In concluding this discourse, there only remains for me now to present the result of my own researches, or, in other words, a general account of my great work. I shall enumerate the animals which I have discovered, in the inverse order of that which I have followed in my enumeration of the formations. By proceeding deeper and deeper into the series of strata, I there rose in the series of epochs. I shall now take the oldest formations,—make known the animals which they contain,—and, passing from one epoch to another, point out those which successively make their appearance in proportion as we approach the present time.

We have seen that zoophytes, mollusca, and certain crustacea, begin to appear in the Transition formations; perhaps there may even at that period be bones and skeletons of fishes; but we do not by any means observe at so early a period remains of animals which live on land, and respire air in its ordinary state.

The great beds of coal, and the trunks of palms and ferns of which they preserve the impressions, although they afford evidence of the existence of dry land, and of a vegetation no longer confined to the waters, do not yet shew bones of quadrupeds, not even of oviparous quadrupeds.

It is only a little above this, in the bituminous copper-slates, that we see the first traces of them; and, what is very remarkable, the first quadrupeds are reptiles of the family of lizards, very much resembling the large monitors which live at the present day in the torrid zone. Several individuals of this kind have been found in the mines of Thuringia[247], among innumerable fishes of a genus now unknown, but which, from its relations to the genera of our days, appears to have lived in fresh water. Every body knows that the monitors are also fresh water animals.

A little higher is the limestone called Alpine, and resting upon it the shell-limestone, so rich in entrochites and encrinites, which forms the basis of a great part of Germany and Lorraine.

In it have been found skeletons of a very large sea-tortoise, the shells of which might have been from six to eight feet in length; and those of another oviparous quadruped of the family of lizards, of a large size, and with a very sharp muzzle[248].

Rising still through sandstones, which present only vegetable impressions of large arundinaceæ, bamboos, palms, and other monocotyledonous plants, we come to the different strata of the deposit which has been named the Jura limestone, on account of its forming the principal nucleus of that chain of mountains.

It is here that the class of Reptiles assumes its full development, and shews itself under the most varied forms and gigantic sizes.

The middle part, which is composed of oolites and lias, or of grey sandstone containing gryphites, contains the remains of two genera, the most extraordinary of all, which have combined the characters of the class of oviparous quadrupeds with organs of motion similar to those of the cetacea.

The ichthyosaurus[249], discovered by Sir Everard Home, has the head of a lizard, but prolonged into an attenuated muzzle, armed with conical and pointed teeth; enormous eyes, the sclerotica of which is strengthened by a frame consisting of bony pieces; a spine composed of flat vertebræ, of a depressed circular form, and concave on both surfaces like those of fishes; slender ribs; a sternum and clavicles like those of lizards and ornithorynchi; a small and weak pelvis; and four limbs, of which the humeri and femurs are short and thick, while the other bones are flattened, and closely set like the stones in a pavement, so as to form, when enveloped with the skin, fins of a single piece, almost incapable of bending; analogous, in short, both as to use and organization, to those of cetacea. These reptiles have lived in the sea; on shore, they could only at most have crept in the hobbling manner of seals; at the same time after they have respired elastic air.

The remains of four species have been found:

The most extensively distributed (I. communis) has blunt conical teeth; its length sometimes exceeds twenty feet.

The second (I. platyodon), which is at least as large as the former, has compressed teeth, with round and bulging roots.

The third (I. tenuirostris), has slender and pointed teeth, and the muzzle thin and elongated.

The fourth (I. intermedius), is, as its name implies, intermediate between the last species and the common, with respect to the form of its teeth. The two latter species do not attain half the size of the two first.

The plesiosaurus, discovered by Mr Conybeare, must have appeared still more monstrous than the ichthyosaurus. It had the same limbs, but somewhat more elongated and more flexible; its shoulder and pelvis were more robust; its vertebræ had more of the forms and articulations of the lizards; but what distinguished it from all oviparous and viviparous quadrupeds, was a slender neck as long as its body, composed of thirty and odd vertebræ, a number greater than that of the neck of any other animal, rising from the trunk like the body of a serpent, and terminating in a very small head, in which all the essential characters of that of the lizard family are observed.

If any thing could justify those hydras and other monsters, the figures of which are so often presented in the monuments of the middle ages, it would incontestibly be this plesiosaurus.[250]

Five species are already known, of which the most generally distributed (P. dolichodeirus) attains a length of more than twenty feet.

A second species (P. recentior), found in more modern strata, has the vertebræ flatter.

A third (P. carinatus) shews a ridge on the under surface of its vertebræ.

A fourth, and lastly a fifth (P. pentagonus and P. trigonus), have the ribs marked with five and three ridges.[251]

These two genera are found everywhere in the lias: they were discovered in England, where this rock is exposed in cliffs of great extent; but they have also been found since in France and Germany.

