General Remarks—Eozoon Canadense—Trilobites—Brachiopods—Pterichthys Milleri—Oldest Reptiles—Wonderful Preservation of Colour in Petrified Shells—PrimÆval Corals and Sponges—Sea-lilies—Orthoceratites and Ammonites—Belemnites—Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus—Pterodactyli—Iguanodon—Tertiary Quadrupeds—Dinotherium—Colossochelys Atlas—Megatherium—Mylodon—Glyptodon—Mammoth—Mastodon—Sivatherium Giganteum—Fossil Ripple-marks, Rain-drops, and Footprints—Harmony has reigned from the beginning.

The fossil remains of plants and animals, which have successively flourished, and passed away since the first dawn of organic life, occupy a prominent place among the wonders of the subterranean world. A medal that has survived the ruin of empires is no doubt a venerable relic, but it seems to have been struck but yesterday when compared with a shell or a leaf that has been buried millions of years ago in the drift of the primeval ocean, and now serves the geologist as a waymark through the past epochs of the earth’s history.

If we examine the condition in which the fossils have been preserved in the strata successively deposited on the surface of our globe, we find that in general only parts of the original plant or animal have escaped destruction, and in these fragments also the primitive substance has often been replaced by other materials, so that only their form or their impression has triumphed over time. While soft and delicate textures have either been utterly swept away, or could only be preserved under the rarest circumstances (as, for instance, the insects and flowers inclosed in amber), a greater degree of hardness or solidity naturally gave a better chance of escaping destruction. Thus among plants the most frequent fossil-remains are furnished by stems, roots, branches, fruit-stones, leaves; and, among animals, by corals, shells, calcareous crusts, teeth, scales, and bones. But the few memorials that have thus survived the lapse of ages enable us to form some idea of the multitudes that have entirely perished; and the petrified shell of the Ammonite, or the jointed arms of the Encrinite, are proofs of the existence of the world of tiny beings which served them for their nourishment and have been utterly swept away. If we consider that the number of all the known species of fossil plants hardly amounts to 3,000, while the Flora of the present day, as far as it has been examined by systematical botanists, numbers at least 250,000 species; that the host of living insects is probably still more numerous, although not much more than 1,500 extinct species of this class are known to us; and that, finally, the remains of all the extinct crustaceous fishes, reptiles, and warm-blooded animals are far outnumbered by the species actually living—we may form some idea of the vast multitudes that have left no trace behind, and whose total loss will for ever confine within narrow limits our knowledge of the past phases of organic creation. This loss appears still greater when we consider the enormous extent of time during which the fossils known to us have successively existed, and that a part only of the comparatively small number of the orders, genera, and species to which they belong existed at one and the same epoch. But as, owing to the hard texture and mode of life which are so eminently favourable for the preservation of shells, we have been enabled to collect about 11,000 fossil species, a number not much inferior to that of the molluscs of the present day, we may justly conclude that the more perishable forms of life, of which, consequently, fewer vestiges have been preserved, were comparatively as numerous, and that ever since the first dawn of organic life our earth has borne an immense variety of plants and animals.

Though comparatively but few species have been preserved, yet sometimes the accumulation of fossil remains is truly astonishing. In the carboniferous strata we not seldom find more than one hundred beds of coal interstratified with sandstones, shales, and limestones, and extending for miles and miles in every direction. How luxuriant must have been the growth of the forests that could produce masses such as these, and what countless multitudes of herbivorous insects must have fed upon their foliage or afforded food to carnivorous hordes scarcely less numerous than themselves! The remains of corals, encrinites, and shells often form the greater part of whole mountain ranges, and, what is still more remarkable, mighty strata of limestone or flint are not seldom almost entirely composed of the aggregated remains of microscopical animals.

After these remarks on fossils in general, I will now briefly point out some of the most striking of the species so preserved to us as they successively appeared upon the stage of life.

