Natural History. 1 1 9 



Important services to this branch of zoology. 

 Besides these, the names of many other respectable 

 naturalists might be recounted, who have devoted 

 their investigations to particular species, and 

 described them with great accuracy and splendour. 

 The scientific journals and memoirs of learned 

 societies, in every part of the century, exhibit a 

 large and very interesting amount of labour per- 

 formed by these diligent and useful inquirers. 



But among the various investigations, in this de- 

 partment of natural history, which distinguish the 

 eighteenth century, few are more curious than 

 those respecting \hQ fossil bones of animals , now no 

 longer known in the living state. These remains 

 of animals, chiefly of the quadruped kind, have 

 been discovered at many different periods, from the 

 commencement of the century to its conclusion; 

 and in almost every part of the world, to which 

 naturalists have had free access. Among many 

 who have distinguished themselves by their inqui- 

 ries respecting these fossil bones, are Sir Hans 

 Sloane, Daubenton, Buffon, Pallas,^ Gmelin, 

 and Dr. W. Hunter. M. Cuvier, of France, 

 has been for some time engaged in a very exten- 

 sive work on this subject, which is likely to prove 

 very interesting to the philosophical world. He 



y Professor Pallas expresses the fullest conviction, that the fossil bones 

 found in Siberia were carried thither by the Flood, or by some such great 

 inundation as the sacred history describes. His first idea was, that the 

 climate was once warm enough to be the native country of the elephant^ 

 and that it had since undergone a radical change. But when he visited, 

 during his travels, the spots where these bones were found, he candidly 

 lenounced his former hypothesis, and expressed a full conviction, in con- 

 formity with the opinion of many other modern philosophers, that they 

 must have been carried thither by water; and that nothing but a sudden 

 and general irruption of waters, such as the deluge is represented to have 

 been, could have transported those bones, from their native regions, so far 

 to the north. In proof of this he informs us, that the bones are generally 

 found separate, as if scattered by the waves; covered with a stratum of 

 mud; and commonly intermixed with the remains of marUit ammals u,iS 

 plants, CQKit TraviU in E^msiitx 