Along with these had lived two species of Crocodiles, the bones of which are also found deposited in the lias, among ammonites, terebratulæ, and other shells of that ancient sea. We have skeletons of them in our cliffs at Honfleur, where the remains are found, from which I have drawn up their characters.[252]

One of these species, the Long-beaked Gavial, has the muzzle longer, and the head more narrow, than the gavial or long-beaked crocodile of the Ganges; the bodies of its vertebræ are convex before, while in our crocodiles of the present day they are so behind. It has been found in the lias deposits of Franconia, as well as in those of France.

A second species, the Short-beaked Gavial, has the muzzle of ordinary length, less attenuated than the gavial of the Ganges, but more so than our crocodiles of St Domingo. Its vertebræ are slightly concave at each of their extremities.

But these crocodiles are not the only ones which have been deposited in the strata of these secondary limestones.

The beautiful oolite quarries of Caen have presented a very remarkable one, the muzzle of which is as long and more pointed than that of the long-beaked gavial, and its head more dilated behind, with wider temporal fossæ. Its stony scales, marked with small round cavities, must have rendered it the best defended of all the crocodiles.[253] Its lower teeth are alternately longer and shorter.

There is still another in the oolite of England; but there have only been found some portions of its cranium, which do not suffice to afford a complete idea of it.[254]

Another very remarkable genus of reptiles, the remains of which, although they are also found beyond the limits of the lias concretion, are especially abundant in the oolite and upper sands, is the megalosaurus, justly so named, for, along with the forms of the lizards, and particularly of the monitors, of which it has also the sharp-edged and dentated teeth, it presents so enormous a size, that if we suppose it to have possessed the proportions of the monitors, it must have exceeded seventy feet in length. It was, in fact, a lizard of the size of a whale.[255] It was discovered by Mr Buckland in England; but we have it also in France; and in Germany there are found bones, if not of the same species, at least of a species which can be referred to no other genus. It is to M. Sœmmering that we owe the first description of this last. He discovered the bones in strata lying above the oolite, in those limestone-schists of Franconia, long celebrated for the numerous fossil remains which they furnished to the cabinets of the curious, and which will be still more celebrated for the services which their employment in lithography render to the arts and sciences.

The crocodiles continue to make their appearance in these schists, and always of the long-muzzled or rostrated kind. M. de Sœmmering has described one (the Crocodilus priscus), the entire skeleton of a small individual of which was found nearly in as good a state of preservation, as it could have been in our cabinets.[256] It is one of those which most resemble the present gavial of the Ganges; the anterior or united part of its lower jaw, however, is less elongated; its lower teeth are alternately and regularly longer and shorter. It has ten vertebræ in the tail.

But the most remarkable animals which these limestone slates contain, are the flying lizards, which I have named Pterodactyli.

They are reptiles whose principal characters are, a very short tail, a very long neck, the muzzle much elongated, and armed with sharp teeth; the legs also long, and one of the toes of the anterior extremity excessively elongated, having probably served for the attachment of a membrane adapted for supporting them in the air, accompanied with four other toes of ordinary size, terminated by hooked claws. One of these strange animals, whose appearance would be frightful did they occur alive at the present day, may have been of the size of a thrush[257], the other of that of a common bat[258]; but it would appear from some fragments that larger species had existed[259].

A little above the limestone slates is found the nearly homogeneous limestone of the Jura ridges. It also contains bones, but always of reptiles, crocodiles, and fresh-water tortoises, of which a vast quantity is found in particular in the neighbourhood of Soleure. They have been very carefully searched for by M. Hugi; and, from the fragments which he has already collected, it is easy to recognise a considerable number of Fresh-water Tortoises, or Emydes, which further discoveries can alone determine, but of which several are already distinguished by their size and peculiar forms, from all the species hitherto known[260].

It is among these innumerable oviparous quadrupeds, of all sizes and forms; in the midst of these crocodiles, tortoises, flying reptiles, huge megalosauri, and monstrous plesiosauri, that some small Mammifera are said to make their appearance for the first time; and the assertion is so far authenticated by the occurrence of jaws, and some other bones discovered in England, which undoubtedly belong to this class of animals, and particularly to the family of Didelphides, or to that of the Insectivora.

It may, however, be supposed, that the stoney matters which encrust these bones, owe their origin to some local recomposition, posterior to the original formation of the strata. However this may be, it is still found for a long time that the class of Reptiles predominates.

The ferruginous sands, placed in England above the chalk, contain abundance of crocodiles, tortoises, megalosauri, and especially a reptile which presents a character quite peculiar, in as much as its teeth appear worn, like those of our herbivorous mammifera.

To Mr Mantell of Lewes, in Sussex, we are indebted for the discovery of this latter animal, as well as of other large reptiles belonging to the sands lying beneath the chalk. He has named it Iguanodon [261].

