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 the 

 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 

 Earth 1 being 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. 



t 'A Dissertation on the Antiquity of the Earth,' by the Rev. James Douglas, 

 4to., 1785, pp. 9, 11. 



