Plate XVII

AURORA BOREALIS

PETER PARLEY'S WONDERS

OF THE

EARTH, SEA, AND SKY.

EDITED BY THE REV. T. WILSON.

A New Edition,
WITH ADDITIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS.
LONDON:
DARTON AND CLARK, HOLBORN HILL.

Entered at Stationers' Hall.

TO
GEORGE BIRKBECK, Esq. M.D., F.G.S.,
PRESIDENT OF THE LONDON MECHANICS' INSTITUTION,
AS A TRIBUTE OF RESPECT
FOR
HIS BENEVOLENT AND EFFECTUAL ENDEAVOURS TO PROMOTE THE
DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE,
This Little Work
IS,
WITH PERMISSION, DEDICATED
BY THE EDITOR.

PREFACE.

It seems to me that there is something very unreasonable in the plan of a great many of the books intended to introduce young people to the various branches of Natural History, which have been recently published. The chief aim of their authors seems to have been to combine brevity with comprehensiveness. Brevity is, without doubt, a great advantage, inasmuch as the proverb is true, that a great book is a great evil; but in my opinion comprehensiveness ought not to be attempted in books intended for children. If it were desirable, I might indeed confidently say, that it can never be obtained within the necessary limits; and the attempt to effect it, will very often reduce the work to a mere dry table of classification. However neat and systematic tables of genera and species, and lists of names may look, they can never convey to the young the elements of sound scientific method; and will seldom fail in being useless or disgusting to the mind, at an age when it is seeking for that sort of knowledge which will exercise the understanding, without burdening the memory. This healthy appetite ought to be carefully cultivated; and I am satisfied that if it were so, from the earliest stage of education, we should have but few complaints of bad memories. The memory is apt to vanish from those who would make an idol of it; and I am disposed to think that its cultivation may very safely be omitted, as a direct object of education, if due care is taken to keep the understanding active, and to present the matter on which it is to be engaged in the most entertaining form possible. In fact, what is often termed "a good memory," that is, a ready recollection independent of the connections which are made solely by the understanding, is, as we may see by its fruits in many persons of feeble intellect, by no means desirable. An apt example of such a memory is afforded, in what Dame Quickly says to Sir John Falstaff, when she reminds him of a mixed multitude of unimportant circumstances, with no other principle of arrangement or connection, than what was supplied by proximity of time and place.

I would not, however, willingly be supposed to recommend books, in which systematic arrangement, or the most scrupulous regard to accurate statement, is overlooked. I had particularly in view that numerous class of little books, which under various names come out in series, each volume professing in a manner to comprise the whole of the branch of Natural History which may be the subject of it, by its containing a mere arrangement of the names of the phenomena which the branch includes. There is another and widely different class of books, in which stories from travellers and other idle gossip of the like kind, are compiled in an undigested mass, without regard to the different names by which the same thing may be called, and not unfrequently to a common respect for truth, which is not much less to be deprecated.

And yet to books of this latter description, often of a very unworthy character, it is that many of us owe the first calling into consciousness of that taste which may have made us travellers or naturalists, or lovers of knowledge. I wish that, without copying the example of their authors, we should learn a lesson from them, and put it in practice, by striving to form a taste to enjoy knowledge in them we have to teach, before we attempt any mode of systematic instruction.

The following little book has been written under the impressions which I have here stated. I have selected a few of such phenomena of the Kingdoms of Nature, as seemed to me to have in them most to excite wonder and admiration; and I have sought to convey distinct notions with the least possible use of technical language; neither forgetting the connection of things, nor overloading the statements with matters that are merely expletive of an arbitrary system. How far I may have succeeded, is for my little friends, and their instructors, who have approved of my other books, to decide. Wishing the former as much pleasure in the reading, as I have had, for their sakes, in the writing, I take my leave of them.

P. P.

CONTENTS.

PART I.—WONDERS OF THE EARTH.

PART II.—WONDERS OF THE SEA.

PART III.—WONDERS OF THE SKY.

List of Plates.

WONDERS OF THE EARTH,
SEA, AND SKY.

PART I.

WONDERS OF THE EARTH.

CHAPTER I.

PARLEY EXPLAINS HOW THE STRATA OF THE EARTH ARE PLACED.

I am now going to tell you, my young friends, about some of the wonderful things in the earth, sea, and sky. A great number of them I have seen myself in my travels through various countries, and others I have only read of; but I shall tell you nothing that is not strictly true, for I do not wish so much to astonish you as to make you take pleasure in contemplating the works of God, and to increase your knowledge of His goodness, wisdom, and power.

I shall begin with some of the wonders of the earth which, as I suppose you know, belong to the branch of natural history which is called geology; and to enable you to understand what follows, I must first explain how the materials which compose the ground you tread upon are arranged.

If you hastily travel over any extensive tract of country, such as that between New York and Philadelphia, or between London and Bristol, you might think that all the different substances, clay, chalk, limestone, and granite, were irregularly mixed together. This is, however, not the case, when taken on a great scale; for if you more carefully examine, you will find that the various sorts of earth are disposed in layers, or strata, and that a uniform order of arrangement is nearly preserved.

If these layers were perfectly horizontal, laid one over another like the coats of an onion, we should have to dig through one before we could get to the second, and our knowledge of what the globe consists, would be much more limited than it is; for the greatest depth to which men have descended in the deepest mines, is not much greater than the thickness of one of the strata.

But, instead of this, the surface is broken up by some force from beneath elevating portions, so as to form mountains and hills; and in consequence of this the edges of the strata appear on the surface one after another; just as you would see the edges of a row of bricks that had been set up on their ends, and then the last one thrown down so as to push down all the others.

This is the way in which the strata are placed in the neighbourhood of Weymouth.

The chief reason why I wished you to understand this is, that you may see how it is known that one stratum is older than another. It is evident that the substance marked a, in the section, which is limestone, must have been deposited before b, while b must certainly be older than c.

Now in most of the strata above the granite, which is nearly always in the position of the oldest formation, there are found various shells, plants, and bones of animals; and where certain remains of different animals or vegetables are found in one stratum, it is concluded that they must have been living about the same time.

Most of the animals of the older strata were different in form from any at present known to exist; and some of them are very remarkable, and if they were alive now, would seem to us very strange and awkward.

