Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth

by John Playfair

416. One fact recorded by the same author, seems calculated to remove all uncertainty. It is that of the carcase of a rhinoceros, almost entire, and covered with the hide, found in the earth in the banks of the river Wilui, which falls into the Lena below Jakutsk.[227] Some of the muscles and tendons were actually adhering to the head when Pallas received it. The head, after being dried in an oven, is still preserved in the museum at Petersburgh. The preservation of the skin and muscles of this natural mummy, as Pallas calls it, was no doubt brought about by its being buried in earth that was in a state of perpetual congelation; for the place is in the parallel of 64°, where the ground is never thawed but to a very small depth below the surface.

[227] Pallas ubi supra, p. 586. Also, Voyages de Pallas, tom. iv. p. 131.

But by what means can we account for the carcase of a rhinoceros being buried in the earth, on the confines of the polar circle? Shall we ascribe it to some immense torrent, which, sweeping across the deserts of Tartary, and the mountains of Altai, transported the productions of India to the plains of Siberia, and interred in the mud of the Lena the animals that had fed on the banks of the Barampooter or the Ganges? Were all other objections to so extraordinary a supposition removed, the preservation of the hide and muscles of a dead animal, and the adhesion of the parts, while it was dragged for 2000 miles over some of the highest and most rugged mountains in the world, is too absurd to be for a moment admitted. Or shall we suppose that this carcase has been floated in by an inundation of the sea, from some tropical country now swallowed up, and of which the numerous islands of the Indian Archipelago are the remains? The heat of a tropical climate, and the putrescence naturally arising from it, would soon, independently of all other accidents, have stripped the bones of their covering. Indeed this instantia singularis, as in every sense it may properly be called, seems calculated for the express purpose of excluding every hypothesis but one from being employed to explain the origin of fossil bones. It not only excludes the two which have just been mentioned, but it excludes also that of Buffon, viz. that these bones are the remains of animals which lived in Siberia, when the arctic regions enjoyed a fine climate, and a temperature like that which southern Asia now possesses. From the preservation of the flesh and hide of this rhinoceros, it is plain, that when the body was buried in the earth, the climate was much the same that it is now, and the cold sufficient to resist the progress of putrefaction.

Pallas takes notice of the inconsistency of the state of this skeleton, with the hypothesis of Buffon; but he does not observe that the inconsistency is equally great between it and his own hypothesis, the importation of the fossil bones by an inundation of the sea, and that flesh or muscle must have been entirely consumed long before it could be carried by the waves to the parallel of 64°, from any climate which the rhinoceros at present inhabits.

417. The presence of petrified marine objects in places where some of the fossil bones are found, is no proof that the latter have come from the sea, though it is produced as such both by Pallas himself, and afterwards by Kirwan. These marine bodies are the shells and corals that have been parts of calcareous rocks, from which being detached by the ordinary progress of disintegration, they are now contained in the beds of sand or gravel where the animal remains are buried. They have nothing in common with these remains; they are real stones, and belong to another, and a far more remote epochs. Such objects being found in the same place where the bones lie, argues only that the strata in the higher grounds, from which the gravel has come, are calcareous; and nothing can show in a stronger light the necessity of distinguishing the different condition of fossil bodies, united by the mere circumstance of contiguity, before we draw any inference as to their having a common origin. If the marine remains were in the same condition with the bones; if they were in no respect mineralized; then the conclusion, that both had been imported by the sea, would have great probability; but without that, their present union must be held as casual, and can give no insight into the origin of either.

418. On the whole, therefore, no conclusion remains, but that these bones have belonged to species of elephants, rhinoceros, &c. which inhabited the very countries where their remains are now buried, and which could endure the severity of the Siberian climate. The rhinoceros of the Wilui certainly lived on the confines of the Polar Circle, and was exposed to the same cold while alive, by which, when dead, its body has been so long, and so curiously preserved.

These animals may also have lived occasionally farther to the south, among the valleys between the great ranges of mountains that bound Siberia on that side. Fossil bones are but rarely found in these valleys, probably because they have been washed down from thence into the plains. We must observe, too, that those animals may have migrated with the seasons, and by that means avoided the rigorous winter of the high latitudes. The dominion of man, by rendering such migration to the larger animals difficult or impossible, must have greatly changed the economy of all those tribes, and narrowed the circle of their enjoyments and existence. The heaps in which the fossil bones appear to be accumulated in particular places, especially in North America, have a great appearance of being connected with the migrations of animals, and the accidents that might bring multitudes of them into the same spot.

What holds of Siberia and of North America, is applicable, a fortiori, to all the other places where animal remains are found in the same condition. Thus we are carried back to a time when many larger species of animals, now entirely extinct, inhabited the earth, and when varieties of those that are at present confined to particular situations, were, either by the liberty of migration, or by their natural constitution, accommodated to all the diversities of climate. This period, though beyond the limits of ordinary chronology, is posterior to the great revolutions on the earth's surface, and the latest among geological epochs.

Note xxiii. § 128.

Geology of Kirwan and De Luc.