535 
and 1806, he expresses his concurrence with Leibnitz in comparing 
the petrified remains of organic bodies to the documents which hi- 
storians discover in medals, inscriptions, and monuments of ancient 
art ; and regards them as affording no less certain chronological evi- 
dence of physical changes during the construction of the earth, than 
we extract from coins and medals respecting events which they re- 
cord in the history of mankind. 
He judiciously explains the occasional discovery of human bones 
and works of art in contact with the relics of extinct species; and 
views the changes that occur in the fossil remains of the successive 
strata as true indications of consecutive changes in the past condi- 
tion of the globe. 
** Mundi naturam totius ztas 
Mutat, et ex alio terram status excipit alter.”’ 
_ Lucret. 
The frozen rhinoceros of Pallas, and remains of herds of extinct 
elephants on the ice-bound shores of Siberia ; the bones of the same 
extinct species of elephants and of rhinoceros, mixed with those of 
lions and hyzenas in the caverns of the Hartz, and in the gravel be- 
neath the very town of Gottingen, led him to infer, as we have now 
additional reasons for doing, the former existence of a nearly tropical 
and uniform condition of climate over the now temperate and frigid 
portions of northern Europe, wherein these animals were formerly 
indigenous ; and in further evidence of high temperature in these 
northern latitudes, he appeals to the quantities of fossil amber so 
abundant in the north of Germany, and to the extinct species of 
insects which the amber so frequently contains. 
He had carefully inspected in the Museum of Schaffhausen the 
fossil remains of Ciningen, and recognized their proximity to the 
existing flora and fauna of Switzerland ; among these he enume- 
rates small rodent animals, birds, frogs, numerous aquatic insects, 
and leaves and blossoms of plants, which more recent discoveries 
have referred to a freshwater formation of the Meiocene period. 
He had distinctly recognized the fossil beaks of extinct cuttle- 
fish in the muschelkalk of the Heimberg, and the septa and siphon 
of the Orthoceratites of Clausthal; and from the family of Ammo- 
nites, which he knew to be numerous in species beyond most other 
fossil shells, he had selected that remarkable example from the Hi- 
malaya mountains called the Salagram*, specimens of which were 
subsequently placed in our museum by the great oriental scholar 
Mr. Henry Colebrook. The Salagram is a hollow cavity or mould 
bearing the impression of Ammonite, included in concretions of lias 
from the bed of the Ganges near Patna, which Indian superstition 
has sanctified as a mystic symbol of the Metamorphosis of Vishnu. 
(Specimen Archeologiz Telluris, § 10.) 
He duly appreciated the differences between the remains of the 
copper-slate, and muschelkalk and transition limestone within the 
limited vicinity of Gottingen; and further observed the degrees of 
* This specimen was given to him by the chaplain of a Hanoverian 
regiment who brought it from India. 
Zen) 
Am 
