursus spelæus; gigantic Lion, Felis spelæa; Hyæna, Hyæna spelæa; Ox, Bison priscus, Bos primigenius; the gigantic Stag, Cervus megaceros; to which we may add the Dinornis and Epiornis, among birds. In America there existed in the Quaternary epoch some Edentates of colossal dimensions and of very peculiar structure, these were Megatherium, Megalonyx, and Mylodon; we shall pass these animals in review, beginning with those of our own hemisphere.
Fig. 180.—Skeleton of the Mammoth, Elephas primigenius.
The Mammoth, the skeleton of which is represented in [Fig. 180], surpassed the largest existing Elephants of the tropics in size, for it was from sixteen to eighteen feet in height. The teeth, and the size of the monstrous tusks, much curved, and with a spiral turn outwards, and which were from ten to fifteen feet in length, serve to distinguish the Mammoth from the two Elephants living at the present day, the African and the Indian. The form of its teeth permits of its being distinguished from its ally, the Mastodon; for while the teeth of the latter have rough mammillations on their surface, those of the Mammoth, like those of the living Indian Elephant, have a broad united surface, with regular furrowed lines of large curvature. The teeth of the Mammoth are four in number, like the Elephants, two in each jaw when the animal is adult, its head is elongated, its forehead concave, its jaws curved and truncated in front. It has been an easy task, as we shall see, to recognise the general form and structure of the Mammoth, even to its skin. We know beyond a doubt that it was thickly covered with long shaggy hair, and that a copious mane floated upon its neck and along its back; its trunk resembled that of the Indian Elephant; its body was heavy, with a tail naked to the end, which was covered with thick tufty hair, and its legs were comparatively shorter than those of the latter animal, many of the habits of which it nevertheless possessed. Blumenbach gave it the specific name of Elephas primigenius.
Fig. 181.—Tooth of the Mammoth.
In all ages, and in almost all countries, chance discoveries have been made of fossil bones of elephants in the soil. Pliny has transmitted to us a tradition, recorded by the historian Theophrastus, who wrote 320 years before Jesus Christ, of the existence of bones of fossil ivory in the soil of Greece, that the bones were sometimes transformed into stones. “These bones,” the historian gravely tells us, “were both black and white, and born of the earth.” Some of the elephant’s bones having a slight resemblance to those of man, they have often been mistaken for human bones. In the earlier historic times these great bones, accidentally disinterred, have passed as having belonged to some hero or demigod; at a later period they were thought to be the bones of giants. We have already spoken of the mistake made by the Greeks in taking the patella of a fossil elephant for the knee-bone of Ajax; in the same manner the bones revealed by an earthquake, and attributed by Pliny to a giant, belonged, no doubt, to a fossil elephant. To a similar origin we may assign the pretended body of Orestes, thirteen feet in length, which was discovered at Tegea by the Spartans; those of Asterius, the son of Ajax, discovered in the Isle of Ladea, of ten cubits in length (about eighteen feet), according to Pausanius; finally, such were the great bones found in the Isle of Rhodes, of which Phlegon of Tralles speaks in his “Mundus Subterraneus.”
We might fill volumes with the history of the remains of pretended giants found in ancient tombs. The books, in fact, which exist, formed a voluminous literature in the middle ages—entitled Gigantology. All the facts, more or less real, true or imaginative, may be explained by the accidental discovery of the bones of some of these gigantic animals. We find in works on Gigantology, the history of a pretended giant, discovered in the 4th century, at Trapani in Sicily, of which Boccaccio speaks, and which may be taken for Polyphemus; of another, found in the 16th century, according to Fasellus, near Palermo; others, according to the same author, at Melilli between Leontium and Syracuse, Calatrasi and Petralia, at each of which places the bones of supposed giants were disinterred. P. Kircher speaks of three other giants being found in Sicily, of which only the teeth remained perfect.
In 1577, a storm having uprooted an oak near the cloisters of Reyden, in the Canton of Lucerne, in Switzerland, some large bones were exposed to view. Seven years after, the celebrated physician and Professor at Basle, Felix Pläten, being at Lucerne, examined these bones, and declared they could only be those of a giant. The Council of Lucerne consented to send the bones to Basle for more minute examination, and Pläten thought himself justified in attributing to the giant a height of nineteen feet. He designed a human skeleton on this scale, and returned the bones with the drawing to Lucerne. In 1706 there only remained of these bones a portion of the scapula and a fragment of the wrist bone; the anatomist Blumenbach, who saw them at the beginning of the century, easily recognised in them the bones of an Elephant. Let us not omit to add, as a complement to this story, that since the sixteenth century, the inhabitants of Lucerne have adopted the image of this fabulous giant as the supporter of the city arms.
Spanish history preserves many stories of giants. The supposed tooth of St. Christopher, shown at Valence, in the church dedicated to the saint, was certainly the molar tooth of a fossil Elephant; and in 1789, the canons of St. Vincent carried through the streets in public procession, to procure rain, the pretended arm of a saint, which was nothing more than the femur of an Elephant.
In France, in the reign of Charles VII. (1456), some of these bones of imaginary giants appeared in the bed of the Rhône. A repetition of the phenomenon occurred near Saint-Peirat, opposite Valence, when the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI., then residing at the latter place, caused the bones to be gathered together and sent to Bourges, where they long remained objects of public curiosity in the interior of the Sainte-Chapelle. In 1564 a similar discovery took place in the same neighbourhood. Two peasants observed on the banks of the Rhône, along a slope, some great bones sticking out of the ground. They carried them to the neighbouring village, where they were examined by Cassanion, who lived at Valence. It was no doubt apropos to this that Cassanion wrote his treatise “De Gigantibus.” The description given by the author of a tooth sufficed, according to Cuvier, to prove that it belonged to an Elephant; it was a foot in length, and weighed eight pounds. It was also on the banks of the Rhône, but in Dauphiny, as we have seen, that the skeleton of the famous Teutobocchus, of which we have spoken in a previous chapter, was found.
In 1663 Otto de Guericke, the illustrious inventor of the air-pump, witnessed the discovery of the bones of an Elephant, buried in the shelly limestone, or Muschelkalk. Along with it were found its enormous tusks, which should have sufficed to establish its zoological origin. Nevertheless they were taken for horns, and the illustrious Leibnitz composed, out of the remains, a strange animal, carrying a horn in the middle of its forehead, and in each jaw a dozen molar teeth a foot long. Having fabricated this fantastic animal, Leibnitz named it also—he called it the fossil unicorn. In his “Protogæa,” a work remarkable besides as the first attempt at a theory of the earth, Leibnitz gave the description and a drawing of this imaginary animal. During more than thirty years the unicorn of Leibnitz was universally accepted throughout Germany; and nothing less than the discovery of the entire skeleton of the Mammoth in the valley of the Unstrut was required to produce a change of opinion. This skeleton was at once recognised by Tinzel, librarian to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, as that of an Elephant, and was established as such; not, however, without a keen controversy with adversaries of all kinds.