In the chalk itself there are only reptiles to be seen: there are found in it remains of tortoises and crocodiles. The famous tufaceous quarries of the mountain of St Peter, near Maestricht, which belong to the chalk formation, along with very large sea tortoises, and a multitude of marine shells and zoophytes, have afforded a genus of lizards not less gigantic than the megalosaurus, which has become celebrated by the researches of Camper, and the figures which Faujas has given of its bones, in his history of that mountain.

It was upwards of five and twenty feet long; its large jaws were armed with very strong conical teeth, a little arcuate, and marked with a ridge, and it had also some of these teeth in the palate. Upwards of a hundred and thirty vertebræ were counted in its spine; they were convex before, and concave behind. Its tail was deep and flat, and formed a large vertical oar (or organ of swimming).[262] Mr Conybeare has recently proposed to name it Mosasaurus.

The clays and lignites which cover the upper part of the chalk, I have only found to contain crocodiles[263]; and I have every reason to think that the lignites which in Switzerland have afforded beaver and mastodon bones, belong to a later epoch. Nor has it been at an earlier period than that of the coarse limestone which rests upon these clays that I have begun to find bones of mammifera; and still do they all belong to marine mammifera, to dolphins of unknown species, lamantins and morses.

Among the dolphins, there is one, the muzzle of which, more elongated than that of any known species, has the lower jaw united in a considerable part of its length, nearly as in a gavial. It was found near Dax by the late president of Borda[264].

Another species, from the cliffs of the Department de l’Orne, has the muzzle also long, but somewhat differently shaped[265].

The entire genus of lamantins is at the present day confined to the seas of the torrid zone; and that of the morses, of which only a single living species is known to exist, is limited to the frozen ocean. Yet we find skeletons of these two genera side by side in the coarse limestone strata of the middle of France; and this association of species, the nearest allied to which are, at the present day, found in opposite zones, will again make its appearance more than once as we proceed.

Our fossil lamantins differ from those known to exist at present, in having the head more elongated, and of a different form[266]. Their ribs, which are easily recognised by their being of a thick and rounded form, and of dense texture, are not of rare occurrence in our different provinces.

With regard to the fossil morse, small fragments only have as yet been found of it, which are insufficient for characterising the species[267].

It is only in the strata that have succeeded the coarse limestone, or, at most, those which may have been of contemporaneous formation with it, but deposited in fresh-water lakes, that the class of land mammifera begins to shew itself in any quantity.

I consider as belonging to the same period, and as having lived together, but perhaps in different spots, the animals whose bones are deposited in the molasse and old gravel beds of the south of France; in the gypsums mixed with limestone, such as those of Paris and Aix; and in the fresh-water marly deposits covered with marine beds, of Alsace, the country of Orleans and of Berry.

This animal population possesses a very remarkable character in the abundance and variety of certain genera of pachydermata, which are entirely awanting among the quadrupeds of our days, and whose characters have more or less resemblance to those of the tapirs, the rhinoceroses, and camels.

These genera, the entire discovery of which is my own, are the palæotheria, lophiodonta, anaplotheria, anthracotheria, cheropotami, and adapis.

The Palæotheria have resembled the tapirs in their general form, and in that of the head, particularly in the shortness of the bones of the nose, which announces that they have had a small proboscis like the tapirs, and, lastly, in their having six incisors and two canine teeth in each jaw; but they have resembled the rhinoceros in their grinders, of which those of the upper jaw have been square, with prominent ridges of various configuration, and those of the lower jaw in the form of double crescents, as well as in their feet, all of which have been divided into three toes, while in the tapirs the fore feet have four.

It is one of the most extensively diffused genera and most numerous in species that occur in the deposits of this period.

Our gypsum quarries in the neighbourhood of Paris are full of them. Bones of seven distinct species are found there. The first (P. magnum) is as large as a horse. The three next are of the size of a hog, but one of them (P. medium) has narrow and long feet, another (P. crassum) has the feet broader, and a third (P. latum) has them still broader, and especially shorter. The fifth species (P. curtum), which is of the size of a sheep, is much lower, and has the feet still broader and shorter in proportion than the last. The sixth (P. minus) is of the size of a small sheep, and has long and slender feet, the lateral toes of which are shorter than the rest. The seventh (P. minimum), which is not larger than a hare, has also the feet slender[268].

Palæotheria have also been found in other districts of France: at Puy in Valey, in strata of gypseous marl, a species (P. velaunum)[269], much resembling (P. medium), but differing from it in the form of its lower jaw; in the neighbourhood of Orleans, in strata of marly rock, a species (P. aurelianense)[270], which is distinguished from the others by having the re-entering angle of the crescent of its lower grinders split into a double point, and by some differences in the necks of the upper grinders; near Issel, in a bed of gravel or molasse, along the declivities of the Black Mountain, a species (P. isselanum)[271], which has the same characters as the Orleans species, but is of smaller size. It is more particularly, however, in the molasse of the Department of the Dordogne, that the palæotherium occurs not less abundantly than in our gypsum deposits in the neighbourhood of Paris.

