FOOTNOTES:
[3] The opinion maintained by some geologists, that certain strata have been formed in the inclined position in which they are now found, admitting it true with regard to some particular strata which might have been crystallized, as Mr Greenough supposes, like the deposit which encrusts the inside of vessels, in which water containing gypsum has been boiled, cannot at least apply to those which contain shells or rolled stones, which could not have waited, so suspended, the formation of the cement by which they were to be agglutinated.
[5] The conjecture of the Marquis de la Place, that the materials of which the globe is composed, have perhaps existed at first in the elastic form, and have successively assumed a liquid consistence on cooling, and have at length been solidified, is well supported by the recent experiments of M. Mitscherlich, who has composed, of all sorts of substances, and crystallized by the heat of intense furnaces, several of the mineral species which enter into the composition of primitive mountains.—Note D.
[6] The Travels of Saussure and Deluc present a multitude of facts of this description. These geologists imagined, that they could only have been produced by enormous eruptions. De Buch and Escher have recently employed themselves upon this subject. The memoir of the latter, inserted in the Nouvelle Alpina of Steinmüller, vol. i. presents the general results in a remarkable manner. The following is a comprehensive view of them: Such of these blocks as are scattered over the low parts of Switzerland and Lombardy, come from the Alps, and have descended along their valleys. They occur every where, and of all sizes, up to 50,000 cubic feet, over the great extent of country which separates the Alps from the Jura mountains; and they rise upon the sides of the latter facing the Alps, to a height of 4000 feet above the level of the sea. They are found at the surface, or in the superficial layers of debris, but not in the strata of sandstone, molasse, or conglomerate, which fill up almost every where the interval in question. They are sometimes isolated, sometimes in heaps. The height of their situation is not connected with their magnitude; the smaller ones alone appear sometimes a little worn, but the large ones are not so at all. Those which belong to the basin of each river are found, upon examination, to be of the same nature as the mountains of the tops or sides of the high valleys in which the tributary streams of this river take their rise. They are already seen in these upper valleys, and are particularly accumulated at the places which are situated above some of the contractions of these valleys. They have passed over the lower hills, when their height has not been more than 4000 feet; and then they are seen upon the other side of the ridges, in the cantons between the Alps and Jura, and even upon the latter itself. It is opposite the mouths of the valleys of the Alps that they are seen in the greatest quantity, and at the greatest heights; those of the intervening spaces have not been carried so high. Among the chains of the Jura mountains, which are more remote from the Alps, they are only found in places which are opposite the openings of the nearer chains.
From these facts, the author draws the conclusion, that the transportation of these blocks has taken place at a period subsequent to the deposition of the sandstones and conglomerates, and has perhaps been occasioned by the last of the revolutions which the globe has experienced. He compares the transportation in question to that which still takes place from the agency of torrents; but the objections presented by the consideration of the great size of the blocks, and the deep valleys over which they must have passed, appear to us to militate greatly against this part of his hypothesis.—Note E.
[7] Regarding the changes of the surface of the earth, known from history or tradition, and consequently dependent on causes still in operation, see the German work of M. de Hof, entitled “ Geschichte der Natürlichen Veränderungen der Erdoberfläche,” 2 vols. 8vo. Goth. 1822 and 1824. The facts contained in it are collected with equal care and erudition.
[10] Voyage aux Terres Australes, t. i. p. 161.
[12] It is a common opinion in Sweden, that the level of the sea is becoming lower, and that many places may even be forded or passed dry-shod, which were formerly impracticable. Eminent philosophers have adopted this popular opinion; and M. von Buch goes so far as to suppose that the whole of Sweden is gradually rising. But it is singular, that no one has made, or at least published, a series of accurate observations, calculated to confirm a fact that had been announced so long ago, and which would leave no doubt upon the mind, if, as Linnæus asserts, this difference of level were so much as four or five feet yearly. Note I.
[13] Mr Stevenson, in his observations upon the bed of the German Ocean and British Channel, maintains that the level of the sea is continually rising, and has been very sensibly elevated within the last three centuries. Fortis asserts the same of some parts of the Adriatic sea. But the example of the Temple of Serapis, near Pouzzola, proves that the margins of that sea are, in many places, of such a nature as to be subject to local risings and fallings. On the other hand, there are thousands of quays, roads, and other works, made along the sea-side by the Romans, from Alexandria to Belgium, the relative level of which has never varied. Note K.
