Miscellaneous. 



357 



In his two celebrated Essays on the Archaeology of the Earth, 1801 

 and 1806, he expresses his concurrence with Leibnitz in comparing 

 the petrified remains of organic bodies to the documents which hi- 

 storians discover in medals, inscriptions, and monuments of ancient 

 art ; and regards them as affording no less certain chronological evi- 

 dence of physical changes during the construction of the earth, than 

 we extract from coins and medals respecting events which they re- 

 cord in the history of mankind. 



He judiciously explains the occasional discovery of human bones 

 and works of art in contact with the relics of extinct species ; and 

 views the changes that occur in the fossil remains of the successive 

 strata as true indications of consecutive changes in the past condi- 

 tion of the globe. 



" Mundi naturam totius setas 

 Mutat, et ex alio terrain status excipit alter." 



Lucret. 



The frozen rhinoceros of Pallas, and remains of herds of extinct 

 elephants on the ice-bound shores of Siberia ; the bones of the same 

 extinct species of elephants and of rhinoceros, mixed with those of 

 lions and hyaenas in the caverns of the Hartz, and in the gravel be- 

 neath the very town of Gottingen, led him to infer, as we have now 

 additional reasons for doing, the former existence of a nearly tropical 

 and uniform condition of climate over the now temperate and frigid 

 portions of northern Europe, wherein these animals were formerly 

 indigenous ; and in further evidence of high temperature in these 

 northern latitudes, he appeals to the quantities of fossil amber so 

 abundant in the north of Germany, and to the extinct species of 

 insects which the amber so frequently contains. 



He had carefully inspected in the Museum of Schaffhausen the 

 fossil remains of CEningen, and recognized their proximity to the 

 existing flora and fauna of Switzerland ; among these he enume- 

 rates small rodent animals, birds, frogs, numerous aquatic insects, 

 and leaves and blossoms of plants, which more recent discoveries 

 have referred to a freshwater formation of the Meiocene period. 



He had distinctly recognized the fossil beaks of extinct cuttle- 

 fish in the muschelkalk of the Heimberg, and the septa and siphon 

 of the Orthoceratites of Clausthal ; and from the family of Ammo- 

 nites, which he knew to be numerous in species beyond most other 

 fossil shells, he had selected that remarkable example from the Hi- 

 malaya mountains called the Salagram*, specimens of which were 

 subsequently placed in our museum by the great oriental scholar 

 Mr. Henry Colebrook. The Salagram is a hollow cavity or mould 

 bearing the impression of Ammonite, included in concretions of lias 

 from the bed of the Ganges near Patna, which Indian superstition 

 has sanctified as a mystic symbol of the Metamorphosis of Vishnu. 

 (Specimen Archseologise Telluris, § 10.) 



* This specimen was given to him by the chaplain of a Hanoverian 

 regiment who brought it from India. 