The Duke Decaze has discovered in the quarries of a single field, bones of three species which appear different from all those of our neighbourhood[272].

The Lophiodons approach still somewhat nearer to the tapirs than the palæotheria do, inasmuch as their lower false grinders have transverse necks like those of the tapirs.

They differ, however, from these latter, in having the fore ones more simple, the backmost of all with three necks, and the upper ones rhomboidal, and marked with ridges very much resembling those of the rhinoceros.

We are still ignorant what the form of their snout, and the number of their toes, may have been. I have discovered not less than twelve species of this genus, all in France, deposited in marly rocks of fresh-water formation, and filled with lymneæ and planorbes, which are shells peculiar to pools and marshes.

The largest species is found near Orleans, in the same quarry as the palæotheria; it approaches the rhinoceros.

There is a smaller species in the same place; a third occurs at Montpellier; a fourth near Laon; two near Buchsweiler in Alsace; five near Argenton in Berry; and one of the three occurs again near Issel, where there are also two others. There is also a large one near Gannat[273].

These species differ from each other in size, the smallest being scarcely so large as a lamb of three months, and in various circumstances connected with the form of their teeth, which it would be too tedious and minute to detail here.

The Anoplotheria have hitherto been discovered nowhere but in the gypsum quarries of the neighbourhood of Paris. They have two characters which are observed in no other animal; feet with two toes, the metacarpal and metatarsal bones of which are separate in their whole length, and do not unite into a single piece, as in the ruminantia; and teeth placed in a continuous series without any interruption. Man alone has the teeth so placed in mutual contiguity, without any interval. Those of the anaplotheria consist of six incisors in each jaw, a canine tooth and six grinders on each side, both above and below; their canine teeth are short and similar to the outer incisors. The three first grinders are compressed; the four others are, in the upper jaw, square, with transverse ridges, and a small cone between them; and, in the lower jaw, in the form of a double crescent, but without neck at the base. The last has three crescents. Their head is of an oblong form, and does not indicate that the muzzle has terminated either in a proboscis or a snout.

This extraordinary genus, which can be compared to nothing in living nature, is subdivided into three subgenera: the Anaplotheria, properly so called, the anterior molares of which are still pretty thick, and the posterior ones of the lower jaw have their crescents with a simple ridge; the Xiphodons, of which the anterior molares are thin and sharp on the edges, and the under posterior, have, directly opposite the concavity of each of their crescents, a point, which, on being worn, also assumes the form of a crescent, so that then the crescents are double as in the ruminantia; lastly, the Dichobunes, the outer crescents of which are also pointed at the beginning, and which have thus points disposed in pairs upon their lower posterior grinders.

The most common species in our gypsum quarries (An. commune), is an animal of the height of a boar, but much more elongated, and furnished with a very long and very thick tail, so that altogether it has nearly the proportion of the otter, but larger. It is probable that it was well fitted for swimming, and frequented the lakes in the bottom of which its bones have been incrusted by the gypsum which was deposited there. We have one a little smaller, but in other respects pretty similar (An. secundarium.)

We are as yet acquainted with only one xiphodon, which, however, is a very remarkable animal: it is that which I have named An. gracile. It is slender, and delicately formed, like the prettiest gazelle.

There is one dichobune, nearly of the size of a hare, to which I have given the name of An. leporinum. Besides its subgeneric characters, it differs from the anaplotheria and xiphodons, in having two small and slender toes on each foot, at the sides of the two large toes.

We do not know if these lateral toes exist in the two other dichobunes, which are small, and scarcely exceed in size the common Guinea pig[274].

The genus of Anthracotheria is in some degree intermediate between the palæotheria, anaplotheria, and hogs. I have named it so, because two of its species have been found in the lignites of Cadibona, near Savone. The first approached the rhinoceros in size; the second was much smaller. They have also been found in Alsace, and in the Vélay. Their grinders are similar to those of the anaplotheria; but they have projecting canine teeth[275].

The genus Cheropotamus is found in our gypsum deposits, where it accompanies the palæotheria and anaplotheria, but where it is of much rarer occurrence. Its posterior grinders are square above, rectangular below, and have four large conical eminences surrounded with smaller ones. The anterior molares are short cones, slightly compressed, and with two roots. Its canine teeth are small. Neither its incisors nor its feet are yet known. I possess only one species, which is of the size of a Siam hog[276].

The genus Adapis has also but one species, which is at most of the size of a rabbit: it is also from our gypsum quarries, and must have been nearly allied to the anaplotheria[277].

We have thus nearly forty species of pachydermata belonging to genera now entirely extinct, and presenting forms and proportions to which there is nothing that can be compared in the present animal kingdom, excepting two tapirs and a daman.

This large number of pachydermata is so much the more remarkable, that the ruminantia, which are at present so numerous in the genera of deer and antelopes, and which attain so great a size in those of the oxen, giraffes, and camels, scarcely make their appearance in the deposits of which we are speaking.