Plate I. p. 5

EXTINCT ANIMALS.

CHAPTER II.

WHAT CREATURES ONCE LIVED WHERE DORSETSHIRE NOW IS.

I will show you a picture of what creatures were once living where the town of Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, now stands, and tell you something about their structure and their habits. You may perhaps be ready to think that a great deal of what we profess to know concerning them, is the work of fancy, but I can assure you it is not, and by and by I will endeavour to convince you that there is reason enough for you to believe what I tell you.

THE ICHTHYOSAURUS.

That large animal lying on the ground, is called the Icthyosaurus, from two Greek words signifying Fish-Lizard, in consequence of his possessing some of the peculiarities of both fishes and lizards.

The usual length of this creature was from twenty to thirty feet. It possessed a most surprising combination of the powers and qualities of different animals which are now in existence. In its general form and character it must have been something like the modern porpoise; but it had the teeth of a crocodile, the head of a lizard, the back-bone of a fish, and the fins or paddles, of a whale.

I shall spend some little time in explaining to you each of these particulars, that you may see how wisely all the parts of living things are framed to supply their wants, and adapt them to the circumstances in which they are placed.

The head was not very different from that of a crocodile, or lizard, in its general shape. The teeth were precisely like those of a crocodile, and grew up in the same manner. Creatures of this sort lead a ruffian sort of life, always biting something or other, and as they live very much in the dark at the bottom of the water, perhaps now and then snap at a stone or a piece of hard wood by mistake, and often break their teeth; and in order therefore to keep them in constant repair, they have a fresh set once a year, or at very short intervals, so that they are always growing. The young tooth a, springs up inside the old one b, till it becomes so large that it splits its predecessor, and the pieces fall off, just as the covering of some sorts of buds falls off as the flower expands, as you will see in this cut, representing one of the fossil teeth.

You must have noticed in the picture the great length of his snout. In a jaw-bone of such amazing length which was to be applied to such violent purposes, it was necessary there should be great strength. There were two ways of obtaining this: one would have been by having the bones very hard and stout; but this would not do, because they would then have been so heavy that the animal would have found difficulty in raising his head to the surface of the water for the purpose of breathing, since it would have overbalanced the other part of his body. The other contrivance, which was the one adopted by the wisdom of the Creator, was to make the jaws consist of several thin bones, a, b, c, d, strongly bound together, and terminating in succession like the plates of steel of which a carriage spring is made. There are accordingly six of these bones thus disposed.

But this was not all, the principal middle bone marked b, instead of having its fibres run straight, parallel with the others, had them placed in a slanting position, and thus there was additional firmness given to the jaw by what ship-builders would call diagonal bracing, a contrivance that you may often see used in the construction of houses and ships.

If you have ever seen a crocodile open its mouth, and then snap together its long thin jaws, so as to make you start with the noise, you will see how necessary all these contrivances must be for him and the Icthyosaurus, whose jaws were still thinner, to prevent them from breaking their bones.

This however is not at all more wonderful than the eye, which in the old-fashioned animal I have been describing, was much larger than that of the crocodile, and not unfrequently bigger than a man's head. From the very great quantity of light which such a large surface would receive, the creature's power of seeing must have been very great. And besides this advantage, it had the same faculty as is possessed by the golden eagle, the turtle, the tortoise, and the lizard, of pressing the eye forward to render it more convex. In man and most animals, the eye is placed in a fixed cavity of thin bone, something like an egg-cup, but in the Icthyosaurus, the cavity was formed by several bones not quite touching each other; (as you may see in the last cut, and in figure 2, you have two of the bones by themselves, taken out of the socket of the eye;) and there were muscles to draw these bones closer together; so that by making the cup less deep, the eye was thrust forward and made to swell out in the middle. This is illustrated in the ball b, which is pressed outwards, by drawing the plates of bone cc, together at o, close than those which have the ball a between them.

You must have seen that the more convex magnifying glasses are, the more they magnify, and the nearer you must hold them to the object you are looking at. By this contrivance, the eye of the Icthyosaurus could be made at pleasure into a microscope, so as to see with wonderful quickness things which were quite close to it, by pushing it forward and rendering it more convex; or it could be made into a telescope like the eyes of some persons who are long-sighted, for seeing what is at a greater distance, by drawing it back.

In all these particulars you may see how the skill of man leads him to adopt the same plans to produce the same ends in the works of art, as God has adopted before him in the works of nature, without his being conscious of copying them; and this should remind you that man was created in the image of his Maker. If man had never made a carriage-spring, or a diagonal bracing, he would not have understood the structure of the jaw of the Icthyosaurus; and if he had never invented the telescope, he would not have been able to explain the construction of the eye.

You have now seen the points in which the Icthyo-saurus chiefly resembled a crocodile or lizard; from which the latter half of its name is derived, saurus, a lizard. I must now tell you something of those parts in which it is like a fish, from which it takes the other part of its name, icthy, for icthus, a fish.

You know that crocodiles live a good part of their time on land, and they therefore have feet and a back-bone like land animals, which enable them to walk better, but do not allow them to swim so well as fish. The back-bone is heavy and firm, and each of the bones composing it has one side slightly hollow, and the other side swelling out to fit into the hollow in the one that comes next to it. But in fish both sides of the bones are hollow, and they are joined together by gristle, as you can easily see in the fish that are commonly eaten; this renders the back-bone much more flexible and lighter, and therefore better adapted for an animal always swimming. That of the Icthyosaurus was formed in the same manner, and we therefore judge that he spent his whole life in the water; for a back-bone so formed, would not have been able to support such a great heavy body when walking on the land.

The fins, or paddles, were very curious, and much like those of the whale; they consisted of above a hundred small bones strongly united together, in a sort of pavement enclosed in a strong skin, and not divided into toes, as you may observe in this representation of the entire skeleton.

You may see many specimens of the skeleton itself in the British Museum.

The Icthyosaurus was a great tyrant, and used to prey on every creature that came within his reach; this is known by the fossil remains found in the inside of his body. He used at times even to act the cannibal, and eat his own relations, for a large one has been dug out of the cliff at Lyme Regis, with part of a small one in his stomach undigested; he must have been altogether a very unamiable character. But as his family has been so long extinct, and we are told that we ought to say nothing but what is good concerning the dead, I shall not say any more about him, leaving you to form your own conclusions from what I have related to you.

