The Testimony of the Rocks Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 67.

BIRD TRACKS OF THE CONNECTICUT.

(_Lias or Oolite._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 68.

FOSSIL FOOTPRINT.

Connecticut.]

Birds make their first appearance in a Red Sandstone deposit of the United States in the valley of the Connecticut, which was at one time supposed to belong to the Tria.s.sic System, but which is now held to be at least not older than the times of the Lias. No fragments of the skeletons of birds have yet been discovered in formations older than the Chalk: the Connecticut remains are those of footprints exclusively; and yet they tell their extraordinary story, so far as it extends, with remarkable precision and distinctness. They were apparently all of the Grallae or stilt order of birds,--an order to which the cranes, herons, and bustards belong, with the ostriches and ca.s.sowaries, and which is characterized by possessing but three toes on each foot (one species of ostrich has but two), or, if a fourth toe be present, so imperfectly is it developed in most of the cases, that it fails to reach the ground.

And in almost all the footprints of the primeval birds of the Connecticut there are only three toes exhibited. Peculiar, ill understood laws regulate the phalangal divisions of the various animals.

It is a law of the human kind, for instance, that the thumb should consist of but three phalanges; while the fingers, even the smallest, consist of four. And, in the same way, it is a law generally exemplified among birds, that of the three toes which correspond to the fingers, the inner toe should be composed of three phalanges, the middle or largest toe of four phalanges, and the outer toe, though but second in point of size, of five phalanges. Such is the law now, and such was equally the law, as shown by the American footprints, in the times of the Lias. Some of the impressions are of singular distinctness. Every claw and phalange has left its mark in the stone; while the trifid termination of the tarso-metatarsal bone leaves three marks more,--fifteen in all,--the true ornithic number. In some of the specimens even the pressure of a metatarsal brush, still possessed by some birds, is distinctly traceable; nay, there are instances in which the impress of the dermoid papillae has remained as sharply as if made in wax. But the immense size of some of these footprints served to militate for a time against belief in their ornithic origin. The impressions that are but secondary in point of size greatly exceed those of the hugest birds which now exist; while those of the largest cla.s.s equal the prints of the bulkier quadrupeds. There are tridactyle footprints in the red sandstones of Connecticut that measure eighteen inches in length from the heel to the middle claw, nearly thirteen inches in breadth from the outer to the inner toe, and which indicate, from their distance apart in the straight line, a stride of about six feet in the creature that impressed them in these ancient sands,--measurements that might well startle zoologists who had derived their experience of the ornithic cla.s.s from existing birds exclusively. Comparatively recent discoveries have, however, if not lessened, at least familiarized us to the wonder. In a deposit of New Zealand that dates little if at all in advance of the human period, there have been detected the remains of birds scarce inferior in size to those of America in the Lia.s.sic ages. The bones of the _Dinornus giganteus_, exhibited by the late Dr. Mantell in Edinburgh in the autumn of 1850, greatly exceeded in bulk those of the largest horse. A thigh bone sixteen inches in length measured nearly nine inches in circ.u.mference in the middle of the shaft: the head of a tibia measured twenty-one inches in circ.u.mference. It was estimated that a foot entire in all its parts, which formed an interesting portion of the exhibition, would, when it was furnished with nails, and covered by the integuments, have measured about fifteen inches in length; and it was calculated by a very competent authority, Professor Owen, that of the other bones of the leg to which it belonged, the tibia must have been about two feet nine inches, and the femur about fourteen and a half inches long. The larger thigh bone referred to must have belonged, it was held, to a bird that stood from eleven to twelve feet high,--the extreme height of the great African elephant. Such were the monster birds of a comparatively recent period; and their remains serve to render credible the evidence furnished by the great footprints of their remote predecessors of the Lias. The huge feet of the greatest Dinornus whose bones have yet been found would have left impressions scarcely an inch shorter than those of the still huger birds of the Connecticut. Is it not truly wonderful, that in this late age of the world, in which the invention of the poets seems to content itself with humbler and lowlier flights than of old, we should thus find the facts of geology fully rivalling, in the strange and the _outre_, the wildest fancies of the romancers who flourished in the middle ages? I have already referred to flying dragons,--real existences of the Oolitic period,--that were quite as extraordinary of type, if not altogether so huge of bulk, as those with which the Seven Champions of Christendom used to do battle; and here are we introduced to birds of the Lia.s.sic ages that were scarce less gigantic than the roc of Sinbad the Sailor. They are fraught with strange meanings these footprints of the Connecticut. They tell of a time far removed into the by-past eternity, when great birds frequented by myriads the sh.o.r.es of a nameless lake, to wade into its shallows in quest of mail-covered fishes of the ancient type, or long-extinct molluscs; while reptiles equally gigantic, and of still stranger proportions, haunted the neighboring swamps and savannahs; and when the same sun that shone on the tall moving forms beside the waters, and threw their long shadows across the red sands, lighted up the glades of deep forests, all of whose fantastic productions,--tree, bush, and herb,--have even in their very species long since pa.s.sed away. And of this scene of things only the footprints remain,--"footprints on the sands of time," that tell us, among other matters, whence the graceful American poet derived his quiet but singularly effective and unmistakeably indigenous figure:--

"Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, _And, departing, leave behind us_ _Footprints on the sand of time._ Footprints that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 69.

THYLACOTHERIUM PREVOSTI.

(_Stonisfield Slate._)]

With the Stonisfield slates,--a deposit which lies above what is known as the Inferior Oolite,--the remains of mammaliferous animals first appear. As, however, no other mammalian remains occur until after the close of the great Secondary Division, and as certain marked peculiarities attach to these Oolitic ones, it may be well to inquire whether their place, so far in advance of their fellows, may not be indicative of a radical difference of character,--a difference considerable enough to suggest to the zoologist an improvement in his scheme of cla.s.sification. It has been shown by Professor Owen,--our highest authority in comparative anatomy,--that while one Stonisfield genus unequivocally belonged to the marsupial order, another of its genera bears also certain of the marsupial traits; and that the group which they composed,--a very small one, and consisting exclusively of minute insect-eating animals,--exhibits in its general aspect the characteristics of this pouched family. Even the genus of the group that least resembles them was p.r.o.nounced by Cuvier to have its nearest affinities with the opossums. And let us mark how very much may be implied in this circ.u.mstance. In the "_Animal Kingdom_" of the great naturalist just named, the marsupiata, or pouched animals, are made to occupy the fourth place among the nine orders of the Mammalia; but should they not rather occupy a place intermediate between the placental mammals and the birds? and does not nature indicate their true position by the position which she a.s.signs to them in the geologic scale? The birds are oviparous; and between the extrusion of the egg and the development of the perfect young bird they have to hatch it into life during a long period of incubation. The marsupiata are not oviparous, for their _eggs_ want the enveloping sh.e.l.l or skin; but they, too, are extruded in an exceedingly rudimentary and foetal state, and have to undergo in the pouch a greatly longer period of _incubation_ than that demanded by nature for any bird whatever. The young kangaroo is extruded, after it has remained for little more than a month in the womb, as a foetus scarcely an inch in length by somewhat less than half an inch in breadth: it is blind, exhibiting merely dark eye spots; its limbs are so rudimentary, that even the hinder legs, so largely developed in the genus when mature, exist as mere stumps; it is unable even to suck, but, holding permanently on by a minute dug, has the sustaining fluid occasionally pressed into its mouth by the mother. And, undergoing a peculiar but not the less real process of incubation, the creature that had to remain for little more than a month in the womb,--strictly thirty-nine days,--has to remain in the mother's pouch, ere it is fully developed and able to provide for itself, for a period of eight months. It is found to increase in weight during this hatching process, from somewhat less than an ounce to somewhat more than eight pounds. Now, this surely is a process quite as nearly akin to the incubation of egg-bearing birds as to the ordinary nursing process of the placental mammals; and on the occult but apparently real principle, that the true arrangement of the animal kingdom is that which we find exemplified by the successive introduction of its various cla.s.ses and orders in the course of geologic history, should we not antic.i.p.ate a point of time for the introduction of the marsupiata, intermediate between the widely-distant points at which the egg-bearing birds and the true placental mammals appeared? Ranged at once chronologically, and by their mode of reproduction, the various cla.s.ses of the vertebrata would run, did we accept the suggested reading, as follows:--First appear cold-blooded vertebrates (fishes), that propagate by eggs or sp.a.w.n,--chiefly by the latter. Next appear cold-blooded vertebrates (reptiles), that propagate by eggs or sp.a.w.n,--chiefly by the former.