In 1700 a soldier of Würtemberg accidentally observed some bones showing themselves projecting out of the earth, in an argillaceous soil, near the city of Canstadt, not far from the banks of the Necker. Having addressed a report to the reigning Duke, the latter caused the place to be excavated, which occupied nearly six months. A veritable cemetery of elephants was discovered, in which were not less than sixty tusks. Those which were entire were preserved; the fragments were abandoned to the court physician, and they became a mere vulgar medicine. In the last century the fossil bones of bears, which were abundant in Germany, were administered in that country medicinally, as an absorbent, astringent, and sudorific. It was then called by the German doctors the Ebur fossile, or Unicornu fossile, Licorn fossil. The magnificent tusks of the Mammoth found at Canstadt helped to combat fever and colic. What an intelligent man this court physician of Würtemberg must have been!
Numerous discoveries like those we have quoted distinguished the 18th century; but the progress of science has now rendered such mistakes as we have had to relate impossible. These bones were at length universally recognised as belonging to an Elephant, but erudition now intervened, and helped to obscure a subject which was otherwise perfectly clear. Some learned pedant declared that the bones found in Italy and France were the remains of the Elephants which Hannibal brought from Carthage with the army in his expedition against the Romans. The part of France where the most ancient bones of these Elephants were found is in the environs of the Rhône, and consequently on the route of the Carthaginian general, and this consideration appeared to these terrible savants to be a particularly triumphant answer to the naturalist’s reasoning. Again, at a later period, Domitius Ænobarbus conducted the Carthaginian armies, which were followed by a number of Elephants, armed for war. Cuvier scarcely took the trouble to refute this insignificant objection. It is merely necessary to read, in his learned dissertation, of the number of elephants which could remain to Hannibal when he had entered Gaul.
But the best reply that can be made to this strange objection raised by the learned, is to show how extensively these fossil bones of Elephants are scattered, not in Europe only, but over the world—there are few regions of the globe in which their remains are not found. In the north of Europe, in Scandinavia, in Ireland, in Belgium, in Germany, in Central Europe, in Poland, in Middle Russia, in South Russia, in Greece, in Italy, in Africa, in Asia, and, as we have seen, in England. In the New World remains of the Mammoth are also met with. What is most singular is that these remains exist more especially in great numbers in the north of Europe, in the frozen regions of Siberia—regions altogether uninhabitable for the Elephant in our days. “There is not,” says Pallas, “in all Asiatic Russia, from the Don to the extremity of the promontory of Tchutchis, a stream or river, especially of those which flow in the plains, on the banks of which some bones of Elephants and other animals foreign to the climate have not been found. But in the more elevated regions, the primitive and schistose chains, they are wanting, as are marine petrifactions. But in the lower slopes and in the great muddy and sandy plains, above all, in places which are swept by rivers and brooks, they are always found, which proves that we should not the less find them throughout the whole extent of the country if we had the same means of searching for them.”
Every year in the season when thaw takes place, the vast rivers which descend to the Frozen Ocean in the north of Siberia sweep down with their waters numerous portions of the banks, and expose to view bones buried in the soil and in the excavations left by the rushing waters. Cuvier gives a long list of places in Russia in which interesting discoveries have been made of Elephants’ bones; and it is certainly curious that the more we advance towards the north in Russia the more numerous and extensive do the bone depositories become. In spite of the oft-repeated and undoubted testimony of numerous travellers, we can scarcely credit the statements made respecting some of the islands of the glacial sea near the poles, situated opposite the mouth of the Lena and of the Indighirka. Here, for example, is an extract from “Billing’s Voyage” concerning these isles: “The whole island (which is about thirty-three leagues in length), except three or four small rocky mountains, is a mixture of ice and sand; and as the shores fall, from the heat of the sun’s thawing them, the tusks and bones of the mammont are found in great abundance. To use Chvoinoff’s own expression, the island is formed of the bones of this extraordinary animal, mixed with the horns and heads of the buffalo, or something like it, and some horns of the rhinoceros.”
New Siberia and the Lächow Islands off the mouth of the river Lena, are, for the most part, only an agglomeration of sand, ice, and Elephants’ teeth. At every tempest the sea casts ashore new quantities of mammoths’ tusks, and the inhabitants of Siberia carry on a profitable commerce in this fossil ivory. Every year, during the summer, innumerable fishermen’s barks direct their course towards this isle of bones; and, during winter, immense caravans take the same route, all the convoys drawn by dogs, returning charged with the tusks of the Mammoth, each weighing from 150 to 200 pounds. The fossil ivory thus withdrawn from the frozen north is imported into China and Europe, where it is employed for the same purposes as ordinary ivory, which is furnished, as we know, by the existing Elephant and Hippopotamus of Africa and Asia.
The Isle of Bones has served as a quarry of this valuable material, for export to China, for 500 years; and it has been exported to Europe for upwards of 100. But the supply from these strange diggings apparently remains practically undiminished. What a number of accumulated generations of these bones and tusks does not this profusion imply!
It was in Siberia that the fossil Elephant received the name of the Mammoth, and its tusks that of mammoth horns. The celebrated Russian savant, Pallas, who gave the first systematic description of the Mammoth, asserts that the name is derived from the word mama, which in the Tartar idiom signifies the earth. According to others, the name is derived from behemoth, mentioned in the Book of Job; or from the epithet mahemoth, which the Arabs add to the word “elephant,” to designate one of unusual size. A curious circumstance enough is, that this same legend of an animal living exclusively under ground, exists amongst the Chinese. They call it tien-schu, and we read, in the great Chinese work on natural history, which was written in the sixteenth century: “The animal named tien-schu, of which we have already spoken in the ancient work upon the ceremonial entitled “Lyki” (a work of the fifth century before Jesus Christ), is called also tyn-schu or yn-schu, that is to say, the mouse which hides itself. It always lives in subterranean caverns; it resembles a mouse, but is of the size of a buffalo or ox. It has no tail; its colour is dark; it is very strong, and excavates caverns in places full of rocks, and forests.” Another writer, quoting the same passage, thus expresses himself: “The tyn-schu haunts obscure and unfrequented places. It dies as soon as it is exposed to the rays of the sun or moon; its feet are short in proportion to its size, which causes it to walk badly. Its tail is a Chinese ell in length. Its eyes are small, and its neck short. It is very stupid and sluggish. When the inundations of the river Tamschuann-tuy took place (in 1571), a great many tyn-schu appeared in the plain; it fed on the roots of the plant fu-kia.”