THE PLESIOSAURUS.

Those still more strange looking animals with very long necks, which are represented swimming in the water, have been named Plesiosauri, a word signifying, related to, or closely resembling, a lizard. There are some nearly perfect specimens in the British Museum, and this is a representation made up by taking the uninjured parts of several, so as to make up a perfect whole.

Taking it altogether, there is not one of the fossil animals so much unlike anything at present known to exist. Its usual length was from 9 to 15 feet, but it was at times very much larger.

The head was much shorter in proportion than that of the Icthyosaurus, being more like that of the guana, the lizard which people eat in the West Indies. The neck must have been longer than that of any living animal, not even excepting the swan; it contained thirty-three bones, or vertebræ, while the whole of the rest of the back-bone in the body and tail, contained only fifty-seven.

The faces of these vertebræ were nearly flat, and not hollow like those of the Icthyosaurus, which would better enable the animal to exist on land, and it appears to have moved about in the same manner as seals do. From some very ingenious observations on certain parts of its anatomy, (which if I were to endeavour to explain to you, you would not understand, unless you possessed a great deal of anatomical knowledge,) naturalists have supposed that it used to change the colour of its skin like the chameleon. Its paddles were almost exactly like those of the turtle, and its body was something of the same shape, but not quite so wide.

From its long neck, which, although it was strengthened by the solid joints and peculiar shapes of the bones, was not very strong, and its small head and jaws, the Plesiosaurus could not have been near a match for its neighbour, the Icthyosaurus, in combat, even when the individuals were of the same size; neither would its form adapt it for cutting through the water so quickly. It must, therefore, no doubt, have often fallen a prey to that voracious monster. Perhaps, however, it often played him a trick when he was pursuing it by running on shore out of his reach; or it might mostly have kept out of his way in very shallow water amongst the rushes and reeds, where it could every now and then dart its long neck like a swan, down at the little fish that came near it; or else suddenly reaching aloft into the air, it may have seized upon some unlucky insect, or Pterodactyle, (a sort of bat of which I shall presently speak) and then laid down as quiet under the rushes as if nothing had happened, waiting for its next mouthful.

THE PTERODACTYLE.

That odd-looking creature which is flying in the air over the heads of the Plesiosauri, has been called the Pterodactyle, which signifies wing-fingered. There were several varieties, of different sizes and figures, from that of a snipe to that of a raven. The most remarkable of them was indeed a curious creature, and so you will say if you look at the picture of his skeleton.

He was more like a bat in his general shape and habits, than anything else we know of, but was very different in a great many respects.

He had a head like a lizard, with a long snout and sharp teeth; his ribs were round and thread-like, not flat like those of birds and bats; his eyes were large; and his wings like a bat's, being a membrane or skin, stretched out by one very long toe on each of his fore-feet. In order to support his long head, there were strong cords running down each side of the vertebræ of his neck, such as are found in some modern birds, as is known by the forms of the bones to which the ends of them were attached. His toes ended in sharp claws, and he had also claws at his two principal joints, so that he could catch hold of the branches of trees with them, as bats do. These creatures used principally to feed upon large dragon flies, beetles, and the other insects, of which the remains are found, and some of which are represented in the picture.

There were also living at the same time with these creatures, several kinds of tortoises, and fish in immense varieties. The whole district where the south coast of England now is, seems to have then been a marsh with no vegetation but sea-weeds, reeds, and the like; and its only inhabitants were, fish, reptiles, and insects.

After the races of animals which we have mentioned, became extinct, a period followed in which they were succeeded by some monstrous creatures, like lizards in all respects, except that they were fitted to live in the water by the construction of their back-bone, their having lungs of the same kind as those of fishes, and the possession of fins. One of these, called the Iguanodon, was sometimes seventy feet long. It had a little horn near the end of its snout, placed something like the horn of a rhinoceros, and must have borne considerable resemblance in its general form to the guana, which I mentioned before. Their bones and teeth, are found at Lewes, in Sussex, and in the Isle of Wight, where you may pick them up on the shore, as you can the bones of Icthyosauri and Plesiosauri, at Lyme Regis, though not in such great numbers.

We are indebted for a great deal of what I have told you about the animals that once lived where Dorsetshire is now, to a lady, Miss Anning, who spends nearly her whole time in collecting fossils out of the cliffs. No one ought to go near Lyme Regis without visiting her collection.

Plate II. p. 21

EXTINCT ANIMALS.

CHAPTER III.

WHAT SORT OF A PLACE ONCE EXISTED WHERE THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF PARIS IS NOW.

I shall show you a picture representing a state of things much more like the present, than the one we looked at before. It existed at a later period, though still a great many years ago; and if you wish to know why we conclude it to be later, since it is the other side of the water and we are therefore prevented from distinctly tracing the succession of the strata, I will tell you.

After leaving the formations of Dorsetshire, in which the great saurian or lizard-like reptiles are found, we come to chalk in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight; and after the chalk, to some beds of clay, and then some beds of limestone. The formations above the chalk, are those called tertiary; those from the chalk down to the lowest containing animal and vegetable remains, are the secondary; and all below that, consisting mainly of various sorts of granite, are the primary.

Now all this occurs in the same order in France, and the neighbourhood of Paris consisting of tertiary formations, just corresponds with the tertiary strata of the Isle of Wight, and them we know to be more recent than the secondary formations of Dorsetshire. Of course, therefore, the animals found at Paris, must be more recent than those found at Lyme Regis.

The largest of the animals represented in the plate, is called the Palæotherium.

The following is a picture of his skeleton, as it has been made out, bone by bone. A single tooth was first discovered, and the French naturalist, Cuvier, was able to determine from this alone, a great many particulars which have now been proved by the subsequent discovery of the bones; such was the knowledge he had acquired by comparing the bones of different animals. He thus discovered that a certain shape of tooth always accompanied a certain shape of foot, as well as indicated what kind of food the animal lived upon. From this might be judged a great deal about the organs of digestion, and the internal structure, and something of its habits and disposition. In all these points and several others, Cuvier predicted from a single bone of the Palæotherium, what has been exactly confirmed by the entire skeleton.

