With the corrections which the above remarks will enable the reader to make, I would refer to the account of Fossil Infusoria in the Medals of Creation, and Wonders of Geology. [129]
[129] See also "Thoughts on Animalcules."
[XV.] The Mosasaurus, or Fossil Reptile of Maestricht. ([Plate LXX.]) The occasional discovery of bones and teeth of an unknown animal in the limestone of St. Peter's Mountain, near Maestricht, and the innumerable shells, corals, teeth of fishes, claws of crabs, echini, and other organic remains, had long since attracted the attention of naturalists, and rendered these quarries celebrated throughout Europe. In 1770, M. Hoffman, the surgeon of the Fort, who had for some years been assiduously collecting the fossils of this locality, had the good fortune to discover a specimen which has conferred an enduring celebrity on his name. Some workmen, on blasting the rock in one of the caverns of the interior of the mountain, perceived to their astonishment the jaws of a large animal attached to the roof of the chasm. The discovery was immediately made known to M. Hoffman, who repaired to the spot, and for weeks presided over the arduous task of separating the mass of stone containing these remains from the surrounding rock. His labours were rewarded by the successful extrication of the specimen, which he conveyed in triumph to his house. This extraordinary discovery soon became the subject of general conversation, and upon reaching the ears of the Canon of the cathedral which stands on the mountain, excited in that functionary a determination to claim the fossil, in right of being lord of the manor; and he unfortunately succeeded, after a long and harassing lawsuit, in obtaining this precious relic. It remained for years in his possession, and Hoffman died without regaining his treasure, or receiving any compensation. At length the French revolution broke out, and the armies of the republic advanced to the gates of Maestricht. The town was bombarded; but at the suggestion of the committee of savans who accompanied the French troops to select their share of plunder, the artillery was not suffered to bombard that part of the city in which the celebrated fossil was known to be preserved. In the mean time, the Canon of St. Peter's, shrewdly suspecting the reason why such peculiar favour was shown to his residence, removed the specimen, and concealed it in a vault; but when the city was taken, the French authorities compelled him to give up his ill-gotten prize, which was immediately transmitted to the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, where it still forms one of the most striking objects in that magnificent collection.[130]
[130] Faujus St. Fond, in whose beautiful work on the fossils of St. Peter's Mountain the above account is given, remarks with much sang froid, "La justice, quoique tardive, arrive enfin avec le tems!" The reader will probably think that although the Canon was justly despoiled of his ill-gotten treasure, the French savans were a very equivocal personification of Justice!
The beautiful model of this most interesting fossil in the British Museum, was presented to me by Baron Cuvier. It is four and a half feet long, and two and a half wide; it consists of the jaws, with teeth, palatal bones, and the tympanic bone, or os quadratum, a bone possessed by reptiles, as well as birds, and in which the auditory cells are contained. There are likewise some fine portions of jaws, with teeth, in the British Museum, presented by Camper. The original animal was probably a terrestrial reptile, holding an intermediate place between the Monitors and Iguanas. It was about twenty-five feet long.
I discovered, many years since (1820), some vertebræ in the chalk near Lewes, which closely resemble the corresponding bones of the Mosasaurus, and in all probability belong to another species. In the cretaceous strata of New Jersey, Dr. Harlan found and described, and my friend. Dr. Morton, of Philadelphia, sent me, in 1834, teeth which cannot be distinguished from those of Maestricht. Vertebræ, and other bones, have since been obtained from the same deposits by Professor Rogers, and described by Professor Owen in the Geological Journal.
[XVI.] Fossil Reptiles. Although when Mr. Parkinson's work was published many fossil bones and teeth of reptiles had been discovered in various parts of England, yet the abundance and variety, and the extraordinary modification of form and structure of this class of vertebrated animals, which prevailed throughout the secondary geological formations, were not for a moment suspected. The few examples of the remains of fossil reptiles described by Mr. Parkinson, serve to mark the degree of knowledge which then existed respecting a department of palæontology that rapidly acquired an importance and interest unsurpassed by any other branch of fossil osteology.
The announcement of the founder of palæontology,[131] that there was a period when the lakes and rivers of our planet were peopled by reptiles, and cold-blooded oviparous quadrupeds of appalling magnitude were the principal inhabitants of the dry land; when the seas swarmed with saurians, exclusively adapted for a marine existence, and the regions of the atmosphere were traversed by winged lizards instead of birds; was an enunciation so novel and startling, as to require all the prestige of the name of Cuvier, to obtain for it any degree of attention and credence, even with those who were sufficiently enlightened to admit, that a universal deluge would not account for the physical mutations which the surface of the earth and its inhabitants had, in the lapse of innumerable ages, undergone.
[131] In the "Ossemens Fossiles;" tom. v. Reptiles Fossiles.
Subsequent discoveries have established the truth of this proposition to an extent beyond what even its promulgator could have surmised; and the "Age of Reptiles" is now admitted into the category of established facts.