142 Things not generally Known. 



learned Cuvier. In extenuation of Cuvier's credulity, it is stated that 

 the bones were so skilfully coloxired as to make them look of immense 

 antiquity, and he was not allowed to touch them lest they should crumble 

 to pieces. But when M. Schlegel subjected them to rude handling, he 

 found that they were comparatively modern, and that they were placed 

 one by the other without that profound knowledge of anatomy which 

 was to have been expected from the man bold enough to execute such 

 an audacious fraud. 



" THE OLDEST PIECE OF WOOD UPON EARTH." 



The most remarkable vegetable relic which the Lower Old 

 Red Sandstone has given us is a small fragment of a coniferous 

 tree of the Araucarian family, which formed one of the chief 

 ornaments of the late Hugh Miller's museum, and to which he 

 used to point as the oldest piece of wood upon earth. He found 

 it in one of the ichthyolite beds of Cromarty, and thus refers to 

 it in his Testimony of the Rocks : 



On what perished land of the early paleozoic ages did this venerably 

 antique tree cast root and flourish, when the extinct genera Pterichthys 

 and Coccoeteus were enjoying life by millions in the surrounding seas, 

 long ere the flora or fauna of the coal measures had begun to be? 



The same nodule which enclosed this lignite contained part of another 

 fossil, the well-marked scales of Diplacanthus striatus, an ichthyolite re- 

 stricted to the Lower Old Red Sandstone exclusively. If there be any 

 value in paleontological evidence, this Cromarty lignite must have been 

 deposited in a sea inhabited by the Coccoeteus and Diplacanthus. It 

 is demonstrable that, while yet in a recent state, a Diplacanthus lay down 

 and died beside it ; and the evidence in the case is unequivocally this, 

 that in the oldest portion of the oldest terrestrial flora yet known there 

 occurs the fragment of a tree quite as high in the scale as the stately 

 Norfolk-Island pine or the noble cedar of Lebanon. 



NO FOSSIL HOSE. 



Professor Agassiz, in a lecture upon the trees of America, 

 states a remarkable fact in regard to the family of the rose, 

 which includes among its varieties not only many of the 

 most beautiful flowers, but also the richest fruits, as the apple, 

 pear, peach, plum, apricot, cherry, strawberry, raspberry, &c., 

 namely, that no fossil plants belonging to this family have ever 

 been discovered by geologists ! This M. Agassiz regards as con- 

 clusive evidence that the introduction of this family of plants 

 upon the earth was coeval with, or subsequent to, the creation 

 of man, to whose comfort and happiness they seem especially 

 designed by a wise Providence to contribute. 



CHANGES ON THE EARTH'S SURFACE. 



In the Imperial Library at Paris is preserved a manuscript 

 work by an Arabian writer, Mohammed Karurini, who nourished 

 in the seventh century of the Hegira, or at the close of the 

 thirteenth century of our era. Herein we find several curious 