I have not seen the slightest trace of them in our gypsum quarries; and all that has come to my hands consists of some fragments of a deer, of the size of the roe, but of a different species, collected among the palæotheria of Orleans[278]; and of one or two other small fragments, from Switzerland, which, however, are perhaps of doubtful origin.

But our pachydermata have not for all this been the only inhabitants of the countries in which they lived. In our gypsum deposits, at least, we find along with them carnivora, glires, several sorts of birds, crocodiles, and tortoises; and these two latter genera also accompany them in the molasse sandstones and marly deposits of the middle and south of France.

At the head of the carnivora, I place a Bat, very recently discovered at Montmartre, and which belongs to the proper genus Vespertilio[279]. The existence of this genus, at an epoch so remote, is so much the more surprising, that, neither in this formation, nor in those which have succeeded it, have I seen any other trace, either of cheiroptera or of quadrumana: no bone or tooth of either monkey or maki has ever presented itself to me, in the course of my long researches.

Montmartre has also furnished the bones of a fox different from ours, and which also differs from the jackals, isatises, and the various species of foxes peculiar to America[280]; those of a carnivorous animal allied to the raccoons and coaties, but larger than any known species[281]; those of a particular species of civet[282]; and of two or three other carnivora, which it has not been possible to determine, from the want of tolerably complete portions.

What is still more remarkable, is, that there are skeletons of a small sarigue, allied to the marmose, but different, and consequently of an animal belonging to a genus which is at the present day confined to the New World[283]. Skeletons of two small glires, of the genus myoxus[284], and a skull belonging to the genus sciurus[285], have also been collected.

Our gypsum deposits are more fertile in bones of birds than any of the other strata either anterior or posterior to it. Entire skeletons, and parts of at least ten species belonging to all the orders, are found there[286].

The crocodiles of the period in question approach our common crocodiles in the form of the head, while, in the deposits of the Jura period, we find only species allied to the gavial.

A species has been found at Argenton, which is remarkable for its compressed, sharp teeth, having their edges dentated like those of certain monitors[287]. Some remains of it also occur in our gypsum quarries[288].

The tortoises of this period are all fresh-water ones: some of them belong to the subgenus Emys; and there are species, both at Montmartre[289], and still more especially in the molasse sandstones of the Dordogne[290], which are larger than any living species known; the others are Trionyces or soft tortoises[291]. This genus, which is easily distinguished by the vermiculate surface of the bones of its shell, and which at present exists only in the rivers of warm countries, such as the Nile, the Ganges, and the Orinoko, has been very abundant in the places where the palæotheria lived. Vast quantities of its remains are found at Montmartre[292], and in the molasse sandstones of the Dordogne, and the other gravel deposits of the south of France.

The fresh-water lakes, around which these various animals have lived, and which had received their bones, nourished, besides the tortoises and crocodiles, some fishes and testaceous mollusca. All that have been collected of these two classes of animals, are as foreign to our climate, and even as much unknown in our present waters, as the palæotheria, and other quadrupeds which were coeval with them[293].

The fishes have even in part belonged to unknown genera.

Hence, it cannot be doubted that this race of inhabitants, which might be termed the population of the middle age, this first great production of mammifera, has been entirely destroyed; and, in fact, in all places where remains of them have been discovered, there are great deposits of marine formation above them, so that the sea has overwhelmed the countries which these races inhabited, and has rested upon them during a long period of time.

Have the countries inundated by it at this period been of great extent? This is a question which the examination of those ancient deposits formed in their lakes do not enable us to answer.

To this period I refer the gypsum beds of Paris and those of Aix, several quarries of marly stones, and the molasse sandstones, at least those of the south of France. I am of opinion that we should also refer to it the portions of the molasse sandstones of Switzerland, and of the lignites of Liguria and Alsace, in which quadrupeds are found of the families enumerated above; but I do not find that any of these animals have been also found in other countries. The fossil bones of Germany, England, and Italy, are all either older or newer than those of which we have been speaking, and belong either to those ancient races of reptiles of the juraic and copper-slate formations, or to the deposits of the last universal inundation, the diluvial formations.

We are, therefore, authorised to believe, until the contrary be proved, that at the period when these numerous pachydermata lived, the globe had only presented for their habitation a small number of plains sufficiently fertile for them to multiply there, and that perhaps these plains were insulated regions, separated by pretty large spaces of elevated chains, in which we do not find that our animals have left any traces of their existence.

The researches of M. Adolphe Brongniart have also made known to us the nature of the vegetables which covered those countries. In the same strata with our palæotheria, there have been found trunks of palms, and many others of those beautiful plants whose genera now only grow in warm climates. Palms, crocodiles, and trionyces always occur in greater or less abundance wherever our ancient pachydermata are found[294].

The sea which had covered these lands and destroyed their animals, left large deposits, which still form at the present day, at no great depth, the basis of our great plains: it had then retired anew, and left immense surfaces to a new population, whose remains are found in the sandy and muddy deposits of all countries known.

