520 Petrifactions. MINERALOGY. P£TftlPAdfl6N§. 
fubftances calculated to promote the comfort of man ; to 
tempt him to the exercife of his innate powers, to furnifh 
him with the means of maintaining his dominion over the 
animals around him, and even to urge him to a change 
from the favage to the civilized date. Another world 
rifes from the overwhelming flood, compofed of the frag¬ 
ments of the former, which appear to be blended toge¬ 
ther in an apparently difordered and incongruous mafs. 
But, after the lapfe of a fmall period of time, the confti- 
tuent parts of the newly-formed world are difcovered to 
be arranged according to thofe wife laws which the great 
Creator had decreed from the beginning. The furface 
again teems with animal and vegetable life ; and the frefh 
creation, enriched by a melioration of its materials, ob¬ 
tains an increafe both in its flock of utility and beauty. 
We now proceed to defcribe the eight genera of this 
clafs. 
Anthropoi.ithus. —The human body, or fome of its 
parts, changed into a foffil fubftance. Here we reckon 
two fpecies. 
i. Anthropolitlius totalis, or the whole human fkeleton. 
This, according to Gmelin, was found, in 1785, at Fah- 
lun, in Sweden, imbedded in a mafs of fulphuret of iron, 
or pyrites, and converted into a hard flone. Other fpeci- 
mens are faid to have been found in fome mineral waters 
in France, and near Freyburg and Saxony. Mr. Parkin- 
fon maintains, on the other hand,'that no well-attefled in- 
flance of the mineralized remains of man is known. How¬ 
ever, in the month of Auguft, 1813, the hon. fir Alexan¬ 
der Cochrane, on his return from the government of 
Guadaloupe, brought with him a foffil human fkeleton, 
alrnoft entire. It is now in the Britifh Mufeum ; and 
Mr. Konig has written a defcription of it, which, to na- 
turalifts, will be regarded as highly important and inter- 
efting. 
“ On the hiftory of the flrata produced by the more re¬ 
cent catalirophes of the globe,” fays Mr. Konig, “ moft 
light has been thrown by the indefatigable exertions of 
M. Cuvier. Superlatively fkilled in comparative ana¬ 
tomy, this gentleman has fucceeded in determining the 
foffil bones of no lefs than 78 fpecies, of which 49 are en¬ 
tirely unknown among the exifling races of animals ; 
•about 12 are identified with known fpecies, and the re¬ 
mainder flrongly refemble exifling fpecies, although their 
identity has not been completely afcertained. From the 
multiplied obfervations which this naturalift has commu¬ 
nicated in his numerous memoirs, we may gather that the 
viviparous quadrupeds appear at a much later period in 
•the foffil Hate than the oviparous ; the latter being pro- 
Babiy coeval with the fifhes, whilft the former are found 
only in the neweft formations, in which, according to 
Brongniart and Cuvier’s interefling difcovery, marine 
beds are obferved to alternate with thofe of frefh water, 
and which (in the neighbourhood of Paris) overlay the 
coarfe fhell-limeflone, which conflitutes the lafl llrata 
formed, as it would appear, by a long and quiet flay of 
the fea on our continent. 
“ All the circumflances under which the known depo- 
fitions of bones occur, both in alluvial beds and in the 
caverns and fiflures of floetz-limeftone, tend to prove, tllat 
the animals to which they belonged met their fate in the 
very places where they now lie buried. Hence, it may be 
confidered as an axiom, that man, and other animals, 
whole bones are not found intermixed with them, did not 
co-exift in time and place. The fame mode of reafoning 
would further juftify us in the conclufion, that, if thole 
cataflrophe,s which overwhelmed a great proportion of the 
brute creation were general, as geognoftic obfervations in 
various parts of the world render probable, the creation 
of man mult have been pofterior to that of thofe genera 
and fpecies of mammalia which perilhed by a general ca- 
taclyfm, and whofe bones are fo thickly diffeminated in 
the more recent formations of rocks. 
