192 
DEMNIS, ON CETACEAN BONES. 
ill accordance with tliat law hy Avliicli Nature^ phoenix-like, 
arises with renewed beauty out of her own ashes_, surely it 
would be ill becoming the scientific age we live in, not to 
derive at the same time intellectual advantage from these 
remarkable remains ; and this has, in some measure, already 
been done — for amongst the fossilized fragments some were 
observed to be of regular form, and, though water-worn, still 
gave indications of their origin, and the credit is due to the 
Rev. Professor Henslow for the discovery of the tympanic 
bones of whales of which Professor Owen has determined 
several species. I am not aware, however, that any attempt 
has been made satisfactorily to determine by the aid of the 
microscope the nature of other associated bones which, from 
their irregular shapes, afforded no sure indications of the ani- 
mals to which they once belonged, and I think it has been too 
prematu.rely concluded that they all belonged to huge whales, 
which have so plentifully left their ear-bones in the Crag ; the 
microscope, and that alone, if judgment be employed in its 
use, must eventually settle this question. These irregular 
portions of bones evidently belonged to massive animals, 
and our study must be directed to other bones of such ani- 
mals for a solution of the problem before us ; and it would be 
certainly jumping too soon at a conclusion to assign all the 
rolled bones found in the Hed Crag to cetacean origin, because 
the hard tympanic bones of many whales have escaped the 
wreck of ages, and still remain as monuments of those huge 
creatures that once sported in primaeval seas. In fact, a 
slight examination of those osseous stones that have been 
rolled like the flints and other portions of rocks that form 
the present shingle on our coasts, must lead us to suspect the 
existence formerly of mighty mammifers which probably once 
trod on dry land and roamed over extensive regions ; and 
who shall estimate the centuries during which those bones 
have rolled to and fro on some primseval beach, lashed by the 
surge of seas which have, like those ponderous animals, been 
swallowed up by all- devouring time. We may fancy their 
first entombment, when probably numbers fell a sacrifice to 
some geological vicissitude during the convulsions of Nature 
in her throes to give birth to the world we live in, while she 
travailed with child — the future parent of civilisation and of 
the arts and sciences. Then again we see the deposit in 
which they were inclosed — "the great mammoth burial- 
ground" — broken up, becoming the sport of ocean, the 
bones torn from their resting-place and dashed fo fragments 
on the shore, the harder portions resisting the action of the 
waves, and fighting for the mastery inch by inch, until the 
