400 HIPPOPOTAMUS. 
to have been the first to which large fossil bones and 
teeth were referred, after the notion that they were the 
relics of giants of the human species began to be ex- 
ploded. 
Thus the learned Saxon scholar, Somner, acquaints us 
that some who had seen the Chartham fossils were of 
opinion that they were bones of a River-horse ;* and tlie 
antiquarian Douglas misinterpreted in like manner the 
jaw and teeth of a Rhinoceros, much of the ingenious 
speculations in his ‘ Dissertation on the Antiquity of the 
Karth’ bemg based on the assumption that the fluviatile 
deposits at Chatham, in the instance which he describes, 
had yielded ‘“ hippopotamic remains.” ‘‘ When we con- 
sider,” he says, ‘the great distance of the Medway from 
the Nile, or other rivers near the tropics, where these 
kinds of animals are now known to inhabit, and when 
we have no authority from the Pentateuch to conclude 
that any extraordinary convulsion of nature had impelled 
animals at that period from their native regions to count- 
ries so remote, so we have no natural inference for con- 
cluding that the deluge was the cause of this phenomenon.” 
Taking into consideration the geological features of the 
stratum of the river soil, he concludes ‘ that as the Hippo- 
potamus is known to be the inhabitant of muddy rivers 
like those of the Nile and the Medway, it should there- 
‘fore argue that this animal was the inhabitant of those 
regions, when in a state of climature to have admitted 
of its existence.” + 
This conclusion is essentially correct, though based in 
the present instance on wrong premises; neither the or- 
* Ante, p. 326. 
+ ‘A Dissertation on the Antiquity of the Earth,’ by the Rey. James Douglas, 
Ato., 1785, pp. 9, 11. 
