Essay on the Theory of the Earth

by baron Georges Cuvier

[79] De Anim. lib. xv. cap. 14.

[80] Ælian, Anim. iv. 52; Photius, Bibl. p. 154.

[81] I do not intend by this remark, as I have already observed on a former occasion, to detract from the merit of the observations of Camper, Pallas, Blumenbach, Sœmmering, Merk, Faugas, Rosenmüller, Home, &c.; but their excellent works, which have been very useful to me, and which I quote throughout, are incomplete; and several of these works have only been published since the first editions of this Essay.

[82] See M. Frederick Cuvier’s memoir upon the varieties of dogs, in the Annales du Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, which he drew up at the request of Professor Cuvier, from a series of skeletons of all the varieties of the dog prepared in the Professor’s collection.

[83] The first figure made of it from nature is in the Description de la Menagerie, a work composed by M. Cuvier. It is seen perfectly represented in the great work on Egypt.—Antiq. t. iv. pl. xlix.

[84] See the Journal de Marseille et des Bouches-du-Rhône, of the 27th Sept. 25th Oct. and 1st Nov. 1820.

[85] I am confirmed in this opinion by the sketches transmitted to me by M. Cottard, one of the Professors of the College of Marseilles.

[86] These skeletons, more or less mutilated, are found near Port de Moule, on the north-west coast of the mainland of Guadaloupe, in a kind of slope resting against the steep edges of the island. This slope is, in a great measure, covered by the sea at high-water, and is nothing else than a tufa, formed, and daily augmented, by the very small debris of shells and corals, which the waves detach from the rocks, and the accumulated mass of which assumes a great degree of cohesion in the places that are most frequently left dry. We find, on examining them with a lens, that several of these fragments have the same red tint as a part of the corals contained in the reefs of the island. Formations of this kind are common in the whole archipelago of the Antilles, where they are known to the Negroes under the name of Maçonne-bon-dieu. Their augmentation is proportioned to the violence of the surge. They have extended the plain of the Cayes to St Domingo, the situation of which has some resemblance to the Plage du Moule, and there are sometimes found in it fragments of earthen vessels, and of other articles of human fabrication, at a depth of twenty feet. A thousand conjectures have been made, and even events imagined, to account for these skeletons of Guadaloupe. But, from all the circumstances of the case, M. Moreau de Jonnès, correspondent of the Academy of Sciences, who has been upon the spot, and to whom I am indebted for the above details, thinks that they are merely bodies of persons that have perished by shipwreck. They were discovered in 1805 by M. Manuel Cortès y Campomanès, at that time a general officer in the service of the colony. General Ernouf, the governor, caused one to be extracted with much labour, of which the head, and almost the whole superior extremities, were wanting. This had been deposited at Guadaloupe, in the expectation that another and more complete specimen would be procured, in order to send them together to Paris, when the island was taken by the English. Admiral Cochrane having found this skeleton at the headquarters, sent it to the English Admiralty, who presented it to the British Museum. It is still in that collection, and M. Kœnig, Keeper of the Mineralogical Department, has described it in the Phil. Trans. of 1814, and there I saw it in 1818. M. Kœnig observes, that the stone in which it is imbedded, has not been cut to its present shape, but that it seems to have been simply inserted, in the form of a distinct nodule, into the surrounding mass. The skeleton is so superficial, that its presence must have been perceived by the projection of some of its bones. They still contain some of their animal matter, and the whole of their phosphate of lime. The rock being entirely formed of pieces of corals, and of compact limestone, readily dissolves in nitric acid. M. Kœnig has detected fragments of Millepora miniacea, of several madrepores, and of shells, which he compares to Helix acuta and Turbo pica. This fossil skeleton is represented in Plate I. More recently, General Donzelot has caused another of these skeletons to be extracted, which is now in the Royal Cabinet, and of which a figure is given in Plate II. It is a body which has the knees bent. A small portion of the upper jaw, the left half of the lower, nearly the whole of one side of the trunk and pelvis, and a large portion of the left upper and lower extremities, are what remain of it. The rock which contains it, is evidently a travertin, in which are imbedded shells of the neighbouring sea, and land-shells, which are still found alive in the island, namely, the Bulimus guadalupensis of Ferussac.

[87] See M. de Schlotheim’s Treatise on Petrifactions, Gotha, 1820, p. 57; and his Letter in the Isis of 1820, 8th Number, No. 6. of Supplement.

[88] It is perhaps proper that I take notice of those fragments of sandstone, regarding which some noise was attempted to be made last year (1824), and in which a man and a horse were alleged to have been found petrified. The mere circumstance of its being a man and a horse, with their flesh and skin, that these fragments must have represented, might have enabled every one to perceive that the whole was a mere lusus naturæ, and not a true petrifaction.—[Note L].