In the Lower Laurentian Rocks, the most ancient strata known, only one fossil has hitherto been found. The Eozoon canadense, as it has been called, belonged to the Rhizopods, which occupy about the lowest grade in the scale of animal existence. Its massive skeletons, composed of innumerable cells, would seem to have extended themselves over submarine rocks, their base upwards of twelve inches in width and their thickness from four to six inches. Such is the antiquity of the Eozoon that the distance of time which separated it from the Trilobites of the Cambrian formation may be equal to the vast period which elapsed between these and the Tertiary ages. In other words, it is beyond our imagination to conceive.

In the next following Cambrian formation we find, besides some zoophytes and shells, a number of Trilobites, which, however, appear to have been most abundant in the Silurian seas, where they probably swarmed as abundantly as the crabs and shrimps in the waters of the present age. Few fossils are more curious than these strange crustaceans, which so widely differ from their modern relatives. The jointed carapace is divided into three lobes, the middle prominent one forming the axis of the body, while the lateral ones were free appendages, under which the soft membranaceous swimming feet were concealed. Large eyes, resembling those of a dragon-fly, projected from the odd crescent-shaped head, and, being composed of many hundred spherical facets, commanded a wide view of the horizon. Provided with such complicated organs of vision, the helpless animal could betimes perceive the approaching enemy, or more easily espy its prey, consisting, most likely, of the smaller marine annelides or molluscs. From the structure of these remarkable eyes we may conclude that the waters of the old Cambrian or Silurian Ocean were as limpid as those of the present seas, and that the natural relations of light to the eye and of the eye to light cannot have greatly changed since that period. Many, if not all, of the Trilobites were capable of rolling themselves up into a ball, like wood-lice; and accordingly it is found that in many of them the contour of the head and tail is so constructed that they fit accurately when rolled up. Most probably the Trilobites either swam in an inverted position, the belly upwards, or crawled slowly along at the bottom of the shallow coast waters, where they lived gregariously in vast numbers.

Contemporaneous with the Trilobites were the Eurypterids, which vary from one foot to five or six feet in length. One of the most striking characteristics of this remarkable order of crustaceans is the formidable pair of pincers with which they were armed. As their whole structure shows them to have been active swimmers, they must have made considerable havoc among the smaller fry of the Devonian and Silurian seas.

Then also abounded in hundreds of species the Brachiopods, a class of molluscs now but feebly represented by a scanty remnant. The greater part of the interior of the shell, consisting of two unequal valves, is occupied with branching arms, furnished with cilia, which cause a constant current to flow towards the mouth of the mollusc, and thus provide for its nourishment. The arms, as in the family of the SpiriferidÆ, are sometimes supported by calcareous skeletons, arranged like loops or spirals.

Some Brachiopods are attached to stones, like oysters; in others the larger valve is perforated, and a sinewy kind of foot, passing through the aperture, serves as a holdfast to the animal.

Most of these helpless creatures did not survive the Carboniferous period, but the TerebratulÆ, which still have their representatives in the modern seas, existed even then, so that their genealogical tree may justly boast of a very high antiquity.

The fishes, of which the oldest known specimen has been found in the Upper Silurian group (Lower Ludlow), become more frequent in the next following Devonian epoch, where they appear in a variety of wonderful forms, widely different from those of the present day. While in nearly all the existing fishes the scales are flexible, and generally either of a more or less circular form (cycloid), as in the salmon, herring, roach, &c., or provided with comb-like teeth, projecting from the posterior margin (ctenoid), as in the sole or perch, the fishes of the Devonian, Permian, and Carboniferous periods were decked with hard bony scales, either covered with a brilliant enamel, as in our sturgeons (ganoid), and arranged in regular rows, the posterior edges of each slightly overlapping the anterior ones of the next, or irregular in their shape, and separately imbedded in the skin (placoid), as in the sharks and rays of the present day. With rare exceptions their skeleton was cartilaginous; but the less perfect ossification of their bones was amply compensated by the solid texture of their enamelled coat of mail, which afforded them a better protection against enemies and injuries from without than is possessed by any bony-skeletoned fish of our days. They were, in fact, comparatively as well prepared for a hostile encounter as an ancient knight in armour, or as one of our modern iron-plated war ships. One of the most remarkable of these mail-clad Ganoids was the Pterichthys Milleri of the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland. In most of our fishes the pectoral fins are but weakly developed; here they constitute real arms, moved by strong muscles, and resembling the paddle of the turtle.