The existence in Russia of the bones and tusks of the Mammoth is sufficiently confirmed by the following extract from an old Russian traveller, Ysbrants Ides, who, in 1692, was sent by Peter the Great as ambassador to the Emperor of China. In the extract which follows, we remark the very surprising fact of the discovery of a head and foot of the Mammoth which had been preserved in ice with all the flesh. “Amongst the hills which are situate north-east of the river Kata,” says the traveller, “the Mammuts’ tongues and legs are found, as they are also particularly on the shores of the river Jenize, Trugan, Mongamsea, Lena, and near Jakutskoi, even as far as the Frozen Ocean. In the spring, when the ice of this river breaks, it is driven in such vast quantities and with such force by the high swollen waters, that it frequently carries very high banks before it, and breaks off the tops of hills, which, falling down, discover these animals whole, or their teeth only, almost frozen to the earth, which thaw by degrees. I had a person with me who had annually gone out in search of these bones; he told it to me as a real truth, that he and his companions found the head of one of these animals, which was discovered by the fall of such a frozen piece of earth. As soon as he opened it, he found the greatest part of the flesh rotten, but it was not without difficulty that they broke out his teeth, which were placed in the fore-part of his mouth, as those of the Elephants are; they also took some bones out of his head, and afterwards came to his fore-foot, which they cut off, and carried part of it to the city of Trugan, the circumference of it being as large as that of the waist of an ordinary man. The bones of the head appeared somewhat red, as though they were tinctured with blood.
“Concerning this animal there are very different reports. The heathens of Jakuti, Tungusi, and Ostiacki, say that they continually, or at least, by reason of the very hard frosts, mostly live under ground, where they go backwards and forwards; to confirm which they tell us, that they have often seen the earth heaved up when one of these beasts was upon the march, and after he was passed, the place sink in, and thereby make a deep pit. They further believe, that if this animal comes so near to the surface of the frozen earth as to smell the air, he immediately dies, which they say is the reason that several of them are found dead on the high banks of the river, where they unawares came out of the ground.
“This is the opinion of the Infidels concerning these beasts, which are never seen.
“But the old Siberian Russians affirm, that the Mammuth is very like the Elephant, with this difference only, that the teeth of the former are firmer, and not so straight as those of the latter. They also are of opinion that there were Elephants in this country before the Deluge, when this climate was warmer, and that their drowned bodies, floating on the surface of the water of that flood, were at last washed and forced into subterranean cavities; but that after this universal deluge, the air, which before was warm, was changed to cold, and that these bones have lain frozen in the earth ever since, and so are preserved from putrefaction till they thaw, and come to light, which is no very unreasonable conjecture, though it is not absolutely necessary that this climate should have been warmer before the Flood, since the carcases of the drowned elephants were very likely to float from other places several hundred miles distant to this country in the great deluge which covered the surface of the whole earth. Some of these teeth, which doubtless have lain the whole summer on the shore, are entirely black and broken, and can never be restored to their former condition. But those which are found in good case, are as good as ivory, and are accordingly transported to all parts of Muscovy, where they are used to make combs, and all other such-like things, instead of ivory.
“The above-mentioned person also told me that he once found two teeth in one head that weighed above twelve Russian pounds, which amount to four hundred German pounds; so that these animals must of necessity be very large, though a great many lesser teeth are found. By all that I could gather from the heathens, no person ever saw one of these beasts alive, or can give any account of its shape; so that all we heard said on this subject arises from bare conjecture only.”
It is possible this recital may seem suspicious to some readers. We have ourselves felt some difficulty in believing that this head and foot were taken from the ice, with the flesh and skin, when we consider that the animal to which they belonged has been extinct probably more than ten thousand years. But the assertion of Ysbrants Ides is confirmed by respectable testimony of more recent date. In 1800, a Russian naturalist, Gabriel Sarytschew, travelled in northern Siberia. Having arrived in the neighbourhood of the Frozen Ocean, he found upon the banks of the Alasœia, which discharges itself into this sea, the entire body of a Mammoth enveloped in a mass of ice. The body was in a complete state of preservation, for the permanent contact of the ice had kept out the air and prevented decomposition. It is well known that at zero and below it, animal substances will not putrefy, so that in our households we can preserve all kinds of animal food as long as we can surround them with ice; and this is precisely what happened to the Mammoth found by Gabriel Sarytschew in the ice of the Alasœia. The rolling waters had disengaged the mass of ice which had imprisoned the monstrous pachyderm for thousands of years. The body, in a complete state of preservation and covered with its flesh as well as its entire hide, to which long hairs adhered in certain places, found itself, again, nearly erect on its four feet.
The Russian naturalist Adams, in 1806, made a discovery quite as extraordinary as the preceding. We borrow his account from a paper by Dr. Tilesius in the “Memoirs of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg” (vol. v.). In 1799, a Tungusian chief, Ossip Schumachoff, while seeking for mammoth-horns on the banks of the lake Oncoul, perceived among the blocks of ice a shapeless mass, not at all resembling the large pieces of floating wood which are commonly found there. The following year he noticed that this mass was more disengaged from the blocks of ice, and had two projecting parts, but he was still unable to make out what it could be. Towards the end of the following summer one entire side of the animal and one of his tusks were quite free from the ice. But the succeeding summer of 1802, which was less warm and more windy than common, caused the Mammoth to remain buried in the ice, which had scarcely melted at all. At length, towards the end of the fifth year (1803), the ice between the earth and the Mammoth having melted faster than the rest, the plane of its support became inclined; and this enormous mass fell by its own weight on a bank of sand. In the month of March, 1804, Schumachoff cut off the horns (the tusks), which he exchanged with the merchant Bultenof for goods of the value of fifty roubles (not quite eight pounds sterling). It was not till two years after this that Mr. Adams, of the St. Petersburg Academy, who was travelling with Count Golovkin, sent by the Czar of Russia on an embassy to China, having been told at Jakutsk of the discovery of an animal of extraordinary magnitude on the shores of the Frozen Ocean, near the mouth of the river Lena, betook himself to the place. He found the Mammoth still in the same place, but altogether mutilated. The Jakoutskis of the neighbourhood had cut off the flesh, with which they fed their dogs; wild beasts, such as white bears, wolves, wolverines, and foxes, had also fed upon it, and traces of their footsteps were seen around. The skeleton, almost entirely cleared of its flesh, remained whole, with the exception of one fore-leg. The spine of the back, one scapula, the pelvis, and the other three limbs were still held together by the ligaments and by parts of the skin; the other scapula was found not far off. The head was covered with a dry skin; one of the ears was furnished with a tuft of hairs; the balls of the eyes were still distinguishable; the brain still occupied the cranium, but seemed dried up; the point of the lower lip had been gnawed and the upper lip had been destroyed so as to expose the teeth; the neck was furnished with a long flowing mane; the skin, of a dark-grey colour, covered with black hairs and a reddish wool, was so heavy that ten persons found great difficulty in transporting it to the shore. There was collected, according to Mr. Adams, more than thirty-six pounds’ weight of hair and wool which the white bears had trod into the ground, while devouring the flesh. This Mammoth was a male so fat and well fed, according to the assertion of the Tungusian chief, that its belly hung down below the joints of its knees. Its tusks were nine feet six inches in length, measured along the curve, and its head without the tusks weighed 414 pounds avoirdupois.