[14] When I formerly mentioned this circumstance of the science of geology having become ridiculous, I only expressed a fact, to the truth of which every day bears witness; but in this I did not profess to give my own opinion, as some respectable geologists seem to have believed. If their mistake has arisen from any thing equivocal in my expressions, I here apologize to them.
[15] Burnet, Telluris Theoria Sacra. Lond. 1681.
[16] Woodward, Essay towards the Natural History of the Earth. Lond. 1702.
[17] Scheuchzer, Mém. de l’Acad. 1708.
[18] Whiston, New Theory of the Earth. Lond. 1708.
[19] Leibnitz, Protogæa. Act. Lips. 1683; Gott. 1749.
[20] Telliamed. Amsterd. 1748.
[21] Theorie de la Terre, 1749; and Epoques de la Nature, 1775.
[22] See La Physique de Rodig. p. 106, Leipsic, 1801; and Telliamed, vol. ii. p. 169, as well as a multitude of new German works. M. de Lamarck has of late years developed this system to a great extent, in France, and supported it with much ingenuity, in his Hydrogeologie and Philosophie Zoologique.
[23] M. Patrin has shewn much ingenuity in supporting these fantastical ideas, in several articles of the Nouveau Dictionnaire d’Histoire Naturelle.
[24] This application of pantheism to geology may be best seen in the works of Oken and Steffens.
[25] Delamétherie, in his “Géologie,” admits crystallization as the principal agent.
[26] Hutton and Playfair.—Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth. Edin. 1802.
[27] Lamanon,—in various parts of the Journal de Physique,—after Michaelis, and several others.
[28] Dolomieu, in the Journal de Physique.
[29] MM. de Marschall, in their Researches respecting the Origin and Development of the present order of the World. Giessen, 1802.
[30] Bertrand,—Periodical Renewal of the Terrestrial Continents. Hamburgh, 1799.
[31] My work has, in fact, proved how far this inquiry was yet new when I commenced it, notwithstanding the excellent labours of Camper, Pallas, Blumenbach, Merk, Sömmering, Rosenmüller, Fischer, Faujas, Home, and other learned men, whose works I have most scrupulously cited in such of my chapters as their researches are connected with.
[32] This is more particularly noticed in the Chapter on Elephants in the first volume of Professor Cuvier’s Recherches.
[33] See the history of the Rhinoceros in the first part of the second volume of Professor Cuvier’s Recherches.
[34] See the chapter on the Hippopotamus, in the first volume of Recherches.
[35] Hist. Anim. Lib. ii. cap. 1.
[36] Jul. Capitol., Gord. iii. cap. 23.
[37] Antilope Gnu, Gmel.
[38] Pliny, Lib. viii. cap. 32.; and Ælian, Lib. vii. cap. 5.
[39] Ælian, Anim. v. 27.
[40] Pliny, lib. viii. cap. 15.; and lib. xi. cap. 37.
[41] Ælian, Anim. xiv. 14.
[42] Opp. Cyneg., ii. v. 445. et seq.
[43] Pliny, lib. viii. cap. 21.
[44] See the great Work upon Egypt, Antiq. iv. pl. 49.; and pl. 66.
[45] Ælian, Anim. xv. 14.
[46] Idem, Anim. iii. 34.
[47] Arist. Hist. Anim. lib. ii. cap. 5.
[48] Ælian, ii. 53.
[49] Idem, ii. 20.
[50] Idem, xv. 24.
[51] Idem, xv. 24.
[52] Idem, Anim. iii. 3.
[53] Idem, iv. 32.
[54] This is more particularly explained in the chapters upon Deer and Oxen, in the fourth volume of Professor Cuvier’s Recherches.
[55] Aurochs is Bos Urus, Lin., not the Urus of the ancients, which latter appears now to be extinct.
[56] Buffon having read in Du Fouilloux a mutilated passage of Gaston-Phébus, Count de Foix, in which that prince describes the chase of the rein-deer, imagined that, in the time of Gaston, this animal lived in the Pyrenees; and the printed editions of Gaston were so faulty, that it was difficult to make out, with certainty, what the author had intended to say; but having had recourse to his original manuscript, which is preserved in the Royal Library, I have ascertained that it was in Xueden and Nourvègue, (Sweden and Norway), that he relates having seen and hunted the rein-deer.
[57] Athenæis, lib. v.
