hunter's posthumous paper on fossils. 313 



" How they became extinct is not easily accounted for j for although 

 we must suppose that the species of deer \_Megaceros] to which belonged 

 the bones and horns now found in the island of Great Britain, more 

 particularly in Scotland, and still more in Ireland, is lost, yet we have 

 reason to believe they were coeval with the elephant ; for I have the 

 lower jaw and tooth of an elephant that were dug up at Ougle [Oundle], 

 in Northamptonshire, twelve feet below the surface, in a strong blue 

 clay ; and with it, one of the horns of the large deer." — P. viii. 



This opinion of the antiquity of the Megaceros has been confirmed by 

 later observations : in Ireland its remains occur in the shell-marl under- 

 lying the turbary 1 . 



Hunter proceeds to express his thoughts on the nature of fossil 

 organic remains, as follows : — " No definition can be given that will suit 

 every fossil, except simply that which strikes the eye, which in a general 

 way is pretty correct. For as extraneous fossils have been and can be 

 matched by such substances in a recent state, and probably the animals 

 most [frequently], they may in a general way be distinguished, and 

 this arises from the part in a fossil state having been more or less 

 deprived of the parts belonging to the recent, which is the animal part ; 

 and which is what principally gives colour to them : thus fossil shells 

 have none of those bright colours found in the recent ; yet some shells 

 retain something of their original colour, though the animal part is 

 dissolved into a kind of mucus, which would make us conceive that both 

 the animal and earthy parts were so disposed as to reflect nearly the 

 same colours, but the animal part is by much the brightest : for it is 

 not simply the state in which the substance is that constitutes a fossil ; 

 but it is the state, with the mode in which it was brought to that state, 

 that commonly constitutes a fossil ; for many things might be called an 

 ' extraneous fossil' if considered abstractedly from the manner of their 

 being brought to that state ; [and, so considered,] every churchyard 

 would produce fossils." — P. xxiv. 



" To establish the principles of fossils, I shall set it down first as a 

 principle, that no animal substance can of itself constitute, or be turned 

 into, a fossil ; it can only be changed for a fossil*." Note the acute di- 

 stinction drawn between ' turned into' and ' changed for.' Hunter next 

 notices the change of animal matter into ' adipocire,' and remarks, — 



" How far critics will consider such to be a fossil, I will not say We 



find vegetables preserved in the earth retaining their original properties ; 



* What I mean by animal substance, is everything that constitutes animal 

 matter which is not earth. 



1 [History of British Fossil Mammals, 8yo. 1846, p. 464.] 