Besides the enormous masses of vegetable matter which distinguish the Carboniferous period, the stone beds of that formation likewise contain a vast number of animal remains. From the reptiles and fishes down to the corals and sponges, many new families, genera, and species crowd upon the scene, while many of the previously flourishing races have either entirely disappeared, or are evidently declining. Thus the Trilobites, formerly so numerous, are reduced to a few species in the Carboniferous period, and vanish towards its close.

In 1847 the oldest known reptiles were found in the coal field of SaarbrÜck, in the centre of spheroidal concretions of clay iron-stone, which not only faithfully preserved the skulls, teeth, and the greater portions of the skeletons of these ancient lizards, but even a large part of their skin, consisting of long, narrow, wedge-shaped, tile-like, and horny scales, arranged in rows. What a lesson for human pride! The pyramid of the Pharaoh Cheops, reared by the labour of thousands of slaves, has been unable to preserve his remains from spoliation even for the short space of a few thousand years, and here a vile reptile has been safely imbedded in a sarcophagus of iron ore during the vast period of many geological formations.

Still more recently (1854) other wonders have been brought to light in the clay iron-stone of SaarbrÜck. The wing of a grasshopper, with all its nerves as distinctly marked as if the creature had been hopping about but yesterday, some white ants or termites (now confined to the warmer regions of the globe), a beetle, and several cockroaches, give us some idea of the insects that lived at the time when our coal-beds were forming. Another highly interesting circumstance, relating to the fossils of that distant period, is that in several of them the patterns of their colouring have been preserved. Thus Terebratula hastata often retains the marks of the original coloured stripes which ornamented the living shell. In Aviculopecten sublobatus dark stripes alternate with a light ground, and wavy blotches are displayed in Pleurotomaria carinata. From these facts Professor Forbes inferred that the depth of the seas in which the Mountain Limestone was formed did not exceed fifty fathoms, as in the existing seas the Testacea, which have shells and well-defined patterns, rarely inhabit a greater depth.

The Magnesian Limestone or Permian group is remarkable chiefly for the vast number of fishes that have been found in some of its members, such as the marl slate of Durham and the Kupferschiefer, or copper slate, of Thuringia. From the curved form of their impressions, as if they had been spasmodically contracted, the fossil fish of the latter locality are supposed to have perished by a sudden death before they sank down into the mud in which they were entombed. Probably the copper which impregnates the stratum in which they occur is connected with this phenomenon. Mighty volcanic eruptions corrupted the water with poisonous metallic salts, and destroyed in a short time whole legions of its finny inhabitants.

From the earliest ages the corals play a conspicuous part in fossil history; and as in our days we find them encircling islands and fringing continents with huge ramparts of limestone, so many an ancient reef, now far inland, and raised several thousand feet above the level of the sea, bears witness to the vast terrestrial changes that have taken place since it was first piled up by the growth of countless zoophytes.

With regard to the dimensions of the fossil corals we do not find that any of them exceeded in size their modern relatives; but their construction was widely different.

The fossil sponges of the primitive seas are likewise very unlike those of the present day.

Thus in all the ancient strata we find abundant spongidÆ with a stony skeleton, while all the modern sponges possess a horny frame. The PetrospongidÆ, or stone sponges, which have long since disappeared, are frequently shapeless masses; but a large number are cup-shaped, with a central tubular cavity, lined, as well as the outer surface, with pores more or less regularly arranged.