Mr. Adams took every care to collect all that remained of this unique specimen of an ancient creation, and forwarded the parts to St. Petersburg, a distance of 11,000 versts (7,330 miles). He succeeded in re-purchasing what he believed to be the tusks at Jakutsk, and the Emperor of Russia, who became the owner of this precious relic, paid him 8,000 roubles. The skeleton is deposited in the Museum of the Academy of St. Petersburg, and the skin still remains attached to the head and the feet. “We have yet to find,” says Cuvier, “any individual equal to it.”
XXVI.—Skeleton of the Mammoth in the St. Petersburg Museum.
Beside the skeleton of this famous Mammoth there is placed that of an Indian Elephant, and another Elephant with skin and hair, in order that the visitor may have a proper appreciation of the vast proportions of the Mammoth, as compared with them. [Plate XXVI.], on the opposite page, represents the saloon of the Museum of St. Petersburg, which contains these three interesting remains.
Fig. 182.—Mammoth restored.
In 1860 a great number of bones of the Mammoth, with remains of Hyæna, Horse, Reindeer, Rhinoceros-megarhinus, and Bison, were found in Belgium in digging a canal at Lierre, in the province of Antwerp. An entire skeleton of a young Mammoth, eleven feet six inches high (to the shoulder), has been reconstructed from these remains by M. Dupont, and is now placed in the Royal Museum of Natural History in Brussels.[98]
We cannot doubt, after such testimony, of the existence in the frozen north, of the almost entire remains of the Mammoth. The animals seem to have perished suddenly; enveloped in ice at the moment of their death, their bodies have been preserved from decomposition by the continued action of the cold. If we suppose that one of those animals had sunk into a marsh which froze soon afterwards, or had fallen accidentally into the crevasse of some glacier, it would be easy for us to understand how its body, buried immediately under eternal ice, had remained there for thousands of years without undergoing decomposition.
In Cuvier’s great work on fossil bones, he gives a long and minute enumeration of the various regions of Germany, France, Italy, and other countries, which have furnished in our days bones or tusks of the Mammoth. We venture to quote two of these descriptions:—“In October, 1816,” he says, “there was discovered at Seilberg, near Canstadt, in Würtemberg, near which some remarkable discoveries were made in 1700, a very remarkable deposit, which the king, Frederick I., caused to be excavated, and its contents collected with the greatest care. We are even assured that the visit which the prince, in his ardour for all that was great, paid to this spot, aggravated the malady of which he died a few days after. An officer, Herr Natter, commenced some excavations, and in four-and-twenty hours discovered twenty-one teeth or fragments of teeth of elephant, mixed with a great number of bones. The king having ordered him to continue the excavations, on the second day they came upon a group of thirteen tusks heaped close upon each other, and along with them some molar teeth, lying as if they had been packed artificially. It was on this discovery that the king caused himself to be transported thither, and ordered all the surrounding soil to be dug up, and every object to be carefully preserved in its original position. The largest of the tusks, though it had lost its points and its roots, was still eight feet long and one foot in diameter. Many isolated tusks were also found, with a quantity of molar teeth, from two inches to a foot in length, some still adhering to the jaws. All these fragments were better preserved than those of 1700, which was attributed to the depth of the bed, and, perhaps, to the nature of the soil. The tusks were generally much curved. In the same deposit some bones of Horses and Stags were found, together with a quantity of teeth of the Rhinoceros, and others which were thought to belong to a Bear, and one specimen which was attributed to the Tapir. The place where this discovery was made is named Seilberg; it is about 600 paces from the city of Canstadt, but on the opposite side of the Necker.
“All the great river basins of Germany have, like those of the Necker, yielded fossil bones of the Elephant; those especially abutting on the Rhine are too numerous to be mentioned, nor is Canstadt the only place in the valley of the Necker where they are found.”
But of all parts of Europe, that in which they are found in greatest numbers is the valley of the Upper Arno. We find there a perfect cemetery of Elephants. These bones were at one time so common in this valley, that the peasantry employed them, indiscriminately with stones, in constructing walls and houses. Since they have learned their value, however, they reserve them for sale to travellers.
The bones and tusks of the Mammoth are met with in America as well as in the Old World, scattered through Canada, Oregon, and the Northern States as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. Cuvier enumerates several places on that continent where their remains are met with, mingled with those of the Mastodon. The Russian Lieutenant Kotzebue found them on the north coast of America, in the cliffs of frozen mud in Eschsholtz Bay, within Behring’s Strait, and in other distant parts of the shores of the Arctic Seas, where they were so common that the sailors burnt many pieces in their fires.
It is very strange that the East Indies, that is, one of the only two regions which is now the home of the Elephant, should be almost the only country in which the fossil bones of these animals have not been discovered. In short, from the preceding enumeration, it appears that, during the geological period whose history we are recording the gigantic Mammoth inhabited most regions of the globe. Now-a-days, the only climates which are suited for the existing race of Elephants are those of Africa and India, that is to say, tropical countries; from which we must draw the conclusions to which so many other inferences lead, that, at the epoch in which these animals lived, the temperature of the earth was much higher than in our days; or, more probably, the extinct race of Elephants must have been adapted for living in a colder climate than that which they now require.
Among the antediluvian Carnivora, one of the most formidable seems to have been the Ursus spelæus, or Cave-bear ([Fig. 183]). This species must have been a fifth, if not a fourth, larger than the Brown Bear of our days. It was also more squat: some of the skeletons we possess are from nine to ten feet long, and only about six feet high. The U. spelæus abounded in England, France, Belgium, and Germany; and so extensively in the latter country, that the teeth of the antediluvian Bear, as we have already stated, formed for a long time part of its materia medica, under the name of fossil licorn. [Fig. 183] represents the skull of the Cave-bear.
