Fig. 177.—Andrias Scheuchzeri.
The Pre-Adamite “witness of the deluge” made a great noise in Germany, and no one there dared to dispute the opinion of the Swiss naturalist, under his double authority of theologian and savant. This, probably, is the reason why Gesner in his “Traité des Pétrifactions,” published in 1758, describes with admiration the fossil of Œningen, which he attributes, with Scheuchzer, to the antediluvian man.
Pierre Camper alone dared to oppose this opinion, which was then universally professed throughout Germany. He went to Œningen in 1787 to examine the celebrated fossil animal; he had no difficulty in detecting the error into which Scheuchzer had fallen. He recognised at once that it was a Reptile; but he deceived himself, nevertheless, as to the family to which it belonged; he took it for a Saurian. “A petrified lizard,” Camper wrote; “could it possibly pass for a man?” It was left to Cuvier to place in its true family the fossil of Œningen; in a memoir on the subject he demonstrated that this skeleton belonged to one of the amphibious batrachians called Salamanders. “Take,” he says in his memoir, “a skeleton of a Salamander and place it alongside the fossil, without allowing yourself to be misled by the difference of size, just as you could easily do in comparing a drawing of the salamander of the natural size with one of the fossil reduced to a sixteenth part of its dimensions, and everything will be explained in the clearest manner.”
“I am even persuaded,” adds the great naturalist, in a subsequent edition of this memoir, “that, if we could re-arrange the fossil and look closer into the details, we should find still more numerous proofs in the articular faces of the vertebræ, in those of the jaws, in the vestiges of very small teeth, and even in the labyrinth of the ear.” And he invited the proprietors or depositaries of the precious fossil to proceed to such an examination. Cuvier had the gratification of making, personally, the investigation he suggested. Finding himself at Haarlem, he asked permission of the Director of the Museum to examine the stone which contained the supposed fossil man. The operation was carried on in the presence of the director and another naturalist. A drawing of the skeleton of a Salamander was placed near the fossil by Cuvier, who had the satisfaction of recognising, as the stone was chipped away under the chisel, each of the bones, announced by the drawing, as they made their appearance. In the natural sciences there are few instances of such triumphant results—few demonstrations so satisfactory as this, of the certitude of the methods of observation and induction on which palæontology is based.
During the Pliocene period Birds of very numerous species, and which still exist, gave animation to the vast solitudes which man had not yet occupied. Vultures and Eagles, among the rapacious birds; and among other genera of birds, gulls, swallows, pies, parroquets, pheasants, jungle-fowl, ducks, &c.
In the marine Pliocene fauna we see, for the first time, aquatic Mammals or Cetaceans—the Dolphin and Balæna belonging to the period. Very little, however, is known of the fossil species belonging to the two genera. Some bones of Dolphins, found in different parts of France, apprise us, however, that the ancient species differed from those of our days. The same remark may be made respecting the Narwhal. This Cetacean, so remarkable for its long tusk, or tooth, in the form of a horn, has at all times been an object of curiosity.
The Whales, whose remains are found in the Pliocene rocks, differ little from those now living. But the observations geologists have been able to make upon these gigantic remains of the ancient world are too few to allow of any very precise conclusion. It is certain, however, that the fossil differs from the existing Whale in certain characters drawn from the bones of the cranium. The discovery of an enormous fragment of a fossil Whale, made at Paris in 1779, in the cellar of a wine-merchant in the Rue Dauphine, created a great sensation. Science pronounced, without much hesitation, on the true origin of these remains; but the public had some difficulty in comprehending the existence of a whale in the Rue Dauphine. It was in digging some holes in his cellars that the wine-merchant made this interesting discovery. His workmen found, under the pick, an enormous piece of bone buried in a yellow clay. Its complete extraction caused him a great deal of labour, and presented many difficulties. Little interested in making further discoveries, our wine-merchant contented himself with raising, with the help of a chisel, a portion of the monstrous bone. The piece thus detached weighed 227 pounds. It was exhibited in the wine-shop, where large numbers of the curious went to see it. Lamanon, a naturalist of that day, who examined it, conjectured that the bone belonged to the head of a whale. As to the bone itself, it was purchased for the Teyler Museum, at Haarlem, where it still remains.