THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 73 



more abundant specimens than Egypt. It affords us not only the 

 representations of animals, but their bodies themselves embalmed in 

 the catacombs. 



I have attentively examined the drawings of animals and birds 

 engraved on the numerous columns brought from Egypt to Rome. 

 All these figures have (taken as a' whole, which must be the way in 

 which artists consider them,) a perfect resemblance to those of the 

 same species still existing. 



Every one may examine the copies made by Kirker and Zoega ; 

 they have given drawings of them, easily recognized, although not 

 precisely similar to the originals. We. may easily distinguish the 

 ibis, the vulture, the owl, the falcon, the Egyptian goose, the lapwing, 

 the landrail, the aspic, the cerastes, the Egyptian hare with its long 

 ears, and even the hippopotamus ; and in these numerous monuments, 

 engraved in the great work on Egypt, we sometimes have the rarest 

 animals — the algazel, for instance, which was not seen in Europe till 

 within these few r years*. 



My learned colleague, M. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, strongly impressed 

 with the importance of this research, collected with great care, in the 

 tombs and temples of Upper and Lower Egpyt, all the mummies of 

 animals which he could obtain. He brought both cats, ibises, birds 

 of prey, dogs, monkeys, crocodiles, and an ox's head embalmed ; and 

 we cannot find any more differences between these and those of the 

 present day, than between human mummies and human skeletons of 

 the present time. Some difference has been found between the mum- 

 mies of ibis and the bird so called by naturalists of the present day ; 

 but I have removed all difficulties in an essay on this bird subjoined 

 to this Disccurse, in which I have shewn that it is at the present time 

 precisely as it was in the time of the Pharaohs. I am aware that I 

 only refer to animals of two or three thousand years, but these are the 

 earliest periods to which we are enabled to revert. 



There is nothing then in known facts, which can support in the least 

 the opinion that the new genera which I have discovered or established 

 amongst fossils, as well as those detected by other naturalists, the 

 palceotheria, the anoplotheria, the megalonyces, the mastodontes, the 

 pterodactyli, the ichthyosauri, &c, could have been the sources of any 

 animals now existing, which would only differ by the influence of time 

 or climate ; and although it should be true (which I am far from be- 



* The first representation of it from nature is in ' La Description de la Menagerie, 

 by my brother ; it is accurately represented in the great work on Egypt. Descr. d' 

 1'Egypte, Ant. t. iv. pi. xlix. 



