278 COSMOS. 



* 

 rium, missiiriura, and the megatherides, among which is 



Owen's sloth-hke mylodon, eleven feet in length.* Besides 

 these extinct families, we find the fossil remains of still extant 

 animals, as the elephant, rhinoceros, ox, horse, and stag. The 

 field near Bogota, called the Gaiwpo de Gigantes, which is 

 filled with the bones of mastodons, and in which 1 caused ex- 

 cavations to be made, lies 8740 feet above the level of the 

 sea, while the osseous remains, found in the elevated plateaux 

 of Mexico, belong to true elephants of extinct species.f The 

 projecting spurs of ther Himalaya, the Sewalik Hills, which 

 have been so zealously investigated by Captain Cautley$ and 

 Dr. Falconer, and the Cordilleras, whose elevations are, prob- 

 ably, of very different epochs, contain, besides numerous mas- 

 todons, the sivatherium, and the gigantic land tortoise of the 

 primitive world ( Colossochelys), which is twelve feet in length 

 and six in height, and several extant families, as elephants, 

 rhinoceroses, and giraffes ; and it io a remarkable fact, that 

 these remains are found in a zone which still enjoys the same 

 tropical climate which must be supposed to have prevailed at 

 the period of the mastodons. § 



Having thus passed in review both the inorganic formations 

 of the earth's crust and the animal remains which are con- 

 tained within it, another branch of the history of organic life 

 still remains for our consideration, viz., the epoch of vegeta 

 tion, and the successive floras that have occurred simul- 

 taneously with the increasing extent of the dry land and the 

 modifications of the atmosphere. The oldest transition strata, 

 as we have already observed, contain merely cellular marine 

 plants, and it is only in the devonian system that a few cryp- 

 togamic forms of vascular plants ( Calami tes and Lycopodi 

 aceae) have been observed.il Nothing appears to corroborate 



* [See Mantell's Wonders of Geology, vol. i., p. 168.] — Tr. 



t Cuvier, Ossemens Fossiles, 1821, t. i., p. 157, 261, and 264. See, 

 also, Humboldt, Ueber die Hochebene von Bogota, in the Deutschen 

 Vierteljahrs-schrift, 1839, bd. i., s. 117. 



X [The fossil fauna of the Sewalik range of hills, skirting the south- 

 ern base of the Himalaya, has proved more abundant in genera and 

 species of maminalia than that of any other region yet explored. As 

 a general expression of the leading features, it may be stated, that it 

 appears to have been composed of representative forms of all ages, 

 from the oldest of the tertiary period down to the modern, and of all th» 

 geographical divisions of the Old Continent grouped together into one 

 comprehensive fauna. Fauna Antiqua Sivaliensis, by Hugh Falconer, 

 M.D., and Major P. T. Cautley.]— Tr. 



§ Journal of the Asiatic Society, 1844, No. 15, p. 109. 



|1 Beyrich, in Karsten's ArchivfH Mineralogie, 1844, bd. xviii., s. 218 