Then appear warm-blooded vertebrates (birds), that propagate by eggs exclusively. Then warm-blooded vertebrates come upon the stage, that produce _eggs_ without sh.e.l.ls, which have to be subjected for months to a species of extra-placental incubation. And last of all the true placental mammals appear. And thus, tried by the test of perfect reproduction, the great vertebral division receives its full development in creation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 70.

ANOPLTHERIUM COMMUNE.

(_Eocene._)]

The placental mammals make their appearance, as I have said, in the earliest ages of the great Tertiary division, and exhibit in the group an aspect very unlike that which they at present bear. The Eocene ages were peculiarly the ages of the Palaeotheres,--strange animals of that pachydermatous or thick-skinned order to which the elephants, the tapirs, the hogs, and the horses belong. It had been remarked by naturalists, that there are fewer families of this order in living nature than of almost any other, and that, of the existing genera, not a few are widely separated in their a.n.a.logies from the others. But in the Palaeotheres of the Eocene, which ranged in size from a large horse to a hare, not a few of the missing links have been found,--links connecting the tapirs to the hogs, and the hogs to the Palaeotheres proper; and there is at least one species suggestive of an union of some of the more peculiar traits of the tapirs and the horses. It was among these extinct Pachydermata of the Paris basin that Cuvier effected his wonderful restorations, and produced those figures in outline which are now as familiar to the geologist as any of the forms of the existing animals.

The London Clay and the Eocene of the Isle of Wight have also yielded numerous specimens of those pachyderms, whose ident.i.ty with the Continental ones has been established by Owen; but they are more fragmentary, and their state of keeping less perfect, than those furnished by the gypsum quarries of Velay and Montmartre. In these the smaller animals occur often in a state of preservation so peculiar and partial as to excite the curiosity of even the untaught workmen. Only half the skeleton is present. The limbs and ribs of the under side are found lying in nearly their proper places; while of the limbs and ribs of the upper side usually not a trace can be detected,--even the upper side of the skull is often awanting. It-would almost seem as if some pre-Adamite butcher had divided the carca.s.ses longitudinally, and carried away with him all the upper halves. The reading of the enigma seems to be, that when the creatures lay down and died, the gypsum in which their remains occur was soft enough to permit their under sides to sink into it, and that then gradually hardening, it kept the bones in their places; while the uncovered upper sides, exposed to the disintegrating influences, either mouldered away piecemeal, or were removed by accident. The bones of the larger animals of the basin are usually found detached; and ere they could be reconstructed into perfect skeletons, they taxed the extraordinary powers of the greatest of comparative anatomists. Rather more than twenty different species of extinct mammals have been detected in the Paris basin,--not a great number, it may be thought; and yet for so limited a locality we may deem it not a very small one, when we take into account the fact that all our native mammals of Britain and Ireland amount (according to Fleming), if we except the Cetaceae and the seals, to but forty species.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig 71.

ANIMALS OF THE PARIS BASIN.[15]

(_Eocene._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 72.