It was about the size of a small horse, and must have possessed a little trunk, or proboscis, like the modern Tapir, to which indeed it must have borne a great resemblance.

American Tapir.

The reason for thinking that it had a trunk, is because there is a peculiar contrivance in the bones to give strength to the neck, which only exists in animals that have a proboscis. There are some Tapirs in the Zoological Gardens, and if you have seen them, you will be able to form a pretty good notion of what the Palæotherium must have been. It had perhaps rather more of the hog about it, than the Tapir has, with a more dull heavy expression of countenance.

There were three varieties of Palæotherium distinguished by their size. The smallest was not much larger than a little dog, and you may see the figure of one of them in the picture, going down to the water to drink.

The more slender animal, which is walking towards the water, is the Anoplotherium, or un-armed beast. Its size varied from that of a hare, to that of a large dog; it had a very thick tail like that of the Kangaroo. Everything about it would lead one to suppose that it was a timid creature, whose swiftness and agility would protect it against stronger animals; not unlike in disposition to the antelope, or the hare of our times.

Another animal was living at the same period, which I must describe to you, as it was, as far as we know, the largest quadruped that ever lived upon the earth, and in some respects the most remarkable. It was called the Dinotherium, or terrible wild beast, and you will soon know how well it deserved this name. The individual of which a part of the head is now in the British Museum, must have been eighteen feet long in the body, and proportionally large! If you compare this size with that of the largest elephant you have ever seen, you will be able to form some notion of his enormous magnitude.

In his general form he somewhat resembled the Tapirs, but by no means so nearly as did the Palæotherium. He had a much longer trunk; and his shoulder blade is formed like that of the mole, by which we know that he must have used his feet in digging. It seems almost certain that he was amphibious: and the back part of his skull has a remarkable similarity to that of the whale, and cetaceous fishes in general. But the most striking peculiarity in the bones which remain of this monster, is the existence of two large tusks bending down from the lower jaw, like two hooks, as you may see represented in this cut, of the head preserved in the Museum. His legs were probably rather short, and might have borne nearly the same proportion to his body, as those of the Hippopotamus do to his. From all we can collect, this must have been his general form and appearance.

There can be but little doubt that he was of a savage disposition and lead a sulky sort of life divided between the water and the land, like the Hippopotamus. His great tusks must have rendered him a formidable enemy; but as we know that he was a digging animal, it is very likely that he more frequently used them as a sort of pickaxe, to grub up such roots as he wanted to eat, for he lived wholly upon vegetables. He might also have employed them (as Dr. Buckland has conjectured), to stick into the banks of rivers to support his head above water, and to anchor himself so as not to be carried down by the stream, while his huge body lay in his favourite element: or it does not seem unlikely that he might at times have hooked them on to the lower boughs of trees, to sustain himself while he plucked down from above the fruit and foliage with his trunk.

His bones have been found in various parts of France, Germany and Austria.

When these animals were living, the climate must have been very much warmer than it is at present in France, for their bones are found associated with palm trees, and other vegetable remains of hot climates, and the bones of crocodiles, tortoises, and other creatures which only live in warm regions. The isle of Sheppey consists chiefly of land which was deposited about the same time, and it contains a great quantity of fossil coffee, and similar plants at present restricted to the East and West Indies, and countries near the equator.

CHAPTER IV.

OF GREAT CAVERNS IN ENGLAND, AND GERMANY, CONTAINING BONES OF WILD ANIMALS.

In several parts of England there are great caverns in limestone and other rocks, which contain an immense quantity of the bones of such animals as are now found only in wild countries with warm climates. One of the most celebrated of these caves, is that of Kirkdale, in Yorkshire. Of the bones which most of them contain, three-fourths and upwards belong to bears, of a sort no longer to be found in the living state. One-half, or perhaps two-thirds, of the remaining fourth, have been traced to a species of hyæna, which is also unknown at the present day. A smaller number may be referred to a sort of tiger or lion, and to some species of the wolf or dog family. The smallest specimens are of various small flesh-eating animals, such as the fox, the polecat, and other kindred species. There are also in some of them bones of the Elephant, Rhinoceros, and Hippopotamus.

Plate III. p. 28

CAVE OF GAYLENREUTH

But the largest and most remarkable of these caves, is at Gaylenreuth, in Germany, of which the picture represents a section. You will understand this representation, if you read the following account of it by Dr. Buckland, the Professor of Geology, in the University of Oxford.

"The first grotto turns to the right, and is upwards of 80 feet long. It is divided into four parts by the unequal heights of the vaulted roof; the first three are from 15 to 20 feet high; whereas, the fourth is only from 4 to 5. On the bottom of this part, and on a level with the floor, there is an orifice only two feet high, which leads into the second grotto. This runs first southward for 60 feet, being 40 wide and 18 high; it then turns to the west through a space of 70 feet, becoming gradually lower till its altitude is only 5 feet. The passage to the third grotto is very incommodious, winding through several corridors. It is thirty feet wide, and only five or six high. The loam of the floor is stuffed full of teeth and jaw-bones. Near the entrance to it, is a gulf of 15 or 20 feet, into which visitors descend by a ladder. After going down, they arrive at a vault 15 feet diameter by 30 feet in height; and on the side on which they descend, is a grotto all bestrewed with bones. By going down a little further still, they fall in with a new arcade which conducts to a grotto 40 feet long, and a new gulf 18 or 20 feet deep. Even after this descent, another cavern presents itself 40 feet high, quite covered with bones. A passage now of 5 feet by 7 leads to a grotto 25 feet long and 12 wide; then alleys, 20 feet long, conduct into another cave 20 feet high; and finally, a grand grotto expands, 83 feet in width, and 24 in height, more copiously furnished with bones than any of the rest. The sixth and last grotto runs in a northerly direction, so that the whole series of caverns and corridors, describes nearly a semicircle.

"A rift in the third grotto, disclosed in 1784, a new grotto, 15 feet long by 4 wide, where the greatest number of hyænas' and lions' bones were found. The opening was much too narrow to have allowed these animals to have entered by it. A peculiar tunnel which terminated in this small grotto, afforded an incredible number of bones, and large skulls quite entire."

It is supposed that these caves were inhabited by the fierce animals whose bones they contain, and that the other more peaceable creatures were dragged in by them for prey, since their bones have evidently been gnawed and crushed as they would be by fierce and powerful carnivorous animals.