It is to this deposition from the sea, made in a state of quiet, that certain fossil cetacea, very much resembling those of our own days, should, in my opinion, be referred;—a dolphin, allied to our epaulard[295], and a whale very like our rorquals[296], both discovered in Lombardy by M. Cortesi; a large head of a whale found within the very precincts of Paris[297], and described by Lamanon and Daubenton; and an entirely new genus, which I have discovered and named Ziphius, and which already contains three species. It is allied to the cachalots and hyperoodons[298].

In the extinct population which fills our alluvial and superficial strata, and which has lived upon the deposit just alluded to, there are no longer either palæotheria or anaplotheria, or, in in fact, any of those singular genera. The pachydermata, however, still predominate; and these are of a gigantic size, elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami, accompanied with innumerable horses and several large ruminantia. Carnivorous animals of the size of the lion, tiger, and hyena, had desolated this new animal kingdom. In general, its character, even in the extreme north, and on the edges of the present frozen ocean, was similar to that which the torrid zone alone now presents, and yet there was no species in it absolutely the same as any of those which are found alive at the present day.

The most remarkable of these animals is the species of elephant named mammoth by the Russians (the Elephas primigenius of Blumenbach), which was fifteen or eighteen feet high, and was covered with coarse red wool, and long, stiff, black hairs, which formed a mane along its back. Its enormous tusks were implanted in alveolæ longer than those of the elephants of the present day; but in other respects it was pretty similar to the Indian elephant[299]. It has left thousands of its carcases from Spain to the shores of Siberia, and it has been found in the whole of North America; so that it had been distributed on both sides of the Atlantic, if, indeed, that ocean had existed in its time, in the place which it occupies at present. It is well known that its tusks are still so well preserved in cold countries, as to be applied to the same uses as fresh ivory; and, as we have already remarked, individuals of it have been found with their flesh, skin, and hair, which had remained frozen since the last general catastrophe. The Tartars and Chinese have imagined it to be an animal which lives under ground, and perishes whenever it perceives the light.

After the mammoth, and almost its equal in size, came also in the countries which form the two presently existing continents, the narrow toothed mastodon, which resembled the elephant, and was armed like it with enormous tusks, but with tusks covered with enamel, shorter legs, and whose mamillated grinders, invested with a thick and shining enamel, have long furnished what has been called occidental turquoise[300].

Its remains, which are pretty common in the temperate parts of Europe, are not so much so towards the north; but it has also been found in the mountains of South America, along with two allied species.

In North America immense quantities of the remains of the great mastodon have been found, a species larger than the preceding, as high in proportion as the elephant, with equally huge tusks, and whose grinders, which are covered over with bristling points, made it long be considered as a carnivorous animal[301].

Its bones were of a large size, and very solid. Even its hoofs and stomach are said to have been found in a sufficient state of preservation to be recognisable; and it is asserted that the stomach was filled with bruised branches of trees. The Indians imagine that the whole race was destroyed by the gods, to prevent them from destroying the human species.

Along with these enormous pachydermata, lived the two somewhat inferior genera of the rhinoceroses and hippopotami.

The Hippopotamus of this period was pretty common in the countries which now form France, Germany and England, and was particularly so in Italy. It so closely resembled the present African species, that it is only by an attentive comparison that it can be distinguished from it[302].

There was also at this time a small species of hippopotamus of the size of the wild boar, to which there is nothing similar at present existing.

There were at least three species of Rhinoceros of large size, all of them two-horned.

The most common species in Germany and England (my Rh. tichorhinus), and which, like the elephant, is found even to the shores of the frozen sea, where it has also left entire individuals, had the head elongated, the bones of the nose very robust and supported by an osseous and not merely cartilaginous septum narium, and, lastly, wanted incisors[303].

Another species, of rarer occurrence, and peculiar to more temperate climates (Rh. incisivus)[304], had incisors like our present rhinoceroses of the East Indies, and, in particular, resembled that of Sumatra[305]; its distinctive characters are derived from some differences in the form of the head.

The third species (Rh. leptorhinus) had no incisors, like the first and like the present rhinoceros of the Cape; but it was distinguished by a more pointed muzzle and more slender limbs[306]. The bones of this species have been found more especially in Italy, in the same strata with those of elephants, mastodons, and hippopotami.

There is a fourth species still (Rh. minutus), furnished, like the second, with incisors, but of a much smaller size, and scarcely larger than a hog[307]. It was undoubtedly rare, for the remains of it have only as yet been found in some places in France.

To those four genera of large pachydermata, is added a Tapir, which equalled them in size, and was consequently twice, perhaps three times, as large in its linear dimensions as the American Tapir[308]. Its teeth have been found in several parts of France and Germany; and almost always accompanying those of rhinoceroses, mastodons, or elephants.