DINOTHERIUM GIGANTEUM.

(_Miocene._)]

In the Middle or Miocene Tertiary, pachyderms, though of a wholly different type from their predecessors, are still the prevailing forms.

The Dinotherium, one of the greatest quadrupedal mammals that ever lived, seems to have formed a connecting link in this middle age between the Pachydermata and the Cetaceae. Each ramus of the under jaw, which in the larger specimens are fully four feet in length, bore at the symphysis a great bent tusk turned downwards, which appears to have been employed as a pickaxe in uprooting the aquatic plants and liliaceous roots on which the creature seems to have lived. The head, which measured about three feet across,--a breadth, sufficient, surely, to satisfy the demands of the most exacting phrenologist,--was provided with muscles of enormous strength, arranged so as to give potent effect to the operations of this strange tool. The hinder part of the skull not a little resembled that of the Cetaceae; while, from the form of the nasal bones, the creature was evidently furnished with a trunk like the elephant. It seems not improbable, therefore, that this bulkiest of mammaliferous quadrupeds const.i.tuted, as I have said, a sort of uniting tie between creatures still a.s.sociated in the human mind, from the circ.u.mstance of their ma.s.sive proportions, as the greatest that swim the sea or walk the land,--the whale and the elephant. The Mastodon, an elephantoid animal, also furnished, like the elephant, with tusks and trunk, but marked by certain peculiarities which const.i.tute it a different genus, seems in Europe to have been contemporary with the Dinotherium; but in North America (the scene of its greatest numerical development) it appears to belong to a later age. In height it did not surpa.s.s the African elephant, but it considerably exceeded it in length,--a specimen which could not have stood above twelve feet high indicating a length of about twenty-five feet: it had what the elephants want,--tusks fixed in its lower jaw, which the males retained through life, but the females lost when young; its limbs were proportionally shorter, but more ma.s.sive, and its abdomen more elongated and slim; its grinder teeth too, some of which have been known to weigh from seventeen to twenty pounds, and their cusps elevated into great mammae-like protuberances, to which the creature owes its name, and wholly differ in their proportions and outline from the grinders of the elephant. The much greater remoteness of the mastodonic period in Europe than in America is a circ.u.mstance worthy of notice, as it is one of many facts that seem to indicate a general transposition of at least the later geologic ages on the opposite sides of the Atlantic. Groups of corresponding character on the eastern and western sh.o.r.es of this great ocean were not contemporaneous in time. It has been repeatedly remarked, that the existing plants and trees of the United States, with not a few of its fishes and reptiles, bear in their forms and construction the marks of a much greater antiquity than those of Europe.

The geologist who sets himself to discover similar types on the eastern side of the Atlantic would have to seek for them among the deposits of the later Tertiaries. North America seems to be still pa.s.sing through its later Tertiary ages; and it appears to be a consequence of this curious transposition, that while in Europe the mastodonic period is removed by two great geologic eras from the present time, it is removed from it in America by only one. Even in America, however, that period lies far beyond the reach of human tradition,--a fact borne out by the pseudo-traditions retailed by the aborigines regarding the mastodon. By none of at least the higher naturalists has there been a doubt entertained respecting its herbivorous character; and the discovery of late years of the stomach of an individual charged with decayed herbage and fragments of the succulent branches of trees, some of them of existing species, has demonstrated the solidity of the reasonings founded on its general structure and aspect. The pseudo-traditions, however, represent it in every instance as a carnivorous tyrant, that, had it not been itself destroyed, would have destroyed all the other animals its contemporaries. It is said by the red men of Virginia, "that a troop of these tremendous quadrupeds made fearful havoc for some time among the deer, the buffaloes, and all the other animals created for the use of the Indians, and spread desolation far and wide. At last '_the Mighty Man above_' seized his thunder and killed them all, with the exception of the largest of the males, who presenting his head to the thunderbolts, shook them off as they fell; but, being wounded in the side, he betook himself to flight towards the great lakes, where he still resides at the present day."

