FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE. 
97 
yore legions of dolpliins and whales were ' blowing ' freely, plongbing the 
surface of the sea with their broad tails, and quietly sporting without fear 
of man. These fossil remains are of a much higher antiquity than all the 
products of human industry. Man had not yet made his appearance at 
the period \^hen the sea covered these latitudes ; the earth was then 
neither sufficiently prepared nor sufficiently solidly establislied to receive 
the 'king of creation.' Between the present epoch and that time past 
when the soil which now bears the wonders of the city of Eubens reposed 
at the bottom of the sea, we find numerous and incontrovertible vestiges 
of an intermediate period when many great terrestrial mammifers held 
their sway. 
" From the depths of Siberia to the basin of the Mediterranean and the 
Black Sea, two great pachyderms, the Mammoth and tichorine Ehino- 
ceros, trod in great numbers the shallow waters and plains,* at the same 
time that the great bears so carefully described b}'^ Dr. Schmerling (in 
1833) frequented the sombre caverns of Liege. The nearly complete ske- 
leton disinterred two years since at Lierre amongst bones of rhinoceros, 
ox, deer, horse, and hyfena, belongs to this intermediate period.f . . . 
The North Sea had not then its present limits ; England had not yet, per- 
haps, been subjected to that terrible convulsion which violently separated 
it from the Continent ; and judging from the considerable number of bones 
which are met with in certain places in the present seas, these great pachy- 
derms traversed freely and diy-foot from the Mouse and the Scheldt to 
the Thames and the county of Essex. ... As I propose to speak of the 
fossil bones collected from the sand, otherwise called the 'Crag,' of the 
environs of Antwerp, and which forms a real catacomb of dolphins and 
whales, permit me to draw attention to the species which now visit our 
coasts, in order the better to judge of the difiTerences which are revealed 
by a cornparison between the present North Sea and the Sea of the Crag at 
that geological epoch. Who is there that, during the fine days of summer, 
reclining on the sand of the dunes or at the foot of the cliflf, abandoned to 
his reveries, has not been struck with that majestic nature which, under a 
thousand different forms, spreads waves of life on the sea ! Who has not 
asked himself, — This shore of to-day, is it like the shores of other days ? 
These waters, have they always enclosed in their bosom the same fishes ? 
What mean these petrified bones, these tusks of mammoths which the sea 
throws up sometimes along the coast? As the archseologist, arrested by 
the majestic ruins of Thebes or Palmyra, delights in evoking the remem- 
brance of their peoples, and figuring to himself the forum and the temple 
filled with the dense crowd, so the naturalist sees the ancient seas roil their 
foaming waves on the dry land, the waters peopled with dolphins and 
sirens, star^fish and 'ear-shells.' . . . All the species, cetacean or fish, 
mollusc or polype, buried in those vast beds of sand, have disappeared from 
owr seas, and even their analogues inhabit only much more southern regions. 
" The mise en scene is the same as of old : flood and ebb produce the 
same effects ; the surf causes the same ravages, —in a word, the decorations 
remain, but the actors are changed. 
" The phenomena most apparent to the naturalist in comparing the pre^ 
* Of late the study of the species of the quaternary epoch in respect to their appearances 
and succession has made great progress. A remarkable memoir by M. Lartet has apr 
peared on this important subject, and according to this learned paleontologist the cave- 
bears had disappeared before the appearance of the mammoths, and man was contemporary 
with these species. (See Ann. des Sc. Nat., 4me Serie, t. xv., cah. iii.) 
+ Scohy, ' Considerations sur les Ossements fossiles decouverts a. Lierre,' 1860; an4 
♦Bulletins de 1' Academic Royale de Belgique,' 2rae Serie, t. ix., No. 5. 
yoL. Y. o 
