Skeletons of animals in recent shell-marl, Scotland.—In some instances, the skeletons of quadrupeds are met with abundantly in recent shell-marls in Scotland, where we cannot suppose them to have been imbedded by the action of rivers or floods. They all belong to species which now inhabit, or are known to have been indigenous in Scotland. The remains of several hundred skeletons have been procured within the last century from five or six small lakes in Forfarshire, where shell-marl has been worked. Those of the stag (Cervus Elaphas) are most numerous; and if the others be arranged in the order of their relative abundance, they will nearly follow thus—the ox, the boar, the horse, the sheep, the dog, the hare, the fox, the wolf, and the cat. The beaver seems extremely rare; but it has been found in the shell-marl of Loch Marlie, in Perthshire, and in the parish of Edrom, in Berwickshire.
In the greater part of these lake-deposits there are no signs of floods; and the expanse of water was originally so confined, that the smallest of the above-mentioned quadrupeds could have crossed, by swimming from one shore to the other. Deer, and such species as take readily to the water, may often have been mired in trying to land, where the bottom was soft and quaggy, and in their efforts to escape may have plunged deeper into the marly bottom. Some individuals, I suspect, of different species, have fallen in when crossing the frozen surface in winter; for nothing can be more treacherous than the ice when covered with snow, in consequence of the springs, which are numerous, and which, retaining always an equal temperature, cause the ice, in certain spots, to be extremely thin, while in every other part of the lake it is strong enough to bear the heaviest weights.
Mammiferous remains in marine strata.—As the bones of mammalia are often so abundantly preserved in peat, and such lakes as have just been described, the encroachments of a sea upon a coast may sometimes throw down the imbedded skeletons, so that they may be carried away by tides and currents, and entombed in submarine formations. Some of the smaller quadrupeds, also, which burrow in the ground, as well as reptiles and every species of plant, are liable to be cast down into the waves by this cause, which must not be overlooked, although probably of comparatively small importance amongst the numerous agents whereby terrestrial organic remains are included in submarine strata.
During the great earthquake of Conception in 1835, some cattle, which were standing on the steep sides of the island of Quiriquina, were rolled by the shock into the sea, while on a low island at the head of the Bay of Conception seventy animals were washed off by a great wave and drowned.[1078]
CHAPTER XLVIII.
IMBEDDING OF THE REMAINS OF MAN AND HIS WORKS IN SUBAQUEOUS STRATA.
Drifting of human bodies to the sea by river inundations—Destruction of bridges and houses—Loss of lives by shipwreck—How human corpses may be preserved in recent deposits—Number of wrecked vessels—Fossil skeletons of men—Fossil canoes, ships, and works of art—Chemical changes which metallic articles have undergone after long submergence—Imbedding of cities and forests in subaqueous strata by subsidence—Earthquake of Cutch in 1819—Buried Temples of Cashmere—Berkeley's arguments for the recent date of the creation of man—Concluding remarks.
I shall now proceed to inquire in what manner the mortal remains of man and the works of his hands may be permanently preserved in subaqueous strata. Of the many hundred million human beings which perish in the course of every century on the land, every vestige is usually destroyed in the course of a few thousand years; but of the smaller number that perish in the waters, a certain proportion must be entombed under circumstances that may enable parts of them to endure throughout entire geological epochs.