[37] Mém. Inst. Math. et Phys. tom. ii. p. 4.
[38] Described by Breyne from a specimen found in Siberia by Messerschmidt in 1722. Phil. Trans. xl. 446.
[39] Ossemens Fossiles, second edit. i. 178.
We have here, then, the starting-point of those researches concerning extinct animals, which, ever since that time, have attracted so large a share of notice from geologists and from the world. Cuvier could hardly have anticipated the vast storehouse of materials which lay under his feet, ready to supply him occupation of the most intense interest in the career on which he had thus entered. The examination of the strata on which Paris stands, and of which its buildings consist, supplied him with animals, not only different from existing ones, but some of them of great size and curious peculiarities. A careful examination of the remains which these strata contain was undertaken soon after the period we have referred to. In 1802, Defrance had collected several hundreds of undescribed species of shells; and Lamarck[40] began a series of Memoirs upon them; remodelling the whole of Conchology, in order that they might be included in its classifications. And two years afterwards (1804) appears the first of Cuvier’s grand series of Memoirs containing the restoration of the vertebrate animals of these strata. In this vast natural museum, and in contributions from other parts of the globe, he discovered the most extraordinary creatures:—the Palæotherium,[41] which is intermediate between the horse and the pig; the Anoplotherium, which stands nearest to the rhinoceros and the tapir; the Megalonix and Megatherium, animals of the sloth tribe, but of the size of the ox and the rhinoceros. The Memoirs which contained these and many other discoveries, set the naturalists to work in every part of Europe.
[40] Annales du Muséum d’Hist. Nat. tom. i. p. 308, and the following volumes.
[41] Daubuisson, ii. 411.
Another very curious class of animals was brought to light principally by the geologists of England; animals of which the bones, found in the lias stratum, were at first supposed to be those of crocodiles. But in 1816,[42] Sir Everard Home says, “In truth, on a consideration of this skeleton, we cannot but be inclined to believe, that among the animals destroyed by the catastrophes of remote antiquity, there had [519] been some at least that differ so entirely in their structure from any which now exist as to make it impossible to arrange their fossil remains with any known class of animals.” The animal thus referred to, being clearly intermediate between fishes and lizards, was named by Mr. König, Ichthyosaurus; and its structure and constitution were more precisely determined by Mr. Conybeare in 1821, when he had occasion to compare with it another extinct animal of which he and Mr. de la Beche had collected the remains. This animal, still more nearly approaching the lizard tribe, was by Mr. Conybeare called Plesiosaurus.[43] Of each of these two genera several species were afterwards found.
[42] Phil. Trans. 1816, p. 20.
[43] Geol. Trans. vol. v.
Before this time, the differences of the races of animals and plants belonging to the past and the present periods of the earth’s history, had become a leading subject of speculation among geological naturalists. The science produced by this study of the natural history of former states of the earth has been termed Palæontology; and there is no branch of human knowledge more fitted to stir men’s wonder, or to excite them to the widest physiological speculations. But in the present part of our history this science requires our notice, only so far as it aims at the restoration of the types of ancient animals, on clear and undoubted principles of comparative anatomy. To show how extensive and how conclusive is the science when thus directed, we need only refer to Cuvier’s Ossemens Fossiles;[44] a work of vast labor and profound knowledge, which has opened wide the doors of this part of geology. I do not here attempt even to mention the labors of the many other eminent contributors to Palæontology; as Brocchi, Des Hayes, Sowerby, Goldfuss, Agassiz, who have employed themselves on animals, and Schlottheim, Brongniart, Hutton, Lindley, on plants.