The Crinoids, or Sea-lilies, now almost entirely extinct, were extremely common in the primeval seas. Unlike our modern sea-stars, to which they are allies, they did not move about freely from place to place, but were affixed, like flowers, to a slender flexible stalk, composed of numerous calcareous joints connected together by a fleshy coat. The Carboniferous Mountain Limestone is loaded with their remains, and the Encrinus liliiformis is one of the leading fossils of the Muschelkalk of the Triassic group. The Pentacrinus briareus is of more modern date, and occurs in tangled masses, forming thin beds of considerable extent in the Lower Lias. This beautiful Crinoid, with its innumerable tentacular arms, appears to have been frequently attached to the drift wood of the Liassic sea, like the floating barnacles of the present day. In the still more recent Chalk group is found a remarkable form of star-fish, the Marsupites ornatus, which resembles in all respects the Crinoids, except that it is not and never was provided with a stem. It seems to have been rolled lazily to and fro, by the influence of the waves, at the bottom of the sea, and to have been anchored in its place by the action of gravity alone.

Of all the changes that have taken place in organic life, none perhaps are more remarkable than the transformations which the Cephalopod molluscs have undergone during the various geological eras. In the more ancient PalÆozoic seas flourished the Orthoceratites, or straight-chambered shells, resembling a nautilus uncoiled. In the Carboniferous ages the Goniatites acquired their highest development. These shells were spirally wound, having the lobes of the chambers free from lateral denticulations or crenatures, so as to form continuous and uninterrupted outlines.

Both Orthoceratites and Goniatites disappear in the Triassic times, and are replaced by hosts of Ammonites, which successively flourished in more than 600 species, and are characterised by an external siphon and chambers of complicated, often foliated, pattern. This foliated structure gives a remarkable character to the intersection of the chamber partitions with the shell, and must have added greatly to the strength of the shell, which was always delicate and often very beautiful. The Ammonites, which made their first appearance towards the end of the Triassic period, abounded in the Oolitic and Cretaceous periods, and were replaced by new forms before the Tertiary beds were deposited. Among these we find the Ancyloceras gigas, which may be regarded as an Ammonite partially unrolled, and the Turrilites tuberculatus, which has the form and peculiar symmetry of a univalve shell.

In several of the older rocks, especially the Lias and Oolite, Belemnites are frequently met with. These singular dart- or arrow-shaped fossils were supposed by the ancients to be the thunderbolts of Jove, but are now known to be the petrified internal bones of a race of voracious cuttle-fishes, whose importance in the Oolitic or Cretaceous Seas may be judged of by the frequency of their remains and the 120 species that have been hitherto discovered.

Belemnites two feet long have been found, so that, to judge by analogies, the animals to which they belonged as cuttle-bones must have measured eighteen or twenty feet from end to end. Provided with prehensile hooks on their long arms, and with a formidable parrot-like bill, these huge creatures must have proved most dangerous antagonists, even to the well-protected fishes that lived in the same seas. But of all the denizens of the Mesozoic Ocean none were more powerful than the large marine or enaliosaurian reptiles, which, flourishing throughout the whole of the Triassic period, were lords of all they surveyed down to the end of the Cretaceous epoch. First among these monsters appears the gigantic Ichthyosaurus, which has been found no less than forty feet long—a creature half fish, half lizard, and combining, in strange juxtaposition, the snout of the porpoise, the teeth of the crocodile, and the paddles of the whale. But the most remarkable of its features is the eye, surpassing a man’s head in size, and wonderfully adapted for vision both far and near.

In the quarries of Caen in Normandy, at Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire, and particularly at Kloster Banz in Franconia, where the largest known specimen has been discovered, entire skeletons of the formidable Ichthyosaurus have been exhumed from the Liassic shale—memorials of the ages long since past, when lands now far removed from the ocean still lay at the bottom of the sea, and formed the domain of gigantic lizards. The enormous jaw-bones of the Ichthyosauri, which in the full-grown animal could be opened seven feet wide, were armed along their whole length with powerful conical teeth, showing them to have been carnivorous, and the half-digested remains of fishes and reptiles found within their skeletons indicate the precise nature of their food. The size of the swallowed object proves also that the cavity of the stomach must have corresponded with the wide opening of the jaws. Thus powerfully equipped for offensive warfare; excellent swimmers from their compressed cuneiform trunk, their long broad paddles, and their stout vertical tail-fin; provided, moreover, with eyes capable of piercing the dim light of the ocean depths, they must have been formidable indeed to the contemporaneous fishes.

