Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth

by John Playfair

[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.