Fig. 183.—Head of Ursus spelæus.
At the same time with the Ursus spelæus another Carnivore, the Felis spelæus, or Cave-lion, lived in Europe. This animal is specifically identical with the living Lion of Asia and Africa: but since in these early times he had not to contend with the hunter for food, he was, on the whole, considerably larger than any Lion now existing on the earth.
Fig. 184.—Head of Hyæna spelæa.
The Hyænas of our age consist of two species, the striped and the spotted Hyænas. The last presents considerable conformity in its structure with that of the Post-pliocene period, which Cuvier designates under the name of the fossil Spotted Hyæna. It seems to have been only a little larger than the existing species. [Fig. 184] represents the head of the Hyæna spelæa, whose remains, with those of others, were found in the caves of Kirkdale and Kent’s Hole; the remains of about 300 being found in the former. Dr. Buckland satisfied himself, from the quantity of their dung, that the Hyænas had lived there. In the cave were found remains of the ox, young elephant, rhinoceros, horse, bear, wolf, hare, water-rat, and several birds. All the bones present an appearance of having been broken and gnawed by the teeth of the Hyænas, and they occur confusedly mixed in loam or mud, or dispersed through the crust of stalagmite which covered the contents of the cave.
The Horse dates from the Quaternary epoch, if not from the last period of the Tertiary epoch. Its remains are found in the same rocks with those of the Mammoth and the Rhinoceros. It is distinguished from our existing Horse only by its size, which was smaller—its remains abound in the Post-pliocene rocks, not only in Europe, but in America; so that an aboriginal Horse existed in the New World long before it was carried thither by the Spaniards, although we know that it was unknown at the date of their arrival. “Certainly it is a marvellous fact in the history of the Mammalia, that in South America, a native horse should have lived and disappeared, to be succeeded in after ages by the countless herds descended from the few introduced with the Spanish colonists!”[99]
The Oxen of the period, if not identical with, were at least very near to our living species. There were three species: the Bison priscus, B. primigenius, and B. Pallasii; the first with slender legs, with convex frontal, broader than it was high, and differing but slightly from the Aurochs, except in being taller and by having larger horns. The remains of Bison priscus are found in England, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, and America. Bison primigenius was, according to Cuvier, the source of our domestic cattle. The Bos Pallasii is found in America and in Siberia, and resembles in many respects the Musk-ox of Canada.
Where these great Mammals are found we generally discover the fossil remains of several species of Deer. The palæontological question as regards these animals is very obscure, and it is often difficult to determine whether the remains belong to an extinct or an existing species. This doubt does not extend, however, to the gigantic forest-stag, Cervus megaceros, one of the most magnificent of the antediluvian animals, whose remains are still frequently found in Ireland in the neighbourhood of Dublin; more rarely in France, Germany, Poland, and Italy. Intermediate between the Fallow-deer and the Elk, the Cervus megaceros partakes of the Elk in its general proportions and in the form of its cranium, but it approaches the Fallow-deer in its size and in the disposition of its horns. These magnificent appendages, however, while they decorated the head of the animal and gave a most imposing appearance to it, must have sadly impeded its progress through the thick and tangled forests of the ancient world. The length of these horns was between nine and ten feet; and they were so divergent that, measured from one extremity to the other, they occupied a space of between three and four yards.
The skeleton of the Cervus megaceros is found in the deposits of calcareous tufa, which underlie the immense peat moss of Ireland; sometimes in the turf itself, as near the Curragh in Kildare; in which position they sometimes occur in little mounds piled up in a small space, and nearly always in the same attitude, the head aloft, the neck stretched out, the horns reversed and thrown downwards towards the back, as if the animal, suddenly immersed into marshy ground, had been under the necessity of throwing up its head in search of respirable air. In the Geological Cabinet of the Sorbonne, at Paris, there is a magnificent skeleton of Cervus megaceros; another belongs to the College of Surgeons in London; and there is a third at Vienna.
The most remarkable creatures of the period, however, were the great Edentates—the Glyptodon, the gigantic Megatherium, the Mylodon and the Megalonyx. The order of Edentates is more particularly characterised by the absence of teeth in the fore part of the mouth. The masticating apparatus of the Edentates consists only of molars, the incisors and canine teeth being, with a few exceptions, absent altogether, as the animals composing this order feed chiefly on insects or the tender leaves of plants. The Armadillo, Anteater and Pangolin, are the living examples of the order. We may add, as still further characteristics, largely developed claws at the extremities of the toes. The order seems thus to establish itself as a zoological link in the chain between the hoofed Mammals and the ungulated animals, or those armed with claws. All these animals are peculiar to the continent of America.
The Glyptodon, which appears during the Quaternary period, belonged to the family of Armadilloes, and their most remarkable feature was the presence of a hard, scaly shell, or coat of mail six feet in length, and composed of numerous segments, which covered the entire upper service of the animal from the head to the tail. It was, in short, a mammiferous animal, which appears to have been enclosed in a shell like that of a Turtle; it resembled in many respects the Dasypus or Anteater, and had sixteen teeth in each jaw. These teeth were channelled laterally with two broad and deep grooves, which divided the surface of the molars into three parts, whence it was named the Glyptodon. The hind feet were broad and massive, and evidently designed to support a vast incumbent mass; it presented phalanges armed with short thick and depressed nails or claws. The animal was, as we have said, enveloped in, and protected by, a cuirass, or solid carapace, composed of plates which, seen from beneath, appeared to be hexagonal and united by denticulated sutures: above they represented double rosettes. The habitat of Glyptodon clavipes was the pampas of Buenos Ayres, and the banks of an affluent of the Rio Santo, near Monte Video; specimens have been found not less than nine feet in length.
The tesselated carapace of the Glyptodon was long thought to belong to the Megatherium; but Professor Owen shows, from the anatomical structure of the two animals, that the cuirass belonged to one of them only, namely, the Glyptodon.
Fig. 185.—Schistopleuron typus. One-twentieth natural size.
The Schistopleuron does not differ essentially from the Glyptodon, but is supposed to have been a different species of the same genus; the chief difference between the two animals being in the structure of the tail, which is massive in the first and in the other composed of half a score of rings. In other respects the organisation and habits are similar, both being herbivorous, and feeding on roots and vegetables. [Fig. 185] represents the Schistopleuron typus restored, and as it appeared when alive.