The Ichthyosaurus was admirably formed for cleaving the waves of an agitated sea; but the Plesiosaurus was equally well organised for pursuing its prey in shallow creeks and bays defended from heavy breakers. Its long swan-like neck no doubt enabled it to drag many a victim from its hiding-place. While these huge lizards were the terror of the seas, the Pterodactyles, a race of winged lizards, armed with long jaws and sharp teeth, hovered in the air. With the exception of the greatly elongated fifth finger, to which, as well as to the whole length of the arm and body, the membranous wing or organ of flight was attached, the fingers of this strange animal were provided with sharp claws, so that it was probably enabled, like the bat, to suspend itself from precipitous rock-walls.

It is a remarkable fact, that, whereas the Pterodactyles of the older Lias beds did not exceed ten or twelve inches in length, the later forms, found fossil in the Greensand and Wealden beds of the Lower Cretaceous formation, must have been at least 16½ feet long. That these reptiles were not the only vertebrated animals capable of hovering in the air at the time when the huge Ichthyosaurus was lord of the seas, is proved by a bird about the size of a rook, which was discovered in 1862, in the lithographic slate of Solenhofen in Bavaria, a stone-bed belonging to the period of the Upper Oolite. The skeleton of this valuable specimen, now in the British Museum, is almost entire, with the exception of the head, and retains even its feathers. Still older fossil mammalia have been found near Stuttgard, in the uppermost bed of the Triassic deposits, and in the Lower Oolite of Oxfordshire. These interesting remains, which carry back the existence of the mammals to a very remote period, belong to small marsupial, or opossum-like, animals. The jaws, which are the principal parts preserved, are exceedingly minute, and remarkable for the number and distribution of their teeth, which prove them to have been either insectivorous or rodent.

The remains of the Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri occur chiefly in the Liassic group, but the more recent Cretaceous (Wealden) formation is distinguished by the presence of still more enormous land saurians. On their massive legs and unwieldy feet these monsters stood much higher than any reptile of our days, and resembled in bulk and stature the elephants of the present world.

The carnivorous Megalosaurus (for its sharply serrated teeth indicate this mode of life) appears to have preceded the gigantic Iguanodon, whose dentition denotes a vegetable food. Like the giant sloths of South America—the Megatherium and the Mylodon—the Iguanodon was provided with a long prehensile tongue and fleshy lips to seize the leaves and branches on which it fed. Professor Owen estimates its probable length at between fifty and sixty feet, and to judge by the proportions of its extremities, and particularly of its huge feet, it must have exceeded the bulk of the elephant eightfold.

During the following Upper Cretaceous epoch flourished the Mosasaurus, a marine saurian, first discovered in the quarries of St. Peter’s Mount, near Maestricht,^[1] and supposed to have been twenty-four feet in length. But the supremacy of the reptiles was now drawing to its close, and in the Tertiary period we at length see the Mammalia assume a prominent place on the scene of life. The oldest of these tertiary quadrupeds differ so widely from those of the present day as to form distinct genera. The PalÆotheriums, for instance, of which there are seventeen species, varying in dimensions from the size of a rhinoceros to that of a hog, combine in their skeleton many of the characters of the tapir, the rhinoceros, and the horse, while the Anoplotheriums, whose size varied from that of a hare to that of a dwarf ass, resembled in some respects the rhinoceros and the horse, and in others the hippopotamus, the hog, and the camel.