Along with these there is still associated, but as it would seem in a very small number of places, a large pachydermatous animal, of which the lower jaw alone has been found, and whose teeth are of the form of double crescents, and undulated. M. Fischer, who discovered it among bones from Siberia, has named it Elasmotherium[309].

The Horse genus also existed in those times[310]. Its teeth accompany in thousands the remains of the animals which we have just mentioned, in almost all their localities; but it is not possible to say whether it was one of the species now existing or not, because the skeletons of these species are so like each other, that they cannot be distinguished by the mere comparison of isolated fragments.

The Ruminantia were now greatly more numerous than at the epoch of the Palæotheria; their numerical proportion must even have differed very little from what it is at present; but we are certain of several species which were different.

This may, in particular, be said with much certainty of a deer exceeding even the elk in size, which is common in the marl deposits and peat-bogs of Ireland and England, and of which remains have also been dug up in France, Germany, and Italy, where they were found in the same strata with bones of elephants. Its wide, palmated, and branched horns, measure so much as twelve or fourteen feet from one point to the other, following the curvatures[311].

The distinction is not so clear with regard to the bones of deer and oxen, which have been collected in certain caverns, and in the fissures of certain rocks. They are sometimes, and especially in the caverns of England, accompanied with bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami, and with those of a hyena, which also occurs in several strata of transported matter, along with these same pachydermata. They are consequently of the same age; but it remains not the less difficult to say in what respect they differ from the oxen and deer of the present day.

The fissures of the rocks of Gibraltar, Cette, Nice, Uliveta near Pisa, and other places on the shores of the Mediterranean, are filled with a red and hard cement, which envelopes fragments of rock and fresh-water shells, and numerous bones of quadrupeds, the greater part fractured. These concretions are termed osseous brecciæ. The bones which they contain sometimes present characters sufficient to prove that they have belonged to unknown animals, or at least to animals foreign to Europe. There are found, for example, four species of deer, three of which have characters in their teeth, which are only observed in the deer of the Indian Archipelago.

There is a fifth near Verona, the horns of which exceed in magnitude those of the Canadian deer[312].

There also occur, in certain places, along with bones of rhinoceroses, and other quadrupeds of this period, those of a deer so much resembling the reindeer, that it would be difficult to assign distinctive characters to it; a circumstance which is so much the more extraordinary, that the reindeer is at the present day confined to the coldest regions of the north, while the whole genus of rhinoceroses belongs to the torrid zone.[313]

There exist in the strata of which we speak, remains of a species very similar to the fallow-deer, but a third larger,[314] and prodigious quantities of horns, very much resembling those of our present stag[315], as well as bones, very like those of the aurochs[316] and domestic ox[317], two very distinct species, which had been erroneously confounded by the naturalists who preceded us. The entire heads, however, resembling those of these two animals, as well as that of the musk-ox of Canada[318], which have often been extracted from the earth, do not come from localities sufficiently well determined to enable us to assert that these species had been contemporaries of the great pachydermata, of which we have made mention above.

The osseous brecciæ of the shores of the Mediterranean have also afforded two species of Lagomys,[319] animals, the genus of which exists at the present day only in Siberia; two species of rabbits[320], lemmings, and rats of the size of the water-rat and domestic mouse[321]. In the caves of England two species are also found[322].

The osseous brecciæ even contain bones of shrew-mice and lizards[323].

In certain sandy strata of Tuscany, there are teeth of a porcupine[324], and in those of Russia heads of a species of beaver, larger than ours, which M. Fischer has named Trogontherium[325].

But it is more particularly in the class Edentata that these races of animals belonging to the period before the last assume a size much superior to that of their present congeners, and even rise to a magnitude altogether gigantic.

The Megatherium unites a part of the generic characters of the armadilloes, with some of those of the sloths, and is in size equal to the largest rhinoceros. Its claws must have been of a monstrous length, and prodigious strength; its whole skeleton possesses an excessive solidity. It has only as yet been found in the sandy strata of North America[326].

The Megalonyx has been very similar to it in its characters, but has been somewhat less; its claws much longer and sharper in the edges. Some bones and entire toes of it have been found in certain caves in Virginia, and in an island on the coast of Georgia[327].

These two enormous edentata have only hitherto presented their remains in America; but Europe possesses one of the same class which does not yield to them in magnitude. It is only known by a single terminal joint of a toe, but this fragment is sufficient to assure us that it was very similar to a pangolin or manis, but to a pangolin of nearly twenty-four feet in length. It lived in the same districts as the elephants, rhinoceroses, and gigantic tapirs; for its bones have been found along with theirs in a sandy deposit in the county of Darmstadt, not far from the Rhine[328].

