188 THE WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. Lect. II. 



surround the great basin of the Mediterranean; — rocks 

 of a uniform character, fissured and broken, their rents 

 filled up with similar materials, and with the remains of 

 the same species of animals. The occurrence of species, 

 either extinct, or no longer inhabiting the same latitudes 

 (as the lagomys), refers the period of the existence of these 

 animals to the epoch of the mammoths and mastodons ; and 

 the absence of marine remains, and of the usual abrading 

 effects of water, show that the breccia was formed on dry 

 land, and not beneath the sea. The rational explanation of 

 these facts, appears to be that which assumes the original 

 union of these distant rocks and islands into a continent, or 

 large island, that, like Calabria, was subject to repeated 

 visitations of earthquakes; and that the animals which 

 inhabited the country fell into the fissures thus produced, 

 and were preserved by the calcareous infiltrations that 

 were constantly in progress. Subsequent convulsions se- 

 vered the country into rocks and insular masses, of which 

 catastrophes the osseous conglomerates are the physical and 

 only records. 



44. Osseous breccia op Australia, — Caves and 

 fissures, filled with osseous breccia, of the same nature 

 as that above described, have also been discovered in 

 New Holland, to the westward of Sydney, near the banks 

 of the Macquarrie river ; and it is not a little remarkable, 

 that even the red ochreous colour of the European conglo- 

 merates prevails ; the bones, however, belong to animals 

 wholly distinct from any noticed in the preceding ex- 

 amples. Some of them are of living, others of extinct 

 species, but almost all are referable to marsupial animals, 

 as the Kangaroo, Wombat, Dasyurus, &c. A portion of 

 a large bone, found in a cave, is said to belong to the 

 hippopotamus, and another fragment to the mastodon, but 

 this requires confirmation ; it is, however, a subject worthy 

 of attention, since the kangaroo is the largest animal now 