In the Miocene epoch many of these more ancient quadrupeds no longer appear upon the scene, while others still flourish in its upper period along with still existing genera, and with forms long since extinct, such as the Dinotherium. This huge animal is particularly remarkable for its two large and heavy tusks, placed at the extremity of the lower jaw, and curved downwards like those in the upper jaw of the walrus. It was formerly supposed to be an herbivorous cretacean, and to have used its anterior limbs principally in the act of digging for roots. The remains on which these speculations were founded were the huge jaws and shoulder-blade discovered at Epplesheim in Hesse Darmstadt; but an immense pelvis of the animal, measuring six feet in breadth and four and a quarter feet in height, discovered by Father Sanno Solaro, in the department of the Haute Garonne, proves that this supposed aquatic pachyderm was a gigantic marsupial, and that the dependent trunks of the unwieldy animal, instead of serving the purpose of anchoring it to the banks of rivers, answered the more homely, but equally important office, of lifting the young into the maternal pouch. ‘The remarkable history of the successive discovery of its bones,’ says Professor Haughton, ‘and the change of views consequent thereupon, should teach geologists modesty in the expression of their opinion.’ During this period also flourished in India, along with many other strange forms of life, the Colossochelys Atlas, a tortoise of the most gigantic proportions, measuring, probably, nearly twenty feet on the curve of the carapace, and dwarfing into insignificance the great Indian tortoise of the present day.

The nearer we approach our own times, the greater becomes the proportion of still existing genera and species; and it is remarkable that as early as the Pliocene epoch we find a geographical distribution of mammalian life analogous to that which now characterises the various regions of the earth.

Thus the fossil monkeys of South America have the nostrils wide apart like all the existing simiÆ of the new world, and fossil monkeys with approximated nostrils, the characteristic mark of all the old world quadrumana, are exclusively found in Asia and in Europe, where now a small species of monkey is confined to the Rock of Gibraltar, but where, in the Upper Miocene times, large long-armed apes, equalling man in stature, lived in the oak forests of France. Thus also South America, where alone sloths and armadilloes exist at the present day, is the only part of the world where, in the younger tertiary rocks, the remains of analogous mammals—the Megatherium, the Mylodon, and the Glyptodon—have been found.

The Mylodon was a colossal sloth, eleven feet long and with a corresponding girth. When we consider the huge size of the pelvis and the massiveness of the limbs, we must needs conclude that Professor Owen could not possibly have given the unwieldy animal a more appropriate surname than that of robustus.

The Megatherium was of still larger size. Its length was as much as eighteen feet, the breadth of its pelvis was six feet, and the tail, where it was attached to the body, must have measured six feet in circumference. The thigh bone was nearly three times as great as that of the largest known elephant, the bones of the instep and those of the foot being also of corresponding size. The general proportions both of the Megatherium and Mylodon resembled those of the elephant, the body being relatively as large, the legs shorter and thicker, and the neck very little longer. The Megatherium may have had a short proboscis, but the Mylodon exhibits no mark of such contrivance.

It is evident, from the bulk and construction of these huge animals, that they did not, like the sloths of the present day, crawl along the under side of the boughs till they had reached a commodious feeding place, but that, firmly seated on the strong tripod of their two hind legs and powerful tail, they uprooted trees or wrenched off branches with their fore limbs, which were well adapted for grasping the trunk or larger branches of a tree. The long and powerful claws were also, no doubt, useful in the preliminary process of scratching away the soil from the roots of the trees to be prostrated. This task accomplished, the long and curved fore claws would next be applied to the opposite sides of the loosened trunk. ‘The tree being thus partly undermined and firmly grappled with, the muscles of the trunk, the pelvis, and hind limbs, animated by the nervous influence of the unusually large spinal cord, would combine their forces with those of the anterior members in the efforts at prostration. If now we picture to ourselves the massive frame of the Megatherium, convulsed with the mighty wrestling, every vibrating fibre reacting upon its bony attachment with a force which the sharp and strong crests and apophyses loudly bespeak, we may suppose that that tree must have been strong indeed which, rocked to and fro, to right and left, in such an embrace, could long withstand the efforts of its ponderous assailant.’