CHAPTER V.

OF OTHER ANIMALS THAT ONCE LIVED IN ENGLAND AND ELSEWHERE.

THE ELEPHANT.

I have before mentioned to you the bones of Elephants, as occurring in the bone caverns; they were, however, not just like the Elephants now living in Africa and Asia. The tusks seem to have been larger, and the head not quite so broad and blunt; the teeth were also different.

There are not perhaps many counties in England in which some of these remains have not been found, and generally not far below the surface of the soil. About London, and at Woolwich in particular, a great many specimens of the fossil tusks have been collected; they are chiefly of about the consistency of chalk, but if you break them across and look at the end, you can see the grain of the ivory, just as you do on a billiard-ball, or at the end of a knife-handle.

Before anatomy was understood so well as it is at present, the bones of the Elephant, and those of several other large extinct animals, were confounded together under the name of Mammoth. There is a remarkable account of the discovery of what was at the time called a Mammoth, (but which was, doubtless, an Elephant,) imbedded in ice in Siberia, which I shall relate to you, as it is very well written and of undoubted veracity.

"In the year 1799, a Tungusian fisherman observed a strange shapeless mass projecting from an ice-bank, near the mouth of a river in the north of Siberia, the nature of which he did not understand, and which was so high in the bank as to be beyond his reach. He next year observed the same object, which was then rather more disengaged from among the ice; but was still unable to conceive what it was. Towards the end of the following summer, 1801, he could distinctly see that it was the frozen carcass of an enormous animal, the entire flank of which, and one of its tusks, had become disengaged from the ice. In consequence of the ice beginning to melt earlier, and to a greater degree than usual, in 1803, the fifth year of this discovery, the enormous carcass became entirely disengaged, and fell down from the ice-crag on a sand-bank, forming part of the coast of the Arctic Ocean. In the month of March of that year, the Tungusian carried away the two tusks, which he sold for fifty rubles, about fifteen pounds sterling.

"Two years afterwards this animal still remained on the sand-bank where it had fallen from the ice; but its body was then greatly mutilated. The peasants had taken away considerable quantities of its flesh to feed their dogs; and the wild animals, particularly the white bears, had also feasted on the carcass; yet the skeleton remained quite entire, except that one of the fore-legs was gone. The entire spine, the pelvis, one shoulder-blade, and three legs, were still held together by their ligaments, and by some remains of the skin; and the other shoulder-blade was found at a short distance. The head remained, covered by the dried skin, and the pupil of the eyes was still distinguishable. The brain also remained within the skull, but a good deal shrunk and dried up; and one of the ears was in excellent preservation, still retaining a tuft of strong bristly hair. The upper lip was a good deal eaten away, and the under lip was entirely gone, so that the teeth were distinctly seen. The animal had a long mane on its neck.

"The skin was extremely thick and heavy, and so much of it remained as required the exertions of ten men to carry away, which they did with considerable difficulty. More than thirty pounds' weight of the hair and bristles of this animal were gathered from the wet sand-bank, having been trampled into the mud by the white bears, while devouring the carcass. The hair was of three distinct kinds; one consisting of stiff black bristles, a foot or more in length; another of thinner bristles, or coarse flexible hair, of a reddish-brown colour; and the third of a coarse reddish-brown wool, which grew among the roots of the hair. These afford an undeniable proof that this animal had belonged to a race of elephants inhabiting a cold region, with which we are now unacquainted, and by no means fitted to live in the torrid zone. It is also evident that this enormous animal must have been frozen up by the ice at the moment of its death."

THE GIGANTIC ELK.

There are frequently found in the peat bogs of England and Ireland, the bones and horns of a large Elk, called the gigantic Elk, and sometimes the Irish Elk.

Plate IV. p. 38

MEGATHERIUM GIGANTIC ELK

Here is a picture of him; and you may judge how well he was entitled to his name, when I tell you that some pairs of his horns have been found, which measured nearly twelve feet across from tip to tip. He must have been considerably larger than the Wapiti Deer in the Zoological Gardens, and of quite a different form.

It is not known when these creatures became extinct; but it is probable that it may have been since Britain has been inhabited by man.

THE MEGATHERIUM.

The bones of this great beast were first found at Buenos Ayres in South America, and a skeleton nearly complete was sent home from thence by the Governor to the Royal Cabinet of Madrid, in 1789. They were found in loose soil, and must apparently have belonged to nearly the same age as the Fossil Elephant and Irish Elk.

The head must have been very much like that of the sloth, but it seems to have possessed the addition of a small trunk like the Palæotherium I told you of just now. The structure of its legs (and in particular its very strong short thigh-bone, which is much stouter than that of any animal living,) shows that it must have moved very slowly.

Its teeth show that it lived on vegetables, and the great ungainly fore-feet, armed with tremendous claws, would lead one to suppose that it used to dig in the ground for roots, and tear down the branches of trees.

It appears to have been covered with a thick shell or coating, thicker than the hide of a rhinoceros, and rather resembling the covering of the armadillo. I have seen a piece of this wonderful coat of armour in the Museum at Paris, which was found along with the skeleton in South America.

If one might decide from its likeness to other animals in its various parts, it was a sulky beast, and, if it could have spoken, would only have said to its neighbours, "Let me alone—I want nothing of you, if you want nothing of me."

Its length was full 13 feet, and its height about 9 feet; so you may suppose armed, and defended as it was, there was not much chance of other animals being disposed to meddle with it, for it must have been big enough and strong enough to take good care of itself, though it could not run very fast.

THE BEAVER.

You will, perhaps, be surprised to hear that Beavers once lived in England; but it is known from history, that they were found in Wales as late as the twelfth century. I have got the bones of some, that were given me by a countryman, who picked them out of a peat bog in Hampshire, without knowing what they were. They were buried close by some hazel nuts, and some moss that had not lost its colour, and was in no degree decayed; such is the great power possessed by certain minerals that exist in these peat bogs, to preserve things from decay, even during a period which could hardly be less than a thousand years.

It is related, that the foot of a lady, which seemed quite fresh, was found in peat, where it had lain in contact with some of these substances, with a sandal of a kind that must have been worn many hundreds of years ago. And though I will not assert that it is true, yet I will say, that it is very likely to be so, from what I have seen myself, in regard to nuts, and moss, and various weeds.