[58] The only error committed, is that of giving it a claw too much to the hind foot. Augustus exhibited thirty-six of them; Dion, lib. lv.
[59] Caracalla killed one of them in the Circus; Dion, lib. lxxvii. Consult also Gisb. Cuperi de Eleph. in nummis obviis, ex. ii. cap. vii.
[60] See Lichtenstein, Comment. de Simiarum quotquot veteribus innotuerunt formis. Hamburgh, 1791.
[61] The Jerboa is impressed upon the medals of Cyrene, and indicated by Aristotle under the name of Two-legged Rat.
[62] Plin. viii. 31. Arist. lib. ii. cap. 40. Phot. Bibl., Art. 72; Ctes. Indic. Ælian, Anim., iv. 21.
[63] Ælian, Anim. iv. 27.
[64] Ælian, xvi. 20. Photius, Bibl., art. 72. Ctes. Indic.
[65] See Corneille Lebrun, Voyage en Muscovie, en Perse et aux Indes, tom. ii. See also the German work by M. Heeren, on the Commerce of the Ancients.
[66] Photius, Bibl., art. 250. Agatharchid., Excerpt. hist., cap. xxxix. Ælian, Anim. xvii. 45. Plin. viii. 21.
[67] I have even seen, in the collection of the late Mr Addrien Camper, a skeleton of a hyena, in which several of the vertebræ of the neck were anchylosed. It was probably from seeing some similar individual that the character in question was attributed to all hyenas. This animal ought to be more subject than any other to such an accident, on account of the prodigious power of the muscles of its neck, and the frequent use which it makes of them. When the hyena has laid hold of any thing, it is easier to drag it along by it than to wrest it from its jaws; and it is this circumstance which has caused the Arabs to consider it as the emblem of invincible obstinacy.
[68] It does not in reality change its sex, but it has an orifice in the perineum, which might make it be supposed to be hermaphrodite.
[69] Arist. Anim. ii. 1. iii. 1. Plin. xl. 46.
[70] Herod. iv. 192.
[71] Oppian, Cyneg. ii. vers. 551.
[72] Plin. viii. 53.
[73] Philostorg. iii. 11.
[74] Plin. viii. 21.
[75] Onesicrit, ap. Strab. lib. xv. Ælian, xiii. 42.
[76] Plin. viii. 31.
[77] Barrow’s Voyage to the Cape, Fr. transl. ii. 178.
[78] Oppian, Cyneg, lib. II. v. 468. and 471.
[79] De Anim. lib. xv. cap. 14.
[80] Ælian, Anim. iv. 52; Photius, Bibl. p. 154.
[81] I do not intend by this remark, as I have already observed on a former occasion, to detract from the merit of the observations of Camper, Pallas, Blumenbach, Sœmmering, Merk, Faugas, Rosenmüller, Home, &c.; but their excellent works, which have been very useful to me, and which I quote throughout, are incomplete; and several of these works have only been published since the first editions of this Essay.
[82] See M. Frederick Cuvier’s memoir upon the varieties of dogs, in the Annales du Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, which he drew up at the request of Professor Cuvier, from a series of skeletons of all the varieties of the dog prepared in the Professor’s collection.
[83] The first figure made of it from nature is in the Description de la Menagerie, a work composed by M. Cuvier. It is seen perfectly represented in the great work on Egypt.—Antiq. t. iv. pl. xlix.
[84] See the Journal de Marseille et des Bouches-du-Rhône, of the 27th Sept. 25th Oct. and 1st Nov. 1820.
[85] I am confirmed in this opinion by the sketches transmitted to me by M. Cottard, one of the Professors of the College of Marseilles.