The Glyptodon, a colossal armadillo of the size of an ox, was covered with a thick heavy tessellated bony armour, which, when detached from the body, resembled the section of a large cask. This harness measured on its curve from head to tail at least six feet, and four feet from side to side, so that a Laplander might have squatted comfortably under its roof.

In the superficial deposits of diluvial drift, in Germany and England, in Italy and Spain, in Northern Asia as well as in North America, between the latitudes of 40° and 75°, the bones of the large extinct Pachyderms have been found, and become more and more abundant as we approach the ice-bound regions within the Arctic Circle. The Siberian tundras, and the islands in the Polar Sea beyond, are, above all, so rich in the fossil remains of the Mammoth, or primitive elephant, that its tusks form a not unimportant branch of commerce. From the presence of so large an animal in treeless wilds, where now only small rodents or their persecutors, the Arctic fox and snow owl, find the means of subsistence, it has been inferred that Siberia must in those times have enjoyed a tropical climate; but many weighty arguments have been arrayed against this opinion. The musk-ox, it is well known, prefers the stinted herbage of the Arctic regions, while the allied buffalo can only thrive in a warm country, and different species of bears are found in all zones; so also the primitive elephant was formed for a temperate or cold climate. Instead of being naked, like his living Asiatic and African relations, the Mammoth was covered with a warm clothing, well fitted to brave a low temperature, a fact sufficiently proved by the carcass of one of these animals which was found, in the year 1803, imbedded in a mass of ice on the bank of the Lena in latitude 70°. Its skin was covered first with black bristles, thicker than horse-hair, from twelve to sixteen inches in length, secondly with hair of a reddish-brown colour, about four inches long, and thirdly with wool of the same colour as the hair, about an inch in length.

The discoveries of Middendorff on the banks of the Taymur likewise show that in those times the climate of Siberia was by no means tropical, for in latitude 75° 15' he found the trunk of a larch imbedded with the bones of a Mammoth in an alluvial stratum fifteen feet above the level of the sea. Fragments of pine leaves have likewise been extracted from cavities in the molar teeth of a fossil rhinoceros, discovered on the banks of the Wiljui, in latitude 64°. The numerous land and freshwater shells accompanying the Mammoth in the highest latitudes are also, almost without exception, identical with those now existing in Siberia.

The Mastodon, though not uncommon among the fossils of the old world, is more abundantly found in North America. The molar teeth of this huge animal, whose grinding surfaces had their crowns studded with conical eminences, more or less resembling the teats of a cow, differed greatly from the flat-crowned grinders of the Mammoth; but both had twenty ribs like the living elephant, and must have been similar in size and general appearance. The body of the Mastodon would seem to have been longer, its limbs thicker and shorter, and, perhaps, its form, on the whole, rather approaching that of the hippopotamus, which it probably resembled also in some of its habits. Its mouth was broader than that of the elephant, and although it was certainly provided with a long trunk, it must have lived on soft succulent food, and it seems to have rarely left the marshes and muddy ponds, in which it would find ample food.

The most complete, and probably the largest, specimen of the Mastodon ever found was exhumed in 1845, in the town of Newbury, New York, the length of the skeleton being twenty-five feet, and its height twelve feet. From another specimen, found in the same year, in Warren County, New Jersey, the clay in the interior within the ribs, just where the contents of the stomach might naturally have been looked for, furnished some bushels of vegetable substance. A microscopic examination proved this matter to consist of pieces of small twigs of a coniferous tree of the cypress family, probably the young shoots of the white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) which is still a native of North America.

This interesting discovery likewise proves that the climate of North America was then, like that of Siberia, not very different from that of the present day.