Let me here remind you in the pa.s.sing, that that antiquity of type which characterizes the recent productions of North America is one of many wonders,--not absolutely geological in themselves, but which, save for the revelations of geology, would have forever remained unnoted and unknown,--which have been pressed, during the last half century, on the notice of naturalists. "It is a circ.u.mstance quite extraordinary and unexpected," says Aga.s.siz, in his profoundly interesting work on Lake Superior, "that the fossil plants of the Tertiary beds of Oeningen resemble more closely the trees and shrubs which grow at present in the eastern parts of North America, than those of any other parts of the world; thus allowing us to express correctly the difference between the opposite coasts of Europe and America, by saying that the present eastern American flora, and, I may add, the fauna also, have a more ancient character than those of Europe. The plants, especially the trees and shrubs, growing in our days in the United States, are, as it were, old-fashioned; and the characteristic genera Lagomys, Chelydra, and the large Salamanders with permanent gills, that remind us of the fossils of Oeningen, are at least equally so;--they bear the marks of former ages."

How strange a fact! Not only are we accustomed to speak of the eastern continents as the Old World, in contradistinction to the great continent of the west, but to speak also of the world before the Flood as the Old World, in contradistinction to the post-diluvian world which succeeded it. And yet equally, if we receive the term in either of its acceptations, is America an older world still,--an older world than that of the eastern continents,--an older world, in the fashion and type of its productions, than the world before the Flood. And when the immigrant settler takes axe amid the deep backwoods, to lay open for the first time what he deems a new country, the great trees that fall before him,--the brushwood that he lops away with a sweep of his tool,--the unfamiliar herbs which he tramples under foot,--the lazy fish-like reptile that scarce stirs out of his path as he descends to the neighboring creek to drink,--the fierce alligator-like tortoise, with the large limbs and small carpace, that he sees watching among the reeds for fish and frogs, just as he reaches the water,--and the little hare-like rodent, without a tail, that he startles by the way,--all attest, by the antiqueness of the mould in which they are cast, how old a country the seemingly new one really is,--a country vastly older, in type at least, than that of the antediluvians and the patriarchs, and only to be compared with that which flourished on the eastern side of the Atlantic long ere the appearance of man, and the remains of whose perished productions we find locked up in the _loess_ of the Rhine, or amid the lignites of Na.s.sau. America is emphatically the _Old_ World. If we accept, however, as sound the ingenious logic by which Colton labors to show, in not inelegant verse, that the _Moderns_ are the true _Ancients_, we may continue to term it the New World still.

"We that on these late days are thrown Must be the oldest Ancients known; The _earliest_ Modern earth hath seen Was Adam in his ap.r.o.n green.

He lived when young Creation pealed Her morning hymn o'er flood and field, Till all her infant offspring came To that great christening for a name.

And he that would the Ancients know, Must forward come, not backward go: The learned lumber of the shelves Shows nothing older than ourselves.

But who in older times than we Shall live?--That infant on the knee,-- See sights to us were never shown, And secrets known to us unknown."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 73.

ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS.

(_Mammoth._) Great British Elephant.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 74.

TROGONTHERIUM CUVIERI.

Gigantic Beaver. (_Pleistocene._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 75.

URSUS SPELaeUS.

Cave Bear. (_Pleistocene._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 76.

HYENA SPELaeA.

Cave Hyaena. (_Pleistocene._)]

The group of mammals which, in Europe, at least, immediately preceded the human period seems to have been everywhere a remarkable one; and nowhere was it more so than in the British islands. Our present mammaliferous fauna is rather poor; but the contents of the later deposits show that we must regard it as but a mere fragment of a very n.o.ble one. a.s.sociated with species that still exist in the less cultivated parts of the country, such as the badger, the fox, the wild cat, the roe and the red deer, we find the remains of great animals, whose congeners must now be sought for in the intertropical regions.