[86] These skeletons, more or less mutilated, are found near Port de Moule, on the north-west coast of the mainland of Guadaloupe, in a kind of slope resting against the steep edges of the island. This slope is, in a great measure, covered by the sea at high-water, and is nothing else than a tufa, formed, and daily augmented, by the very small debris of shells and corals, which the waves detach from the rocks, and the accumulated mass of which assumes a great degree of cohesion in the places that are most frequently left dry. We find, on examining them with a lens, that several of these fragments have the same red tint as a part of the corals contained in the reefs of the island. Formations of this kind are common in the whole archipelago of the Antilles, where they are known to the Negroes under the name of Maçonne-bon-dieu. Their augmentation is proportioned to the violence of the surge. They have extended the plain of the Cayes to St Domingo, the situation of which has some resemblance to the Plage du Moule, and there are sometimes found in it fragments of earthen vessels, and of other articles of human fabrication, at a depth of twenty feet. A thousand conjectures have been made, and even events imagined, to account for these skeletons of Guadaloupe. But, from all the circumstances of the case, M. Moreau de Jonnès, correspondent of the Academy of Sciences, who has been upon the spot, and to whom I am indebted for the above details, thinks that they are merely bodies of persons that have perished by shipwreck. They were discovered in 1805 by M. Manuel Cortès y Campomanès, at that time a general officer in the service of the colony. General Ernouf, the governor, caused one to be extracted with much labour, of which the head, and almost the whole superior extremities, were wanting. This had been deposited at Guadaloupe, in the expectation that another and more complete specimen would be procured, in order to send them together to Paris, when the island was taken by the English. Admiral Cochrane having found this skeleton at the headquarters, sent it to the English Admiralty, who presented it to the British Museum. It is still in that collection, and M. Kœnig, Keeper of the Mineralogical Department, has described it in the Phil. Trans. of 1814, and there I saw it in 1818. M. Kœnig observes, that the stone in which it is imbedded, has not been cut to its present shape, but that it seems to have been simply inserted, in the form of a distinct nodule, into the surrounding mass. The skeleton is so superficial, that its presence must have been perceived by the projection of some of its bones. They still contain some of their animal matter, and the whole of their phosphate of lime. The rock being entirely formed of pieces of corals, and of compact limestone, readily dissolves in nitric acid. M. Kœnig has detected fragments of Millepora miniacea, of several madrepores, and of shells, which he compares to Helix acuta and Turbo pica. This fossil skeleton is represented in Plate I. More recently, General Donzelot has caused another of these skeletons to be extracted, which is now in the Royal Cabinet, and of which a figure is given in Plate II. It is a body which has the knees bent. A small portion of the upper jaw, the left half of the lower, nearly the whole of one side of the trunk and pelvis, and a large portion of the left upper and lower extremities, are what remain of it. The rock which contains it, is evidently a travertin, in which are imbedded shells of the neighbouring sea, and land-shells, which are still found alive in the island, namely, the Bulimus guadalupensis of Ferussac.
[87] See M. de Schlotheim’s Treatise on Petrifactions, Gotha, 1820, p. 57; and his Letter in the Isis of 1820, 8th Number, No. 6. of Supplement.
[88] It is perhaps proper that I take notice of those fragments of sandstone, regarding which some noise was attempted to be made last year (1824), and in which a man and a horse were alleged to have been found petrified. The mere circumstance of its being a man and a horse, with their flesh and skin, that these fragments must have represented, might have enabled every one to perceive that the whole was a mere lusus naturæ, and not a true petrifaction.—Note L.
[89] Fourcroy has given an analysis of them in the Annales du Museum, vol. x. p. 1.
[90] Journal de Physique, t. xlii, p. 40. et seq.
[91] Herod. Euterpe, v. and xxv.
[92] Arist. Meteor. lib. i. cap. 14.
[93] Demaillet, Description of Egypt, p. 102-3.
[94] Herod. Euterpe, xiii.
[95] See M. Girard’s Observations on the valley of Egypt; and on the secular increase of the soil which covers it, in the great work upon Egypt, and Mod. Mem. t. ii. p. 343. On this subject we may further observe that Dolomieu, Shaw, and other respectable authors, have estimated these secular elevations much higher than M. Girard. It is to be lamented, that nowhere has it been tried to examine the depth of these deposits over the original soil, or the natural rock.
[96] See M. Forfait’s Memoir on the lagunes of Venice, inserted in the Mém. de la Classe Phys. de l’Institut, t. v. p. 213.
[98] In various parts of the two last volumes of his Letters to the Queen of England.
[99] Melpom. lxxxvi.
[100] Ibid. lvi.
[101] This supposed diminution of the Black Sea and Sea of Asoph, has also been attributed to the rupture of the Bosphorus, which had taken place at the pretended period of the deluge of Deucalion; and yet, in order to establish the fact itself, recourse is had to successive diminutions of the extent attributed to these seas by Herodotus, Strabo, and others. But it is very obvious, that, if this diminution had arisen from the rupture of the Bosphorus, it would necessarily have been completed long before the time of Herodotus, and even at the period at which Deucalion is supposed to have lived.