“ The human Ikeletons from Guadaloupe are called 
Calibi by the natives of that iiland j a name laid to have 
been that of an ancient tribe of Caribs of Gfuiana, but 
which, according to a plaulible conjecture, originated in 
the fubflitution of the letter l inflead of r, in the word 
Caribbee. No mention is made of them by any author 
except general Ernouf, in a letter to M. Faujas St. Fond, 
inferted in vol. v. (1805) of the Annales du Mufeum; 
and by M. Lavaifle, in his Voyage a la Trinidad, &c. pub- 
lifhed in 1813. The former of thefe gentlemen writes, 
that, on that part of the windward fide of the Grande- 
Terre called La Moule, Ikeletons are found enveloped 
in what he terms Muffes fie madrepores petrifies, which 
being very hard, and fituated within the line of high 
water, could not be worked without great difficulty; but 
that he expeCted to lucceed in caufingfome of thefe maffes 
to be detached, the meafurements of which he Hates to 
be about eight feet by two and a half. 
“ The block brought home by fir Alexander Cochrane 
exaftly anfwered this account with regard to the mea¬ 
furements ; in thickuefs it was about a foot and a half. 
It weighed nearly two tons ; its fhape was irregular, ap¬ 
proaching to a flattened oval, with here and there fome 
concavities, the largefl of which, as it afterwards appeared, 
occupying the place where the thigh-bone had been 
fituated, the lower part of which was therefore wanting. 
Except the few holes evidently made to affift in raiding 
the block, the mafons here declared, that there was no 
mark of a tool upon any part of it; and, indeed, the 
whole had very much the appearance of a huge nodule 
difengaged from a furrounding mafs. The fituation of 
the fkeleton in the block was fo fuperficial, that its pre¬ 
fence in the rock on the coafl had probably been indi¬ 
cated by the projection of fome of the more elevated parts 
of the left fore-arm. 
“ The fkull is wanting; a circumftance which is the 
more to be regretted, as this charaCteriftic part might pof- 
fibly have thrown fome light on the fubjeCt under confi- 
deration, or would, at leafl, have fettled the queftion, 
whether the fkeleton is that of a Carib, who ufed to give 
the frontal bone of the head a particular fhape by com- 
preffion ; which had the effeCt of depreffing the upper, 
and protruding the lower, edge of the orbits, fo as to 
make the direction of their opening nearly upwards, or 
horizontal, inflead of vertical. The vertebra of the neck 
were loft with the head. The bones of the thorax bear all 
the marks of confiderable concuffion, and are completely 
diliocated. The feven true ribs of the left fide, though 
their heads are not in connexion with the vertebras, are 
complete; but only three of the falfe ribs are obfervable. 
On the right fide only fragments of thefe bones are feen ; 
but the upper part of the feven true ribs of this fide are 
found on the left, and might at firfl fight be taken for the 
termination of the left ribs. The right ribs mull, there¬ 
fore, have been violently broken, and carried over to the 
left fide, where, if this mode of viewing the fubjeCt be cor¬ 
rect, the fternum mull likewife lie concealed below the 
termination of the ribs. The fmall bone dependent above 
the upper ribs of the left fide, appears to be the right cla¬ 
vicle. The right os humeri is loft; of the left nothing 
remains except the condyles in connexion with the fore¬ 
arm, which is in the Hate of pronation ; the radius of this 
fide exifts nearly in its full length, while of the ulna the 
lower part only remains, which is confiderably puffied up¬ 
wards. Of the two bones of the right fore-arm, the in¬ 
ferior terminations are feen. Both the rows of the bones 
of the wrifls are loft, but the whole metacarpus of the left 
hand is difplayed, together with part of the bones of the 
fingers : the firfl joint of the fore-finger refts on the upper 
ridge of the os pubis ; the two others, detached from their 
metacarpal bones, are propelled downwards, and fituated 
at the inner fide of the femur, and below the foramen 
magnum ifehii of this fide. Veftiges of three of the fingers- 
of the right hand are likewife vitible, confiderably below 
the lower portion of the fore-arm, and clofe to the upper 
extremity of the femur. The vertebras may be traced 
along the whole length of the column, but are in no part 