THE DODO.

When the Dutch in the 16th century, took possession of the Isle of France, now called Mauritius, which up to that time had not been inhabited by man, they found a large bird something of the Duck kind, of which they sent home specimens and representations. They called it the Dodo, but why, I cannot tell you.

The race has now become extinct, so that many naturalists have declared that it never existed, and that the account of it was naughtily invented, and sent home for the gratification and delusion of

"Those who greedily pursue

Things wonderful instead of true."

But there is not the least doubt of its being a fact, for in the Museum in London there is a painting said to have been taken from the living bird; there is also a leg and a plaster cast of the head placed near the painting, which naturalists have determined could not have belonged to any other animal known, from their peculiar construction; there is also another foot and the head from which the cast was taken, preserved in the Museum of the University of Oxford, being the remains of an entire specimen which was kept in the collection of curiosities made by Elias Ashmole, Esq. till it rotted. This is representation of these two valuable relics.

The account of the removal of the bones was entered in the records of the University, and the date is the 1st January, 1755.

More recently some of the bones have been found in the Mauritius, and have been sent to Paris, where I have heard they may be seen now.

It seems to have been the most unwieldy and inactive bird in existence, and to have held nearly the same kind of place among feathered animals as the sloth does among beasts. The body was very massive, and almost round, and seemed to be stuck upon two short thick legs like pillars. The tail was strangely out of its place, according to the usual form of birds; and two little caricatures of wings were hung upon its great blank sides. A thick pursy neck supported the head, which consisted of two enormous chaps that opened far behind the eyes. You will best understand the form of the bill by looking at the cut copied from the painting which I mentioned before, and you may there see how like a monk's cowl the feathers of his head looked.

Some of the Dutch who met with this bird in its own country called it the nauseous bird, and declared that its flesh was intolerably disagreeable to the taste; while others asserted that it was very good eating, and that about three Dodos would feast a hundred men. But whatever may have been the quality of the flesh, I do not believe what the latter said of its quantity, for the head and leg which I have seen, and which appear to have belonged to a full grown bird, are not very much larger than those of a swan.

However this is now a question which of course will never be certainly decided, as there are no more of them to be eaten. It appears that, like the beavers and wolves in England, the progress of man and cultivation deprived them of their sources of sustenance.

If we may judge of what his character was, from his appearance, he must have been a silly, voracious creature, with hardly any power of resistance or flight. However, like all the rest of God's works, he was no doubt adapted for the circumstances in which he was placed, and had enough means of enjoyment, to make it well worth his while to live as long as he could.

CHAPTER VI.

PARLEY DESCRIBES VOLCANOES, EARTHQUAKES, AND HOT SPRINGS.

You have no doubt often heard of Volcanoes and Earthquakes, for almost everybody in all ages has felt a deep interest in them, and a curiosity to know what they are caused by. If you will listen to me, while I merely describe them as they really exist, without "drawing the long bow," as people say, I will then tell you how I think they are produced.

It is quite certain that there is an important connexion between Volcanoes and Earthquakes; and we may safely take this for granted, and at once call the cause of both, whatever it may be, volcanic agency.

It has been discovered by extensive observations, that this agency does not exert itself in individual spots, so as to produce here a Volcano and there an Earthquake; but its operations take place over long tracts of country in which the Volcanoes are placed, and, in the spaces between them, Earthquakes are more or less frequent.

These tracts are called Volcanic bands; one of them extends nearly parallel with the West Coast of South America, along the chain of mountains called the Andes, which you will see marked on the map; and another much smaller extends from Mount Vesuvius to Mount Etna, with the Volcanic Island Stromboli, and several extinct Volcanoes lying between them, and then turns to the East, through several of the Greek Islands, and passes on to Syria, where Earthquakes are frequent.

Earthquakes in their simplest form are nothing more than violent shakings of the ground; but sometimes the earth is split open; sometimes it is raised; and sometimes it is depressed.

I shall tell you of some of the changes which took place in the great Earthquake of Calabria, which lies in the smaller volcanic band I mentioned to you between Vesuvius and Etna.

EARTHQUAKE OF CALABRIA.

The shocks began in 1783, and lasted for nearly four years, till the end of 1786. During this time the King of Naples sent persons to take correct notes and representations of all that was going on, and we have therefore got a better account of it than we have of any other Earthquake that ever occurred.

The convulsion of the earth, sea, and air, extended as far as Naples, and over the whole of Sicily; but the district over which it was so violent as to excite intense alarm, was about five hundred miles in circumference.

"The first shock of February 5th, 1783, threw down, in two minutes, the greater part of the houses in all the cities, towns, and villages, from the western sides of the Apennines in Calabria Ultra, to Messina in Sicily, and convulsed the whole surface of the country. Another occurred on the 28th of March, with almost equal violence. The chain of granite mountains which passes through Calabria from north to south, and attains the height of many thousand feet, was shaken but slightly; but it is said that a great part of the shocks which were spread with a wave-like motion through the recent strata from west to east, became very violent when they reached the point of junction with the granite, as if a reaction was produced where the wave-like movement of the soft strata was suddenly arrested by the more solid rocks. The surface of the country often heaved like the billows of a swelling sea, which produced a swimming in the head like sea-sickness. It is particularly stated, in almost all the accounts, that just before each shock the clouds appeared motionless; and although no explanation is offered of this phenomenon, it is obviously the same as that observed in a ship at sea when it pitches violently. The clouds seem arrested in their career as often as the vessel rises in a direction contrary to their course; so that the Calabrians must have experienced precisely the same motion on the land."

At Messina in Sicily, the shore was rent; and the soil along the port, which before the shock was perfectly level, was inclined towards the sea, and the sea itself was considerably deeper, which showed that the inclination must have been occasioned by the bottom's sinking. The quay also sunk down 14 inches below the level of the sea, and the houses in the neighbourhood were much cracked.

In one town there was a large round tower of great strength, which was divided by a perpendicular rent, and one-half was raised up several feet, so as to show the foundations. Those who saw it, said that it looked like a great tooth half extracted, showing the fangs. Along the line of the crack, the walls were found to fit so exactly together, that you would not have known they had even been divided if the courses of the stones had not been disturbed.