Some of the fossil Tortoises discovered in the sub-Himalayan beds possessed a carapace twelve feet long by six feet in breadth, which must have corresponded to an animal from eighteen to twenty feet in length; and the bones of the legs were as massive as those of the Rhinoceros.
The Megatherium, or Animal of Paraguay, as it was called, is, at first view, the oddest and most remarkable animal we have yet had under consideration, where all have been, according to our notions, strange, extraordinary, and formidable. The animal creation still goes on as if—
“Nature made them and then broke the die.”
XXVII.—Skeleton of the Megatherium (Clift).
If we cast a glance at the skeleton figured on the opposite page ([Plate XXVII.]), which was found in Paraguay, at Buenos Ayres, in 1788, and which is now placed, in a perfect state of preservation, in the Museum of Natural History in Madrid, it is impossible to avoid being struck with its unusually heavy form, at once awkward as a whole, and ponderous in most of its parts. It is allied to the existing genus of Sloths, which Buffon tells us is “of all the animal creation that which has received the most vicious organisation—a being to which Nature has forbidden all enjoyment; which has only been created for hardships and misery.” This notion of the romantic Buffon is, however, altogether incorrect. An attentive examination of the Animal of Paraguay shows that its organisation cannot be considered either odd or awkward when viewed in connection with its mode of life and individual habits. The special organisation which renders the movements of the Sloths so sluggish, and apparently so painful on level ground, gives them, on the other hand, marvellous assistance when they live in trees, the leaves of which constitute their exclusive food. In the same manner, if we consider that the Megatherium was created to burrow in the earth and feed upon the roots of trees and shrubs, every organ of its heavy frame would appear to be perfectly appropriate to its kind of life, and well adapted to the special purpose which was assigned to it by the Creator. We ought to place the Megatherium between the Sloths and the Anteaters. Like the first, it usually fed on the branches and leaves of trees; like the latter, it burrowed deep in the soil, finding there both food and shelter. It was as large as an Elephant or Rhinoceros of the largest species. Its body measured twelve or thirteen feet in length, and it was between five and six feet high. The engraving on page 403 ([Plate XXVII.]) will convey, more accurately than any mere verbal description, an idea of the form and proportions of the animal.
The English reader is chiefly indebted to the zeal and energy of Sir Woodbine Parish for the materials from which our naturalists have been enabled to re-construct the history of the Megatherium. The remains collected by him were found in the river Salado, which runs through the flat alluvial plains called Pampas to the south of the city of Buenos Ayres. A succession of three unusually dry seasons had lowered the waters to such a degree as to expose part of the pelvis to view, as the skeleton stood upright in the mud forming the bed of the river. Further inquiries led to the discovery of the remains of two other skeletons near the place where the first had been found; and with them an immense shell or carapace was met with, most of the bones associated with which crumbled to pieces on exposure to the air. The osseous structure of this enormous animal, as furnished by Mr. Clift, an eminent anatomist of the day, and under whose superintendence the skeleton was drawn, must have exceeded fourteen feet in length, and upwards of eight feet in height. The deeply shaded parts of the figure show the portions which are deficient in the Madrid skeleton.
Cuvier pointed out that the skull very much resembled that of the Sloths, but that the rest of the skeleton bore relationship, partly to the Sloths, and partly to the Anteaters.
The large bones, which descend from the zygomatic arch along the cheek-bones, would furnish a powerful means of attaching the motor muscles of the jaws. The anterior part of the muzzle is fully developed, and riddled with holes for the passage of the nerves and vessels which must have been there, not for a trunk, which would have been useless to an animal furnished with a very long neck, but for a snout analogous to that of the Tapir.
The jaw and dental apparatus cannot be exactly stated, because the number of teeth in the lower jaw is not known. The upper jaw, Professor Owen has shown, contained five molars on each side; and from comparison and analogy with the Scelidotherium it may be conjectured that the Megatherium had four on each side of the lower jaw. Being without incisors or canines, the structure of its eighteen molars proves that it was not carnivorous: they each resemble the composite molars of the Elephant.
Fig. 186.—Skeleton of Megatherium foreshortened.
The vertebræ of the neck (as exhibited in the foreshortened figure ([Fig. 186]), taken from the work of Pander and D’Alton, and showing nearly a front view of the head), as well as the anterior and posterior extremities of the Madrid skeleton, although powerful, are not to be compared in dimensions to those of the other extremity of the body; for the head seems to have been relatively light and defenceless. The lumbar vertebræ increase in a degree corresponding to the enormous enlargement of the pelvis and the posterior members. The vertebræ of the tail are enormous, as is seen in [Fig. 187], which represents the bones of the pelvis and hind foot, discovered by Sir Woodbine Parish, and now in the Museum of the College of Surgeons. If we add to these osseous organs the muscles, tendons, and integuments which covered them, we must admit that the tail of the Megatherium could not be less than two feet in diameter. It is probable that, like the Armadillo, it employed the tail to assist in supporting the enormous weight of its body; it would also be a formidable defensive organ when employed, as is the case with the Pangolins and Crocodiles. The fore-feet would be about three feet long and one foot broad. They would form a powerful implement for excavating the earth, to the greatest depths at which the roots of vegetables penetrate. The fore-feet rested on the ground to their full length. Thus solidly supported by the two hind-feet and the tail, and in advance by one of the fore-feet, the animal could employ the fore-foot left at liberty in clearing away the earth, in digging up the roots of trees, or in tearing down the branches; the toes of the fore-feet were, for this purpose, furnished with large and powerful claws, which lie at an oblique angle relatively to the ground, much like the burrowing talons of the mole.
Fig. 187.—Bones of the pelvis of the Megatherium.
The solidity and size of the pelvis must have been enormous; its immense iliac bones are nearly at right angles with the vertebral column; their external edges are distant more than a yard and a half from each other when the animal is standing. The femur is three times the thickness of the thigh-bone of the Elephant, and the many peculiarities of structure in this bone appear to have been intended to give solidity to the whole frame, by means of its short and massive proportions. The two bones of the leg are, like the femur, short, thick, and solid; presenting proportions which we only meet with in the Armadilloes and Anteaters; burrowing animals with which, as we have said, its two extremities seem to connect it.
