CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY. 423 



we perceive an intermixture of existing with extinct species ; the 

 proportion of the former increasing according to the more recent 

 formation of the strata, till, in the deposits of the modern era, the 

 remains of existing species alone are discovered, and, as we have al- 

 ready remarked, in these accumulations of debris, the skeletons of 

 man, and traces of the works of art of the early tribes of our race, 

 are sometimes found imbedded. 



The extinction of whole genera of animals and plants has, no doubt, 

 depended on various causes. In the earlier revolutions, the vicissitudes 

 of climate, and the mutations of land and water, were, probably, the 

 principal agents of destruction : but since man became the lord of the 

 creation, his necessities and caprice have occasioned the extirpation 

 of many tribes, whose relics are found in the same superficial strata 

 with those of species concerning which all human history and tradi- 

 tion are silent.* 



The obliteration of certain forms of animal life (and perhaps the 

 creation of new ones) appears, therefore, to be dependent on a law in 

 the economy of nature, which is still in active operation. Of this we 

 have a remarkable instance in the case of the Dodo, which has been 

 annihilated, and become a denizen of the fossil kingdom, almost be- 

 fore our eyes. The Dodo was a bird of the gallinaceous tribe, larger 

 than the turkey, which existed in great numbers in the Mauritius and 

 adjacent islands, when those countries were first colonized by the 

 Dutch, about two centuries ago. This bird was the principal food of 

 the colonists; but it was incapable of domestication, and its numbers 

 soon became sensibly diminished. Stuffed specimens were sent to 

 the museums of Europe, and paintings of the living animal were exe- 

 cuted, and copied into the works on natural history. The Dodo is 

 now extinct: it is no longer to be found in the isles where it once 

 flourished, and even all the stuffed specimens are destroyed ; the only 

 relics that remain being the head and foot of an individual in the Ash- 

 molean museum at Oxford, and the leg of another in the British mu- 

 seum. To render this history complete, the fossilized remains were 

 alone wanting, and these have actually been found beneath a bed of 

 lava in the Isle of France, and are now in the museum of the Jardin 

 des Plantes at Paris ; affording the most unexpected and conclusive 

 evidence of the truth of what was formerly considered one of the 

 most startling propositions in modern geology. f 



Another highly interesting and important fact is proved by the phe- 

 nomena that have been presented to our examination, namely, the 

 comparatively recent period at which man became an inhabitant of 

 the earth, and exercised dominion over the animal creation ; a fact in 



* In Great Britain, we may instance, as belonging to species which formerly 

 existed in this country, and are still living in other parts of the globe, the beaver, 

 hear, wolf, hyena, (^c; and, as wholly extinct, the Irish Elk and Mammoth, with 

 whose bones existing species of shells are sometimes found associated. Consult 

 Dr. Fleming's British Anrniah, 1vol. 8vo. 1828: also an excellent Memoir, by 

 the same author, in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, No. xxii. ' 



t See an excellent paper on the Dodo, by Mr. Duncan, ZoologirMl Journal for 

 January, 1828 : also, " Contributions towards the History of the Dodo, ( Didus in- 

 eptus,) by J. V. Thompson, Esq., Mog. Nat. Hist., vol. ii. p. 412; and Mr. Lyell's 

 Principles of Geology, vol. ii, p. 15L 



