FOSSIL REPTILES. 333 



Baron in his admirable and most interesting account of the 

 osteology of the living species. Nothing, indeed, can be in 

 itself more curious and important, but it is not necessary, as 

 such researches were in former instances, to elucidate our ac- 

 count in the way of comparison. The details of the living 

 batracians will be given in their proper place in the present 

 work ; and we shall now proceed at once to what can be said 

 respecting their fossil remains. 



We shall first speak of the pretended fossil man of the quar- 

 ries of CEningen, described by Scheuchzer, which other natu- 

 ralists considered a silurus, but which, in reality, is nothing 

 but an aquatic salamander of gigantic size, and unknown 

 species. 



It was natural that those who attributed all petrifactions to 

 the deluge, should be astonished at never encountering amongst 

 so many remains of animals of all classes, any human bones 

 that could at all be distinguished. 



Scheuchzer, who supported this theory, with more detail and 

 continuity than any other writer, was accordingly more inte- 

 rested in discovering some remains of our species. He, there- 

 fore, received, with a sort of transport, a schistous rock from 

 CEningen, which appeared to present to him the impression of 

 a skeleton of a man. He described this specimen, in brief, in 

 '' The Philosophical Transactions for 1726," (vol. xxxiv. p. 38). 

 He then made it the subject of a particular dissertation, en- 

 titled *' Homo Diluvii testis,^' He reproduced it in his " Sacred 

 Physics," assuring us, *^that it is indubitable, and that it con- 

 tains a moiety, or nearly so, of the skeleton of a man — that 

 the substance even of the bones, nay more, of the flesh, and 

 of parts still softer than the flesh, are there incorporated in the 

 stone. In a word, that it is one of the rarest relics which we 

 possess of that cursed race which was overwhelmed by the 

 waters." 



It required all the blindness which the spirit of system can 

 produce, for such a man as Scheuchzer, who was a physician. 