The anatomical organisation of these members denotes heavy, slow, and powerful locomotion, but solid and admirable combinations for supporting the weight of an enormous sedentary creature; a sort of excavating machine, slow of motion but of incalculable power for its own purposes. In short, the Megatherium exceeded in dimensions all existing Edentates. It had the head and shoulders of the Sloth, the feet and legs combined the characteristics of the Anteaters and Sloths, of enormous size, since it was at least twelve feet long when full grown, its feet armed with gigantic claws, and its tail at once a means of supporting its huge body and an instrument of defence. An animal built with such massive proportions could evidently neither creep nor run; its walk would be excessively slow. But what necessity was there for rapid movement in a being only occupied in burrowing under the earth, seeking for roots, and which would consequently rarely change its place? What need had it of agility to fly from its enemies, when it could overthrow the Crocodile with a sweep of its tail? Secure from the attacks of other animals, this robust herbivorous creature, of which [Figure 188] is a restoration, must have lived peacefully and respected in the solitary pampas of America.
Fig. 188.—Megatherium restored.
The immediate cause of the extinction of the Megatherium is, probably, to be found in causes which are still in operation in South America. The period between the years 1827 and 1830 is called the “gran seco,” or the great drought, in South America; and according to Darwin, the loss of cattle in the province of Buenos Ayres alone was calculated at 1,000,000 head. One proprietor at San Pedro, in the middle of the finest pasture-country, had lost 20,000 cattle previously to those years. “I was informed by an eyewitness,” he adds, “that the cattle, in herds of thousands, rushed into the Parana, and, being exhausted by hunger, they were unable to crawl up the muddy banks, and thus were drowned. The arm of the river which runs by San Pedro was so full of putrid carcases, that the master of a vessel told me that the smell rendered it quite impassable. All the small rivers became highly saline, and this caused the death of vast numbers in particular spots; for when an animal drinks of such water it does not recover. Azara describes the fury of the wild horses on a similar occasion: rushing into the marshes, those which arrived first being overwhelmed and crushed by those which followed.”[100] The upright position in which the various specimens of Megatheria were found indicates some such cause of death; as if the ponderous animal, approaching the banks of the river, when shrunk within its banks, had been bogged in soft mud, sufficiently adhesive to hold it there till it perished.
Like the Megatherium, the Mylodon closely resembled the Sloth, and it belonged exclusively to the New World. Smaller than the Megatherium, it differed from it chiefly in the form of the teeth. These organs presented only molars with smooth surfaces, indicating that the animal fed on vegetables, probably the leaves and tender buds of trees. As the Mylodon presents at once hoofs and claws on each foot, it has been thought that it formed the link between the hoofed, or ungulated animals and the Edentates. Three species are known, which lived in the pampas of Buenos Ayres.
In consequence of some hints given by the illustrious Washington, Mr. Jefferson, one of his successors as President of the United States, discovered, in a cavern of Western Virginia, the bones of a species of gigantic Sloth, which he pronounced to be the remains of some carnivorous animal. They consisted of a femur, a humerus, an ulna, and three claws, with half a dozen other bones of the foot. These bones Mr. Jefferson believed to be analogous to those of the lion. Cuvier saw at once the true analogies of the animal. The bones were the remains of a species of gigantic Sloth; the complete skeleton of which was subsequently discovered in the Mississippi, in such a perfect state of preservation that the cartilages, still adhering to the bones, were not decomposed. Jefferson called this species the Megalonyx. It resembled in many respects the Sloth. Its size was that of the largest ox; the muzzle was pointed; the jaws were armed with cylindrical teeth; the anterior limbs much longer than the posterior; the articulation of the foot oblique to the leg; two great toes, short, and armed with long and very powerful claws; the index finger more slender, and armed also with a less powerful claw; the tail strong and solid: such were the salient points of the organisation of the Megalonyx, whose form was a little slighter than that of the Megatherium.
Fig. 189.—Mylodon robustus.
The country in which the Megatherium has been found is described by Mr. Darwin as belonging to the great Pampean formation, which consists partly of a reddish clay and in part of a highly calcareous marly rock. Near the coast there are some plains formed from the wreck of the upper plain, and from mud, gravel, and sand thrown up by the sea during the slow elevation of the land, as shown by the raised beds of recent shells. At Punta Alta there is a highly-interesting section of one of the later-formed little plains, in which many remains of these gigantic land-animals have been found. These were, says Mr. Darwin:—“First, parts of three heads and other bones of the Megatherium, the huge dimensions of which are expressed by its name. Secondly, the Megalonyx, a great allied animal. Thirdly, the Scelidotherium, also an allied animal, of which I obtained a nearly perfect skeleton: it must have been as large as a rhinoceros; in the structure of its head it comes, according to Professor Owen, nearest to the Cape Anteater, but in some other respects it approaches to the Armadilloes. Fourthly, the Mylodon Darwinii, a closely related genus, of little inferior size. Fifthly, another gigantic edental quadruped. Sixthly, a large animal with an osseous coat, in compartments, very like that of an armadillo. Seventhly, an extinct kind of horse. Eighthly, a tooth of a pachydermatous animal, probably the same with the Macrauchenia, a huge beast with a long neck like a camel. Lastly, the Toxodon, perhaps one of the strangest animals ever discovered; in size it equalled an Elephant or Megatherium, but the structure of its teeth, as Professor Owen states, proves indisputably that it was intimately related to the Gnawers, the order which, at the present day, includes most of the smallest quadrupeds; in many details it is allied to the pachydermata; judging from the position of its eyes, ears, and nostrils, it was probably aquatic, like the Dugong and Manatee, to which it is allied. How wonderfully are the different orders—at the present time so well separated—blended together in different points in the structure of the Toxodon!”[101]
Fig. 190.—Lower jaw of the Mylodon.
The remains on which our knowledge of the Scelidotherium is founded include the cranium, which is nearly entire, with the teeth and part of the os hyoides, seven cervical, eight dorsal, and five sacral vertebræ, both the scapulæ, and some other bones. The remains of the cranium indicate that its general form was an elongated slender compressed cone, beginning behind by a flattened vertical base, expanding slightly to the cheek-bone, and thence contracting to the anterior extremity. All these parts were discovered in their natural relative positions, indicating, as Mr. Darwin observes, that the gravelly formation in which they were discovered had not been disturbed since its deposition.
Fig. 191.—Skull of Scelidotherium.
The lower jaw-bone of Mylodon, which Mr. Darwin discovered at the base of the cliff called Punta Alta, in Northern Patagonia, had the teeth entire on both sides; they are implanted in deep sockets, and only about one-sixth of the last molar projects above the alveolus, but the proportion of the exposed part increases gradually in the inner teeth ([Fig. 191]).
