288 On Animals depicted on Antique Monuments. 



perhaps be objected, that we have introduced specimens, the 

 existence of which, anterior to that of man himself, belongs^ so 

 to speak, to a scarcely finished world, the ruder productions 

 of which could not survive the various changes to which the 

 globe has been subjected. It might be said, that the species 

 contemporaneous with man, are the only ones which can be com- 

 pared with our living races, and that their tribes have nothing so 

 uncommon nor so extraordinary. Belonging to the stable period 

 to which the globe has now arrived, more especially since the 

 times of history, these have in themselves a principle of regularity 

 which insures their existence, by giving them the means to with- 

 stand the various causes which would tend to their destruction. 



Even allowing there might be something in this objection, 

 still other examples, and not less remarkable, will ere long prove, 

 that when antique monuments exhibit the representation of spe- 

 cies in themselves possible, we ought not to regard them imagi- 

 nary, although we can no longer discover traces of them on the 

 globe. 



In short, would it have been right for us to reject as a fable 

 the terrestrial quadruped which the monuments of antiquity 

 alone had represented as having the beak of a palmipede bird, 

 because we had fancied that such characters could not be com- 

 bined ? In doing so, we would have contradicted nature, which, 

 in that continent so long unknown, has brought such an animal 

 to light, along with many other not less remarkable productions. 

 And if descriptions had been left us of this remarkable being, 

 should we have been justified in regarding them apocryphal, be- 

 cause they announced that this quadruped with a bird"'s bill, had 

 this other peculiarity of the animals of this class, that, namely, 

 of depositing its eggs ? 



We might wiih as much propriety reject the account of Aris- 

 totle, when he describes the history of that fish (Gaubhis niger, 

 Lin.) which makes a nest, and hatches its eggs after the man- 

 ner of birds. And yet, very recently, Olivi, in examining this 

 same fish, has confirmed the observations of Aristotle ; and that 

 which most strikingly proves the accuracy of that great man is, 

 that Olivi has not a doubt that Aristotle, under the name of 

 Phycis, has accurately described the habits of the Gaubius *. 



■ In a former Number of this Journal, there is a notice of fishes' nests, 

 with their ova, observed on the east coast of Scotland. 