The osseous brecciæ also contain, but very rarely, bones of carnivora[329], which are much more numerous in caverns, that is to say, in cavities wider and more complicated than the fissures or veins containing osseous brecciæ. The Jura chain in particular, is celebrated for them in the part of it which extends into Germany, where, for ages past, incredible quantities have been removed and destroyed, on account of certain medical virtues which had been attributed to them, and yet there still remains enough to fill the mind with astonishment. The principal part of these remains consists of bones of a very large species of bear (Ursus spelæus), which is characterised by a more prominent forehead than that of any of our living bears[330]. Along with these bones are found those of two other species of bear (U. arctoideus and U. priscus)[331]; those of a hyena (H. fossilis), allied to the spotted hyena of the Cape, but differing from it in the form of its teeth and head[332]; those of two tigers or panthers[333], of a wolf[334], a fox[335], a glutton[336], as well as of weasels, viverræ, and other small carnivora[337].

Here, also, may be observed that singular association of animals, the species resembling which live at the present day in climates so widely separated from each other as the Cape, the country of the spotted hyena, and Lapland, the country of our present gluttons. In like manner we have seen in a cave in France, a rhinoceros and a reindeer by the side of each other.

Bears are of rare occurrence in alluvial strata. Remains of the large species of the caves (U. spelæus), are said, however, to have been found in Austria and Hainaut; and in Tuscany there are bones of a particular species, remarkable for its compressed canine teeth (U. cultridens)[338]. The hyenas are more frequently met with. We have remains of them in France, found along with bones of elephants and rhinoceroses. A cave has lately been discovered in England, which contained prodigious quantities of them, where they were found of every age, and of which the soil presented even their excrements in a sufficient state of preservation to be easily recognised. It would appear that they had long lived there, and that it had been by them that the bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, horses, oxen, deer, and various animals of the class of glires, which are found along with them, and which bear evident marks of their teeth, had been dragged into the cave. But what must have been the soil of England, when these enormous animals lived upon it, and constituted the prey of ferocious beasts! These caves contain also bones of tigers, wolves and foxes; but the remains of bears are of excessively rare occurrence in them[339].

However this may be, we see that, at the epoch of the animal population which we are now passing under review, the class of carnivora was numerous and powerful. It reckoned three bears with round canine teeth, one with compressed canini, a large tiger or lion, another feline animal, of the size of the panther, a hyena, a wolf, a fox, a glutton, a martin or pole-cat, and a weasel.

The class of glires, composed in general of weak and small species, has been little observed by the collectors of fossil remains; and, in all cases, where the bones of these animals have been found in the strata or deposits of which we speak, they also have presented unknown species. Such, in particular, is a species of Lagomys found in the osseous brecciæ of Corsica and Sardinia, somewhat resembling the Lagomys alpinus of the high mountains of Siberia: so true is it that it is not always in the torrid zone only, that we are to seek for the animals which resemble those of this period.

These are the principal animals, the remains of which have been found in that mass of earth, sand, and mud,—that Diluvium, which everywhere covers our large plains, fills our caverns, and chokes up the fissures in many of our rocks. They incontestibly formed the population of the continents, at the epoch of the great catastrophe which has destroyed their races, and which has prepared the soil, on which the animals of the present day subsist.

Whatever resemblance certain of these species bear to those of our days, it cannot be disputed that the general mass of this population had a very different character, and that the greater part of the races which composed it have been utterly destroyed.

What astonishes us is, that, among all these mammifera, the greater number of which have their congeners at the present day in the warm parts of the globe, there has not been a single quadrumanous animal,—that there has not been collected a single bone or a single tooth of an ape or monkey, not so much even as a bone or a tooth belonging to an extinct species of these animals.

Nor is there any trace of man. All the bones of our species that have been found along with those of which we have been speaking, have occurred accidentally[340], and their number besides is exceedingly small, which assuredly would not have been the case, if men had then been settled in the countries which these animals inhabited.

Where, then, was the human race at this period? Did the last and most perfect of the works of the Creator nowhere exist? Did the animals which now accompany him upon the globe, and of which there are no traces among these fossil remains, surround him? Were the countries in which he lived with them swallowed up, when those which he now inhabits, and whose former population may have been destroyed by a great inundation, were laid dry again? These are questions which the study of fossil remains does not enable us to solve, and in this discourse we must not apply for information to other sources.

This much is certain, that we are now at least in the midst of a fourth succession of land animals,—that, after the age of reptiles, the age of palæotheria, the age of mammoths, and that of mastodons and megatheria, has come the age in which the human species, aided by some domestic animals, peaceably governs and fertilizes the earth, and that it is only in the deposits formed since the commencement of this age, in alluvial matters, peat-bogs, and recent concretions, that bones are found in the fossil state, which belong all of them to known and still living animals.

Such are the human skeletons of Guadaloupe, imbedded in a species of travertine formed of land shells, slate, and fragments of shells and madrepores of the neighbouring sea; the bones of oxen, deer, roes, and beavers, common in peat-bogs, and all the bones of men and domestic animals found in the mud and sand deposited by rivers, in burying grounds, and upon ancient fields of battle.

None of these remains belong either to the great deposit formed at the time of the last catastrophe, nor to those of preceding ages.

APPENDIX.