The most remarkable of the fossil Ruminants are found among the deer tribe. The largest of these is the Sivatherium giganteum, discovered in the Tertiary beds of the sub-Himalayan hills. It was a deer with four horns, and, to judge by the size of its bones, must have exceeded the elephant in its dimensions. Near this huge ‘antlered monarch of the waste’ the extinct Cervus megaceros, found in the bogs and shallow marls of Ireland, appears as a mere dwarf, in spite of its large branching palmate horns, often weighing eighty pounds, and a corresponding stature far exceeding that of our modern deer.

The colossal size of many of the extinct plants and animals might seem to favour the belief that organic life has degenerated from its former powers; but a survey of existing creation soon proves the vital principle to be as strong and flourishing as ever.

No fossil tree has yet been found to equal the towering height of the huge Sequoias and Wellingtonias of California; and though the Horsetails and Clubmosses of the Carboniferous ages may well be called colossal when compared with their diminutive representatives of the present day, yet their height by no means exceeded that of the tall bamboo of India. No fossil bivalve is as large as the Tridacna of the tropical seas; and though our nautilus is a mere pigmy when compared with many of the Ammonites, our naked cuttlefishes are probably as bulky as those of any of the former geological formations. The living crustaceans and fishes are not inferior to their predecessors in size, and though the giant saurians of the past were much larger than our crocodiles, yet they do not completely dwarf them by comparison. The extinct Dinornis^[2] far surpassed the ostrich in size, but the Mammoth and the Mastodon find their equal in our elephant; and though the sloths of the present day are mere pigmies when compared with the Megatherium, yet no extinct mammal attains the size of the Greenland whale.

The perfect preservation of so many fossil remains of animals and plants, which enables us to trace the progress of organic life on earth from one vast epoch to another, is surely wonderful enough; but we must consider it as a still greater wonder that phenomena usually so evanescent as foot-prints, ripple-marks, and rain-prints should in some cases have been permanently engraved in stone, and appear as distinct after millions of years as if their traces had been left but yesterday. All these marks were at first printed on soft argillaceous mud, on the sea-shore, or on the borders of lakes and rivers, which retained them as they became dry. Sand or clay having then been drifted into the mould by the wind, or deposited in its cavity by the next tide, a permanent cast was made, indented in the lower stratum and standing out in relief on the upper one.

Thus rain-drops on greenish slates of the Coal period, with several worm tracks, such as usually accompany rain-marks on the recent mud of modern beaches, have been discovered near Sydney, in Cape Breton. As the drops resemble in their average size those which now fall from the clouds, we may presume that the atmosphere of the Carboniferous period corresponded in density with that now investing the globe, and that different currents of air varied then as now in temperature, so as, by their mixture, to give rise to the condensation of aqueous vapour.

In like manner it has been possible to detect the footprints of reptiles, even in shales as old as the Cambrian formation, and to follow their trail as they walked or crawled along.

In the Upper New Red Sandstone (Lower Trias), near Hildburghausen, in Saxony, a strange unknown animal, supposed to belong to the frog order, has left foot-prints bearing a striking resemblance to the impressions made by a human hand; and in the still older red sandstone of Connecticut, a gigantic bird has marked a foot four times larger than that of the ostrich. It existed long before the Ichthyosaurus was seen on earth, and yet by a singular chance its traces, printed on a foundation proverbially unstable, have outlived the wreck of so many ages.

However brief and defective the foregoing review of the fossil world may have been, it has still sufficed to point out the existence on our planet of so many habitable surfaces, each distinct in time, and peopled with its peculiar races of aquatic and terrestrial beings, all admirably fitted for the new states of the globe as they arose, or they would not have increased and multiplied and endured for indefinite periods.

‘The proofs now accumulated,’ says Sir Charles Lyell, ‘of the close analogy between extinct and recent species are such as to leave no doubt on the mind that the same harmony of parts and beauty of contrivance which we admire in the living creation has equally characterised the organic world at remote periods. Thus, as we increase our knowledge of the inexhaustible variety displayed in living nature, our admiration is multiplied by the reflection that it is only the last of a great series of pre-existing creations, of which we cannot estimate the number or limit in times past.’