320 THE WORLD. 



egg's, are found in good preservation they are allied to present ex- 

 isting species. On the island of New Zealand, an immense num- 

 ber of fossil bones of birds have been found ; we have already al- 

 luded to one of these, the Dinornis, page 312; the beak of this 

 bird was shaped like a cooper's adze, and admirably adapted for 

 tearing up roots ; they were, as Dr. Mantel! remarks in a letter to 

 Prof. Silliman, " glorious bipeds, .some ten or twelve feet high." 

 In the tertiary strata of the Paris basin, Cuvier found the remains 

 of several thick skinned animals allied to the tapir, and of others 

 forming a connecting link between the tapir and the ruminants, 

 or animals chewing the cud some of these were of very pecu- 

 liar forms. A remarkable animal, characteristic of the middle 

 tertiary period, was the Deinotherium, or terrible beast, figured in 

 the engraving below This huge animal dwelt probably in 



marshes and swamps, and was nearly twenty feet long ; the legs 

 are supposed to have been nearly ten feet in length, the head was 

 of proportional size, and furnished with two large tusks fixed in 

 the lower jaw, which probably, served ihe purpose of pickaxes, to 

 dig out the roots upon which it fed, and perhaps to anchor it by 

 the side of the bank at night. In Russia and Siberia, remains 

 of ihe elephant and rhinoceros have been found entombed in ice, 

 together with birch trees, far beyond where even stinted bus 

 now grow. The tusks of the fossil elephants are found in th( 

 high hills above the sea level, in clay and sand frozen as hard as 

 a rock, and increasing in abundance as we proceed north. For 

 about a century they have been brought away in immense num- 



