138 Lectures on the Results of the 



or the science of fossil organic remains, remarkable for its unprece- 

 dented rapidity, adds a new element to the elucidation of this 

 question, which was so ably discussed by Buffon and the naturalists 

 of the last century. At present, however, the evidence which 

 palaeontology yields is of the negative kind. No unequivocal 

 fossil remains of the sheep have yet been found in the bone caves, 

 the drift, or the more tranquil stratified newer pliocene deposits, 

 so associated with the fossil bones of oxen, wild boar, wolves, 

 foxes, otters, beavers, &c, as to indicate the coevality of the sheep 

 with those species, or in such an altered state as to indicate them 

 to have been of equal antiquity. I have had my attention par- 

 ticularly directed to this point, in collecting evidence for a " His- 

 tory of our British Fossil Mammalia." Wherever the truly 

 characteristic parts, viz., the bony cores of the horns, have been 

 found associated with jaws, teeth, and other parts of the skeleton 

 of a ruminant, corresponding in size and other characters with 

 those of the goat and sheep, in the formations of the newer plio- 

 cene period, such supports of the horns have proved to be those of 

 the goat.* No fossil horn-core of a sheep has yet been anywhere 

 discovered ; and so far as this negative evidence goes, we may 

 infer that the sheep is not geologically more ancient than man ; 

 that it is not a native of Europe, but has been introduced by the 

 tribes who carried hither the germs of civilisation in their migra- 

 tions westward from Asia. 



2. Baleen. — I have next to speak of a substance which, though 

 commonly called " whalebone," has nothing of the nature of bone 

 in it ; but it is an albuminous tissue, nearly allied to hair and 

 bristles, both in its chemical and vital properties, and its mode of 

 development. 



Of all the creatures which man has subdued for his advantage 

 and use, that which surpasses every other animal in bulk, and which 

 lives in an element unfitted for man's existence, might be supposed 

 to be the last that he would have the audacity to attack, or the 

 power to overcome. The great whales, that " tempest the ocean," 

 are able, as many instances — and a very recent one — have shewn, 

 to stave in the bottom of a ship by a blow of their muzzle, and 

 crack a boat by a nip of their jaws, as easily as we would a nut — 

 " Si sua robora norint!" If they did but know their strength, 

 and how to use it, pursuit would be in vain, and whales would be- 

 come the most dreaded, instead of the most coveted, of the deni- 

 zens of the deep. 



* A characteristic fossil of this kind, found associated with remains of the 

 Mammoth and leptorine rhinoceros in the newer fresh-water pliocene of 

 Walton, in Kssox, is figured in my " History of British Fossil Mammalia," 

 p. 489, cut 204. 