There was a very curious difference between some of the walls which had been thrown down, or very much shaken by some of the shocks. In some of them, the separate stones were parted from the mortar, so as to leave an exact mould where they had rested; and in others, the mortar was ground to dust between the stones. It was not less strange to see the effect of what must have been whirling movements in the ground. In some streets, one house would be thrown down, and leave the rest uninjured; while in others, all the houses but one were thrown down, and that one remained firm and unmoved. Two obelisks were twisted round, so that the stones of which they were composed, stood at cross purposes. This cut represents one of the two, as it stood after the earthquake, and before.

"It appears evident that a great part of the rending and splitting of the ground was the effect of a violent motion from below upwards; and in a multitude of cases where the rents and chasms opened and closed alternately, we must suppose that the earth was by turns heaved up, and then let fall again. We may conceive the same effect to be produced on a small scale, if, by some mechanical force, a pavement composed of large flags of stone should be raised up and then allowed to fall suddenly, so as to resume its original position. If any small pebbles happened to be lying on the line of contact of two flags, they would fall into the opening when the pavement rose, and be swallowed up, so that no trace of them would appear after the subsidence of the stones. In the same manner, when the earth was upheaved, large houses, trees, cattle, and men were engulfed in an instant in chasms and fissures; and when the ground sunk down again, the earth closed upon them, so that no vestige of them was discoverable on the surface. In many instances individuals were swallowed up by one shock, and then thrown out alive, together with large jets of water, by the shock which immediately succeeded."

The district called Jerocarne, was torn in a surprising manner, and in one spot the cracks resembled those in a starred pane of glass; and as these cracks remained open when the earthquake was over, it seemed as if the middle had been permanently lifted up.

"In the vicinity of Oppido, the central point from which the earthquake diffused its violent movements, many houses were swallowed up by the yawning earth, which closed immediately over them. In the adjacent district also of Cannamaria, four farm-houses, several oil-stores, and some spacious dwelling-houses were so completely engulphed in one chasm, that no vestige of them was afterwards discernible."

Amongst the many fissures that were opened, there was one, a mile long, a hundred feet wide, and thirty feet deep; and another, three quarters of a mile long, one hundred and fifty feet wide, and one hundred feet deep; and a third, about a quarter of a mile long, which was two hundred and twenty-five feet deep.

A mountain was cleft completely in two; and a lake of considerable size was formed by the opening of this great chasm, and springs bursting out at the bottom. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood were afraid that the pool of nearly stagnant water which was thus formed would injure their health, and were at great expense in trying to drain it; but it was all in vain, for the springs that fed it at the bottom were inexhaustible.

A great mass of earth, or hill, two hundred feet high, and four hundred feet in diameter, was moved nearly four miles out of its place, with trees growing upon it; and another similar mass, with a house on it, which was not at all injured. Some olive and mulberry trees travelled a full mile. These great movements were aided by springs under the masses of earth, which made a slimy sort of road for them; and, of course, the whole distance was down hill.

"Great agitation was frequently observed in the bed of the sea during the shocks, and, on those parts of the coast where the movement was most violent, all kinds of fish were taken in greater abundance, and with much greater facility. Some rare species, which usually lie buried in the sand, were taken on the surface of the waters in great quantity. The sea is said to have boiled up near Messina, and to have been agitated as if by a copious discharge of vapours from its bottom. The Prince of Scilla had persuaded a great part of his vassals to betake themselves to their fishing-boats for safety, and he himself had gone on board. On the night of the 5th of February, when some of the people were sleeping in the boats, and others on a level plain, slightly elevated above the sea, the earth rocked, and suddenly a great mass was torn from the contiguous Mount Jaci, and thrown down with a dreadful crash upon the plain. Immediately afterwards, the sea rising thirty palms above the level of this low tract, rolled foaming over it, and swept away the multitude. It then retreated, but soon rushed back again with greater violence, bringing with it some of the people and animals it had carried away. At the same time every boat was sunk or dashed against the beach, and some of them were swept far inland. The aged Prince, with one thousand four hundred and thirty of his people, was destroyed. The number of persons who perished during the earthquake is estimated at about forty thousand, and about twenty thousand more died by diseases which were caused by insufficient nourishment, exposure to the atmosphere, and malaria, arising from the new stagnant lakes and pools. By far the greater number were buried under the ruins of their houses; while some were burnt to death in the conflagrations which almost invariably followed the shocks, and consumed immense magazines of oil and other provisions. A small number were engulfed in chasms and fissures, and their skeletons are perhaps buried in the earth to this day, at the depth of several hundred feet, for such was the profundity of some of the openings which did not close in again."

There is a fine description of the Earthquake and this melancholy result, in Cowper's Task, which we shall quote.

Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now

Lie scatter'd where the shapely column stood.

Her palaces are dust. In all her streets

The voice of singing and the sprightly chord

Are silent. Revelry, and dance, and show

Suffer a syncope and solemn pause;

While God performs upon the trembling stage

Of his own works his dreadful part alone.

The rocks fall headlong, and the valleys rise,

The rivers die into offensive pools,

And charged with putrid verdure, breathe a gross

And mortal nuisance into all the air.

What solid was, by transformation strange,

Grows fluid; and the fix'd and rooted earth,

Tormented into billows, heaves and swells,

Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl

Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immense

The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs

And agonies of human and of brute

Multitudes, fugitive on every side,

And fugitive in vain. The sylvan scene

Migrates uplifted; and, with all its soil

Alighting in far distant fields, finds out

A new possessor, and survives the change.

Ocean has caught the frenzy, and upwrought

To an enormous and o'erbearing height,

Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice

Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore

With force resistless. Where now the throng,

That press'd the beach, and, hasty to depart,

Look'd to the sea for safety? They are gone,

Gone with the refluent wave into the deep—

A prince with half his people!

You will find a great many other astonishing effects of this Earthquake described in Mr. Lyell's Work on Geology, from which I have extracted some parts of the preceding account.

VOLCANOES.

The word Volcano comes from Vulcan, the name of the God of fire in the Greek mythology. You have read how the poets used to represent him as engaged underground in forging thunderbolts for Jupiter, and other work of the same kind, with the assistance of his one-eyed journeymen the Cyclopes. They feigned that Volcanoes were the chimneys of his workshops, and that when an eruption took place he was busy forging his iron.

