A Period in the Histori/ of our Planet. 15 



the Faunas of different zones, we perceive the most distinct 

 boundaries of climates which, in a remarkable manner, stand 

 in a certain relation to the climates of our epoch. For, when 

 elephants, hippopotami, and rhinoceroses inhabited the Old 

 World, the savannas of South America were peopled by the 

 gigantic Edentata, those inhabitants of caverns whose awkward 

 persons were for the most part protected by a hard coat of 

 mail against the attacks of animals of prey, to which they must 

 else have become, from their unwieldiness, an easy prey. The 

 Megatherium, of which the skeleton attracted so much atten- 

 tion, that even the Spanish government was at the expense of 

 conveying it to Europe, I shall adduce as the sole type of the 

 strange Brazilian Fauna, with which we have very recently 

 been made acquainted through the indefatigable inquiries of 

 Doctor Lund. 



And New Holland, — the land of wonders, with its bizarre 

 forms of men, mammalia, and plants, the native country of the 

 Ornithorynchus, of the Kangaroo, of the Echidna, of the most 

 various Marsupialia, — preserves this seal of the wonderful, 

 even in this earlier epoch ; for the zeal of inquiry has already 

 discovered bones of gigantic fossil kangaroos ; and progressing 

 civilization, whilst it seeks to turn to account the productions 

 of the soil, will likewise send us from thence valuable contribu- 

 tions to science. • 



Such creatures were existing, when an unexpected catas- 

 trophe put a period to their existence. A climate, such as the 

 poles of our earth can scarcely produce, — a cold in which every 

 thing that had life was benumbed, — suddenly appeared. Could 

 the animals which were created for a moderate tropical climate 

 survive siick-a thorough change ? Certainly not ; for nowhere 

 did the earth offer them protection against the omnipotence 

 of the cold. Whithersoever they fled, into the dens of the 

 mountains, which formerly had served to many of them as a 

 lurking-place ; into the thickets of the forests ; everywhere 

 they succumbed to the might of the annihilating element. 

 The aqueous vapours which the warm atmosphere of the earth 

 must then have contained in greater quantity, and the quan- 

 tity of which was undoubtedly in proportion to the greater ex- 

 tension of the waters, and especially of the large internal lakes 



