FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 21 



grows in India. In the midst of quart zose sands of the most 

 arid kind in the African deserts, and on the surface of a soil 

 for ages under the curse of sterihty, are found considerable 

 quantities of the trunks of trees changed into silex. Buried 

 in the peat, on a mountain in the department of the I sere, in 

 France, fossil wood was found not less than 2000 feet above the 

 most elevated line where trees can grow at the present day *. 



We have now to notice a fact connected with fossil osteo- 

 logy of the most singular and striking kind. We find, as has 

 been seen, quadrupeds of different genera, cetacea, birds, rep- 

 tiles, fishes, insects, mollusca, and vegetables, in the fossil 

 state. But to the present moment no human remains have 

 been found, nor any traces of the works of man in those par- 

 ticular formations where these different organic fossils have 

 been discovered. What is meant by this assertion is, that no 

 human bones have been found in the regular strata of the sur- 

 face of the globe. In turf-bogs, alluvial beds, and ancient 

 burying-grounds, they are disinterred as abundantly as the 

 bones of other living species. Similar remains are found in 

 the clefts of rocks, and sometimes in caves, where stalactite is 

 accumulated upon them ; and the stage of decomposition in 

 which they are found, and other circumstances, prove the 

 comparative recentness of their deposition ; but not a frag- 

 ment of human bone has been found in such situations as can 

 lead us to suppose that our species was contemporary with the 

 more ancient races, — with the palaeotheria, the anoplotheria, or 

 even with the elephants and rhinoceroses of comparatively a 

 later date. Many authors, indeed, have asserted, that debris of 

 the human species have been found among the fossils, properly 

 so called ; but a careful examination of the facts on which 



* In speaking- of fossil vegetables, we should not omit to mention the 

 name of our countryman, Mr. Parkinson, who, in his *• Org-anic Remains,'' 

 was one of the first writers who threw considerable lig-ht on the subject 

 of fossils in g-eneral. Though erroneous in some of his speculative 

 notions, his work contains a sumjuary of facts of the utmost iiJij)ortancc 

 to this branch of science. 