Others pretended that when Jupiter had overcome the giants named Titans, who had rebelled against him, instead of putting them in the stocks, he placed mountains upon them, and that when the imprisoned monsters turned themselves from one side to the other, earthquakes and eruptions were the consequence.

However, we don't believe any of these stories now, neither perhaps did the ancients. But you must learn all about them and their meaning, (where they have any,) from your schoolmaster. My business now is to tell you what Volcanoes are.

They are openings in the surface of the earth, from whence ignited matter of various kinds, smoke, and ashes, are sent forth by some subterranean agency.

For the most part they do not always keep in activity, but have long intervals of rest for months, and sometimes for very many years, between the eruptions.

One of the few that always keeps in eruption, is Stromboli, one of the Lipari Islands off the coast of Sicily, which there is good reason to think, has been active for nearly 1600 years. This Volcano is merely a mountain or rock, standing out of the sea, and the melted matter, that occasionally runs down its sides, flows directly into the water, and at once kills and parboils the fish that happen to be near it, and they are thus sometimes taken and eaten by the poor fishermen who live about the base of the mountain.

The way in which an eruption takes place in a Volcano of the other kind, when it has been quiet for a long time, is as follows.

Great noises are heard about the foot of the mountain, and earthquakes frequently occur for several days before any change is seen in the opening or crater, as it is called. The springs in the neighbourhood often disappear, and as you may suppose all these forebodings make the people who live near gloomy enough.

After a time a dreadful burst takes place, and the crater is in an instant cleared of the stones and earth that may have fallen into it during the period of repose; ashes and cinders, rocks and stones, are thrown up to an immense height in the air, and a great cloud of smoke and steam accompanies them.

In perfectly still weather, this vapour is seen to shape itself in a very beautiful manner. The immense impulse from beneath sends it up to a vast height as straight and almost as distinct as a pillar. At a certain elevation, it spreads abroad and assumes the appearance represented in the plate. When this occurs on Vesuvius, the Italians call it the pine tree cloud, from the resemblance its form bears to that of a pine tree.

As the eruption goes on the cloud of smoke which is always copiously charged with electricity, sends out brilliant lightnings; its form becomes disturbed, and the dark volumes of vapour are angrily sent forth in shapeless masses. Red-hot stones are sent into the air to a stupendous height; the melted matter boils up inside the crater and rolls down the sides of the mountain, setting fire to the trees that it meets with, and destroying or enveloping whatever else remains in its way.

You will see their effect as they appear by night, in the other plate. I should tell you that the Volcano represented in both the pictures is Mount Vesuvius.

Plate V. p. 64

VESUVIUS N^o. 1

The melted matter that boils up in the crater, and flows down the mountain, is called Lava. I dare say most of you have seen some pieces of this substance when polished and worked into ornaments. It is found in great variety, and is sometimes black, porous, and light like cinders; sometimes it consists of crystallized particles of quartz, felspar, and other minerals, so as closely to resemble granite; and not unfrequently it is a solid dark-coloured mass, heavy and hard as the stone that our streets are paved with.

It issues from the crater in a melted state, bubbling and boiling like water in a tea-kettle, but you must not therefore suppose that it runs down the declivity of the mountain like water. On the contrary, its motion is mostly very slow, seldom being faster when it gets at some distance from the crater, than four miles an hour, which is about as fast as a man can walk. When it has run still further from its source it does not travel more than a few yards in a day.

The motion of a stream of Lava is very peculiar, for the surface exposed to the air is immediately formed into a crust, and hence it constantly moves with a crackling noise, and when the stream is quite fresh no light is seen except in the cracks that are constantly being formed at the extremity.

In this way a current will sometimes go drawling on for months after the eruption which gave rise to it has ceased.

A very curious effect is produced when the lava runs in a certain state of fluidity down a steep descent. A thick, strong crust forms on the outside, and it is one of the qualities of lava when it has become hard, like most other stony substances, to present great opposition to the passage of heat. In consequence of this the liquid lava in the inside of the current is kept hot, and continues to run on for a long time after the supply from the crater has ceased, and leaves the crust in the form of an arched passage.

From what I have told you about lava streams, you will see that there is not much danger from them to living creatures, who may always get out of their way fast enough: but sometimes houses and even towns are enveloped in them.

Plate VI. p. 66

VESUVIUS N^o. 2

However, from the peculiar mode in which they travel there is often a way of preventing this, and on one occasion it was resorted to, and the town of Catania thereby saved. A current of lava from Mount Etna was making its way straight towards the town, but a body of fifty bold strong fellows went out to meet it, armed with crow bars; with these they broke great holes in the crust at the side, and thus the stream was turned into another course, and pursued its way on one side of the town.

Throughout an eruption, a great quantity of dust is produced by the rubbing of the stones against each other which are thrown out from the crater, and often fall back and are thrown up again several times.

This dust is driven over a great extent of country, and a gentleman whom I visited, who lived about fourteen miles from Mount Vesuvius, told me that during the great eruption of 1822, his garden was covered with them, to the depth of full six inches.

But in more violent eruptions they are carried much further than this. In an eruption of a Volcano in Sumbawa, an island which lies some miles to the East of Java, the ashes were carried to a distance of 270 miles in such quantities as to darken the air, and in another direction they were found 300 miles off. They fell so heavily 40 miles away from the Volcano that they broke into many houses, and rendered them uninhabitable.

Quantities of liquid lava are thrown upwards, and shape themselves into nearly the forms of fish by their passage through the air. These are called bombs by the inhabitants, and the fall of them is very justly dreaded, as they come with great violence.

The size of the largest of those from which the following picture was taken, was six inches long, two inches and a quarter wide, and one inch and three quarters thick; but there are much larger sometimes.

If you should have a chance of examining any of these, you may observe how wisely the living principle, which gives the figure to fish, has been ordained by their Creator to provide the best form to assist their motions, in a medium in which they are suspended, and do not move on ground as the beasts do; seeing that it is precisely the same sort of figure as the laws of inanimate matter impress upon it, when in a yielding state, and being impelled to move under similar circumstances.

I must give you a notion of the quantity of lava sometimes sent out in a single eruption.