ON GEOLOGY. 



71 



these, having been erroneously regarded of the same antiquity as Werner's 

 UNIVERSAL FORMATIONS, have been appealed to by various writers as affording 

 proofs of the falsity of his theory.* 



We have other instances of this local formation in many parts of our own 

 country, and particularly near the banks of the Thames. Mr. Trimmer has 

 given an interesting account of the substrate of two fields in the vicinity of 

 Brentford, that are loaded with the organic remains of the larger kinds of 

 quadrupeds ; as bones of elephants, approaching to both the Asiatic and the 

 African species ; horns of deer, apparently as enormous as those dug up in 

 Ireland; bones of the bos genus; and teeth and bones of the hippopotamus; 

 the last very abundant, and intermixed with fresh water shells,} and other 

 fresh water relics. 



Occasionally, however, marine remains are found intermingled with such 

 animal fossils and composing their beds instead of those of fresh w^ater; and 

 not unfrequently layers of the one kind, as in the basin of Paris, are irregu- 

 larly surmounted by layers of the other. But no human skeletons are dis- 

 covered in the midst of any of these rocks, although the bones of man are 

 as capable of preservation as those of any other animal : the only known 

 instance of this sort being that imported into our own country from Guada- 

 loupe by Sir Alexander Cochrane, and which is now exhibited in the British 

 Museum, imbedded in a block of calcareous stone; a very accurate descrip- 

 tion of which has been published in the Philosophical Transactions by Mr. 

 Konig. 



It is hence obvious, that the catastrophes which involved these enormous 

 quadrupeds in destruction must have occurred at a period when mankind had 

 no existence in the regions which are thus overwhelmed; and in some places 

 overwhelmed alternately by disruptions and inundations of sea and of fresh 

 water. And it is equally obvious, that as the fossil bones are not rolled or 

 violently distorted, or deprived of their natural contour, such remains have 

 not been brought to their present beds from a distance ; but that the deluge 

 must have been sudden, and overtaken them in their natural resorts ; and 

 hence may, in many cases, have swept away all the individuals of a species 

 in a common calamity. 



There is, however, a great difficulty with some naturalists in conceiving 

 that such animals as the elephant, the tapir, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, 

 the mammoth, or mastodon, animals now only found in the torrid regions, 

 could have existed in these northern parts of the globe. M. de Marschall 

 endeavoured by one sweeping stroke of the fancy to solve this, as well as 

 that of the extraordinary fragments in which they are often imbedded, and 

 held out that the whole have fallen at different times, like meteoric stones, 

 from heaven.J The real difficulty, however, vanishes in a considerable de- 

 gree, if not entirely, when we reflect, that although the torrid regions furnish 

 us with some of these genera, they do not appear in any instance to contain 

 the same precise species as are traced among the large fossil quadrupeds of 

 the northern and colder parts : and hence it is no argument, that because the 

 habits of the extant species do not qualify them for a residence in these lat- 

 ter regions, such situations might not have furnished a comfortable home to 

 the species whose remains are found among us. The fossil species do not 

 differ less from the living to which they make the nearest approach, than 

 various animals that are familiar to us do from others that belong to the same 

 tribes, and which are found, under one species or other, over the whole world. 

 The race of horses, of swine, or of sheep, furnishes us with abundant exam- 

 ples of this remark : and that of dogs affords perhaps a still more striking 

 illustration; for while under one form, that of the isatis or Arctic fox, the 

 canis Lagopus of Linnaeus, we find it in the northernmost coast of America, 

 and even the frozen sea, living in clefts, or burrowing on the naked moun- 



* For an admirable defence of this part of the theory, see Mr. Jameson's essay " On Formations," in- 

 serted in the Annals of Philos. No. iii. p. 191. 



t Phil. Trans, for 1813, p. 135. See also Mr. Webster's valuable essay on the same subject, in vol. ii. of 

 the Transactions of the Geological Society. % Recherches sur I'Origine, &,c. GeLssen, 1802. 



