Geological facts; or, the crust of the earth, what it is, and what are its uses

by W. G. Barrett

FOSSILS FROM THE RED CRAG, NEAR IPSWICH.
1. Venericardia senilis.
2. Turritella.
3. Patella æqualis.
4. Cyprea.
5. Paludina lenta.
6. Pectunculus variabilis.
7. Murex.
8. Fusus contrarius.
9. Buccinum elongata.
10. Venericardia scalaris.
11. Voluta lamberti.
12. Fusus asper.
13. Pectunculus pilosus.

But these are not the only fossils of this period; it is here we meet, and that for the first time, with the highest form of animal life with which the researches of geology have made us acquainted. We have traced life in various forms in the different rocks that have passed under our rapid survey, and in all we have seen a wondrous and most orderly gradation. We began with the coral zoophytes, and from them proceeded to the mollusks and crustacea of the hypogene rocks; ascending, we discovered “fish with glittering scales,” associated with the crinoids and cryptogamous plants of the secondary series of rocks; and then we arrive where we are now, among the true dicotyledonous and exogenous plants and trees, with the strange birds and gigantic quadrupeds of the tertiary period. But the student must not imagine that even the fossils of this epoch bring him up to the modern era, or the reign of man; for even in the tertiary system numberless species lived and flourished, which in their turn became extinct, to be succeeded by others long before man, the chief of animals and something more, made his appearance, to hold dominion over these manifold productions of creative skill and power. But amidst these creations,

“God was everywhere, the God who framed

Mankind to be one mighty human family,

Himself their Father, and the world their home.”

It would be altogether beside the purpose of this preliminary treatise to enter into any details respecting the animals that have been found in such abundance in the Norwich Crag, that it has been called the “Mammaliferous Crag.” Those who desire full and deeply interesting information on this question should consult Owen’s noble work, entitled “British Fossil Mammals and Birds,” where, under the respective divisions of Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, he will see a complete chart of our riches in the possessions of a past creation. For the discovery of the Siberian Mammoth so often quoted, we shall refer to the same work, page 217, &c.; from which we shall only quote one brief extract, illustrative of the abundance of these remains in our own coasts in the ages past.

“Mr. Woodward, in his ‘Geology of Norfolk,’ supposes that upwards of two thousand grinders of the mammoth have been dredged up by the fishermen of the little village of Happisburgh in the space of thirteen years. The oyster-bed was discovered here in 1820; and during the first twelve months hundreds of the molar teeth of mammoths were landed in strange association with the edible mollusca. Great quantities of the bones and tusks of the mammoth are, doubtless, annually destroyed by the action of the waves of the sea. Remains of the mammoth are hardly less numerous in Suffolk, especially in the pleistocene beds along the coast, and at Stutton;—they become more rare in the fluvio-marine crag at Southwold and Thorp. The village of Walton, near Harwich, is famous for the abundance of these fossils, which lie along the base of the sea-cliffs, mixed with bones of species of horse, ox, and deer.”[^[118]]

SKELETON OF THE MEGATHERIUM CUVIERI (AMERICANUM).

All the animals of this period are called theroid animals: from therion, a wild beast; and looking at the skeletons as they have been arranged from the few existing fossils, or from nearly complete materials—a matter not of guess-work, but of the most rigid application of the principles of comparative anatomy—we stand astounded at the prodigious sizes of these mammoths of the tertiary era. There is the deinotherium, or fierce wild beast; the palæotherium, or ancient wild beast; the anoplotherium, or unarmed wild beast, and others. We give above a drawing of the well-known megatherium, or great wild beast, to be seen in the British Museum, and add the following from Mantell’s Guide to the Fossils of the British Museum:—“This stupendous extinct animal of the sloth tribe was first made known to European naturalists by a skeleton, almost entire, dug up in 1789, on the banks of a river in South America, named the Luxon, about three miles south-east of Buenos Ayres. The specimen was sent to Madrid, and fixed up in the Museum, in the form represented in numerous works on natural history. A second skeleton was exhumed at Lima, in 1795; and of late years Sir Woodbine Parish, Mr. Darwin, and other naturalists have sent bones of the megatherium, and other allied genera, to England. The model of the megatherium has been constructed with great care from the original bones, in the Wall-cases 9, 10, and in the Hunterian Museum. The attitude given to the skeleton, with the right arm clasping a tree, is, of course, hypothetical; and the position of the hinder toes and feet does not appear to be natural. Altogether, however, the construction is highly satisfactory; and a better idea of the colossal proportions of the original is conveyed by this model, than could otherwise be obtained.”[^[119]]