“The habits of life of these Megatheroid animals were a complete puzzle to naturalists, until Professor Owen solved the problem with remarkable ingenuity. The teeth indicate, by their simple structure, that these Megatheroid animals lived on vegetable food, and probably on the leaves and small twigs of trees; their ponderous forms and great strong curved claws seem so little adapted for locomotion, that some eminent naturalists have actually believed that, like the Sloths, to which they are intimately related, they subsisted by climbing back downwards, on trees, and feeding on the leaves. It was a bold, not to say preposterous idea to conceive even antediluvian trees with branches strong enough to bear animals as large as elephants. Professor Owen, with far more probability, believes that, instead of climbing on the trees, they pulled the branches down to them, and tore up the smaller ones by the roots, and so fed on the leaves. The colossal breadth and weight of their hinder quarters, which can hardly be imagined without having been seen, become, on this view, of obvious service instead of being an encumbrance; their apparent clumsiness disappears. With their great tails and their huge heels firmly fixed like a tripod in the ground, they could freely exert the full force of their most powerful arms and great claws. The Mylodon, moreover, was furnished with a long extensile tongue, like that of the giraffe, which by one of those beautiful provisions of Nature, thus reaches, with the aid of its long neck, its leafy food.”[102]
XXVIII.—Ideal European Landscape in the Quaternary Epoch.
Fig. 192.—Dinornis, and Bos.
Two gigantic birds seem to have lived in New Zealand during the Quaternary epoch. The Dinornis, which, if we may judge from the tibia, which is upwards of three feet long, and from its eggs, which are much larger than those of the Ostrich, must have been of most extraordinary size for a bird. In [Fig. 192] an attempt is made to restore this fearfully great bird, the Dinornis. As to the Epiornis, its eggs only have been found.
On the opposite page ([Plate XXVIII.]) an attempt is made to represent the appearance of Europe during the epoch we have under consideration. The Bear is seated at the mouth of its den—the cave (thus reminding us of the origin of its name of Ursus spelæus), where it gnaws the bones of the Elephant. Above the cavern the Hyæna spelæa looks out, with savage eye, for the moment when it will be prudent to dispute possession of these remains with its formidable rival. The great Wood-stag, with other great animals of the epoch, occupies the farthest shore of a small lake, where some small hills rise out of a valley crowned with the trees and shrubs of the period. Mountains, recently upheaved, rise on the distant horizon, covered with a mantle of frozen snow, reminding us that the glacial period is approaching, and has already begun to manifest itself.
All these fossil bones, belonging to the great Mammalia which we have been describing, are found in the Quaternary formation; but the most abundant of all are those of the Elephant and the Horse. The extreme profusion of the bones of the Mammoth, crowded into the more recently formed deposits of the globe, is only surpassed by the prodigious quantity of the bones of the Horse which are buried in the same beds. The singular abundance of the remains of these two animals proves that, during the Quaternary epoch, the earth gave nourishment to immense herds of the Horse and the Elephant. It is probable that from one pole to the other, from the equator to the two extremities of the axis of the globe, the earth must have formed a vast and boundless prairie, while an immense carpet of verdure covered its whole surface; and such abundant pastures would be absolutely necessary to sustain these prodigious numbers of herbivorous animals of great size.
The mind can scarcely realise the immense and verdant plains of this earlier world, animated by the presence of an infinity of such inhabitants. In its burning temperature, Pachyderms of monstrous forms, but of peaceful habits, traversed the tall vegetation, composed of grasses of all sorts. Deer of gigantic size, their heads ornamented with enormous horns, escorted the heavy herds of the Mammoth; while the Horse, small in size and compact of form, galloped and frisked round these magnificent horizons of verdure which no human eye had yet contemplated.
Nevertheless, all was not quiet and tranquil in the landscapes of the ancient world. Voracious and formidable carnivorous animals waged a bloody war on the inoffensive herds. The Tiger, the Lion, and the ferocious Hyæna; the Bear, and the Jackal, there selected their prey. On the opposite page an endeavour is made to represent the great animals among the Edentates which inhabited the American plains during the Quaternary epoch ([Plate XXIX]). We observe there the Glyptodon, the Megatherium, the Mylodon, and, along with them, the Mastodon. A small Ape (the Orthopithecus), which first appeared in the Miocene period, occupies the branch of a tree in the landscape. The vegetation is that of tropical America at the present time.
The deposits of this age, which are of later date than the Crag, and of earlier date than the Boulder Clay, with its fragments of rocks frequently transported from great distances, are classed under the term “pre-glacial.”
After the deposition of the Forest Bed, which is seen overlying the Crag for miles between high and low-water mark, on the shore west of Cromer, in Norfolk, there was a general reduction of temperature, and a period of intense cold, known as the “glacial period,” seems to have set in, during which a great part of what is now the British Islands was covered with a thick coating of ice, and probably united with the Continent.
At this time England south of the Bristol Channel (the estuary of the Severn), and the Thames, appears to have been above water. The northern part of the country, and the high-ground generally of Britain and Ireland were covered with gliding glaciers, by whose grinding action the whole surface became moulded and worn into its present shape, while the floating icebergs which broke off at the sea-side from these glaciers, conveyed away and dropped on the bed of the sea those fragments of rocks and the gravel and other earthy materials which are now generally recognised as glacial accumulations.
In all directions, however, proofs are being gradually obtained that, about this period, movements of submersion under the sea were in progress, all north of the Thames.
XXIX.—Ideal American Landscape in the Quaternary Epoch.
Ramsay points out indications, first of an intensely cold period, when land was much more elevated than it is now; then of submergence beneath the sea; and, lastly, re-elevation attended by glacial action. “When we speak of the vegetation and quadrupeds of Cromer Forest being pre-glacial,” says Lyell, “we merely mean that their formation preceded the era of the general submergence of the British Isles beneath the waters of the glacial sea. The successive deposits seen in direct superposition on the Norfolk coast,” adds Sir Charles, “imply at first the prevalence over a wide area of the Newer Pliocene Sea. Afterwards, the bed of the sea was converted into dry land, and underwent several oscillations of level, so as to be, first, dry land supporting a forest; then an estuary; then again land; and, finally, a sea near the mouth of a river, till the downward movement became so great as to convert the whole area into a sea of considerable depth, in which much floating ice, carrying mud, sand, and boulders melted, letting its burthen fall to the bottom. Finally, over the till with boulders stratified drift was formed; after which, but not until the total subsidence amounted to more than 400 feet, an upward movement began, which re-elevated the whole country, so that the lowest of the terrestrial formations, or the forest bed, was brought up to nearly its pristine level, in such a manner as to be exposed at a low tide. Both the descending and ascending movement seem to have been very gradual.”
Fig. 193.—Palæophognos Gesneri. Fossil Toad.