Essay on the Theory of the Earth

by baron Georges Cuvier

Small probability of discovering New Species of large Quadrupeds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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