98 FOSSIL REMAINS OF CETACEA. 



the snow-clad mountains of the eastern states, the flowery 

 prairies of Illinois, or the orange-groves of East Florida. — 

 Whether this fault has originated on this side of the water or 

 on the other, I know not. It may be that the American en- 

 tomologists themselves, in their remittances of insects to Eu- 

 rope, have neglected to specify their exact localities ; or it 

 may be that we are too apt to forget the vast extent of the 

 various republics known as the United States of America. — 

 Be this as it may, that such carelessness should exist cannot 

 be too much lamented. — Edward Doubleday. — Sudbury, 2Lv£ 

 J any. 1839. 



On the Fossil Remains of Cetacea. — The philosophical 

 journals both of England and Scotland record instances of 

 the discovery of cetaceous remains in positions to which it 

 is physically impossible the present seas can have reached; 

 and yet the condition of such remains, and their isolated en- 

 tombment, added to the fact of their occurrence exclusively 

 in the most superficial strata, have led to a doubt of their fos- 

 sil character. On the banks of the Forth the bones of an 

 animal 72 feet long were once discovered, imbedded in clay 

 more than 20 feet above the reach of the highest tide of that 

 river. A solitary vertebra was described by Sir George Mac- 

 kenzie in the 'Edinb. Phil. Trans.' vol. x., p. 105, as obtain- 

 ed from Strathpepper in Rosshire, at an altitude of 12 feet 

 above the present level of the sea. Several bones of a whale 

 were subsequently discovered at Dumore Rock, Stirlingshire, 

 in brick earth, nearly 40 feet above the present level of the 

 sea. Still in all these instances no remains of extinct ani- 

 mals were present with them, nor were there any extinct ma- 

 rine Testacea attached to the bones : so that their fossil cha- 

 racter rests upon the inference to be drawn from the condition 

 of the beds in which they were deposited, and from the rela- 

 tive position of their respective mausoleums. The latter, be 

 it observed, are generally on more or less elevated ground, 

 adjacent either to the sea or to tidal rivers. The stratum in 

 which they repose is either without exception what is termed 

 marine diluvium, or the clay beds subordinate to it. It is 

 true moreover that living Cetacea are occasional visitants to 

 the neighbourhood in which the supposed fossil remains are 

 discovered. We must therefore await additional evidence 

 before we can with confidence assign to these remains any 

 degree in the chronological scale higher than that of the re- 

 cent period of geologists. 



To the before-mentioned instances I may add that in the 

 course of the summer of 1837, I obtained twelve vertebrae of 

 a whale, some caudal others dorsal, from the yellow marie or 