[102] See the Geography of Herodotus by M. Rennel, p. 56. et seq.; and the Physical Geography of the Black Sea, &c. by M. Dureau de Lamalle. There is only at present the small river of Kamennoipost, that could represent the Gerrhus and Hypacyris, such as they are described by Herodotus.
M. Dureau, p. 170, supposes Herodotus to have made the Borysthenes and Hypanis discharge themselves into the Palus Mæotis; but Herodotus (in Melpom. liii.) only says that these two rivers fall together into the same lake, that is, into the Liman, as at the present day. Herodotus does not carry the Gerrhus and Hypacyris any farther.
[103] For example, M. Dureau de Lamalle, in his Physical Geography of the Black Sea, quotes Aristotle (Meteor. lib. i. cap. 13.) as “apprising us, that, in his time, there still existed several ancient periods and peripli, attesting that there had been a canal leading from the Caspian Sea into the Palus Mæotis.” Now, Aristotle’s words at the place mentioned (Duval’s edition, i. 545. B.) are merely these: “From the Paropamisus, descend, among other rivers, the Bactrus, the Choaspes, and the Araxis, from which the Tanais, which is a branch of it, takes its origin, into the Palus Mæotis.” Who does not see that this nonsense, which is neither founded upon peripli nor periods, is nothing else than the strange idea of Alexander’s soldiers, who took the Jaxartes or Tanais of the Transoxian for the Don or Tanais of Scythia? Arrian and Pliny distinguish these two rivers from each other, but the distinction does not appear to have been made in the time of Aristotle. How, then, could such geographers as these furnish us with geological documents?
[104] See the Report upon the Downs of the Gulf of Gascony (or Bay of Biscay) by M. Tassin.—Mont. de-Marsan, an x.
[105] Memoir on the means of fixing Downs, by M. Bremontier.
[106] Report of M. Tassin, loc. cit.
[107] See M. Bremontier’s Memoir.
[108] Denon, Voyage en Egypte.
[109] We might cite in confirmation all the travellers who have visited the western border of Egypt.
[110] These phenomena are very well treated of in M. Deluc’s Letters to the Queen of England, in the parts where he describes the peat-mosses of Westphalia; and in his Letters to Lametherie, inserted in the Journal de Physique for 1791, &c. as well as in those which he has addressed to Blumenbach. We may refer also to the very interesting details which are given in note F, respecting the islands of the west coast of the Duchy of Sleswick, and the manner in which they have been joined, whether to one another, or to the continent, by alluvial depositions and peat-mosses, as well as respecting the irruptions of the sea which from time to time have destroyed or separated some of their parts.
[111] The period of Cyrus, about 650 years before the Christian era.
[112] The period of Ninus, about 2348 years before Christ, according to Ctesias, and those who have followed him; but only 1250, according to Volney, after Herodotus.
[113] Herodotus lived 440 years before Christ.
[114] Cadmus, Pherecydes, Aristæus of Proconnesus, Acusilaus, Hecatæus of Miletum, Charon of Lampsacus, &c. See Vossius, Histor. Græc. lib. i., and especially his fourth book.
[115] Note N.
[116] The Septuagint, 5345 years; the Samaritan text, 4869; the Hebrew text, 4174.
[117] There is a difference of several years among chronologists with respect to each of these events; but these migrations form, notwithstanding, the peculiar and very remarkable feature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries before the christian era. Thus, according to the calculations of Usserius, Cecrops came from Egypt to Athens about 1556 years before Christ; Deucalion settled on Parnassus about 1548; Cadmus arrived from Phenicia at Thebes about 1493; Danaus came to Argos about 1485; and Dardanus established himself on the Hellespont about 1449. All these founders of nations must therefore have been nearly contemporary with Moses, whose migration took place in 1491. Consult further, regarding the synchronism of Moses, Danaus and Cadmus, Diodorus, lib. xi; in Photius, p. 1152.
[118] The genealogies of Apollodorus are generally known, and that portion of them upon which Clavier endeavoured to establish a sort of primitive history of Greece; but, when we become acquainted with the genealogies of the Arabs, those of the Tartars, and all those which our old chronicling monks invented for the different sovereigns of Europe, and even for individuals, we readily comprehend that Greek writers must have done for the early periods of their nation what has been done for all the other nations, at periods when criticism had not been used to throw light upon history.
[119] 1856 or 1823 years before Christ, or other dates still, but always about 350 years before the principal Phœnician or Egyptian colonies.