Britain, during the times of the boulder clay, and for ages previous, had its native elephant, its two species of rhinoceros, its hippopotamus, its hyaena, its tiger, its three species of bears, its two species of beavers, its great elk, and its gigantic deer. Forms now found widely apart, and in very different climates, meet within the British area. During at least the earlier times of the group, the temperature of our island seems to have been very much what it is now.

As I have already had occasion to remark, the British oak flourished on its plains and lower slopes, and the birch and Scotch fir on its hills.

And yet under these familiar trees the lagomys or tailless hare, a form now mainly restricted to Siberia and the wilds of Northern America, and the reindeer, an animal whose proper habitat at the present time is Lapland, were a.s.sociated with forms that are now only to be found between the tropics, such as that of the hippopotamus and rhinoceros.

These last, however, unequivocally of extinct species, seem to have been adapted to live in a temperate climate; and we know from the famous Siberian specimen, that the British elephant, with its covering of long hair and closely-felted wool, was fitted to sustain the rigors of a very severe one. It is surely a strange fact, but not less true than strange, that since hill and dale a.s.sumed in Britain their present configuration, and the oak and birch flourished in its woods, there were caves in England haunted for ages by families of hyaenas,--that they dragged into their dens with the carca.s.ses of long extinct animals those of the still familiar denizens of our hill-sides, and feasted, now on the lagomys, and now on the common hare,--that they now fastened on the beaver or the reindeer, and now upon the roebuck or the goat. In one of these caves, such of the bones as projected from the stiff soil have been actually worn smooth in a narrow pa.s.sage where the hyaenas used to come in contact with them in pa.s.sing out and in; and for several feet in depth the floor beneath is composed almost exclusively of gnawed fragments, that still exhibit the deeply indented marks of formidable teeth. In the famous Kirkdale cave alone, parts of the skeletons of from two to three hundred hyaenas have been detected, mixed with portions of the osseous framework of the cave-tiger, the cave-bear, the ox, the deer, the mammoth, and the rhinoceros. That cave must have been a den of wild creatures for many ages ere the times of the boulder clay, during which period it was shut up from all access to the light and air by a drift deposit, and lay covered over until again laid open by some workmen little more than thirty years ago. Not only were many of the wild animals of the country which still exist contemporary for a time with its extinct bears, tigers, and elephants, but it seems at least highly probable that several of our domesticated breeds derived their origin from progenitors whose remains we find entombed in the bone-caves and other deposits of the same age; though of course the changes effected by domestication in almost all the tame animals renders the question of their ident.i.ty with the indigenous breeds somewhat obscure. Cuvier was, however, unable to detect any difference between the skeleton of a fossil horse, contemporary with the elephant, and that of our domestic breed: a fossil goat of the same age cannot be distinguished from the domesticated animal; and one of our two fossil oxen (_Bos longifrons_) does not differ more from some of the existing breeds than these have, in the course of time, been made, chiefly by artificial means, to differ among themselves. But of one of our domestic tribes no trace has yet been found in the rocks: like the cod family among fishes, or the Rosaceae among plants, it seems to have preceded man by but a very brief period.

And certainly, if created specially for his use, though the pride of the herald might prevent him from selecting it as in aught typical of the human race, it would yet not be easy to instance a family of animals that has ministered more extensively to his necessities. I refer to the sheep,--that soft and harmless creature, that clothes civilized man everywhere in the colder lat.i.tudes with its fleece,--that feeds him with its flesh,--that gives its bowels to be spun into the catgut with which he refits his musical instruments,--whose horns he has learned to fashion into a thousand useful trinkets,--and whose skin, converted into parchment, served to convey to later times the thinking of the first full blow of the human intellect across the dreary gulf of the middle ages.

At length the human period begins. A creature appears upon the scene unlike all that had preceded him, and whose nature it equally is to look back upon the events of the past,--among other matters, on that succession of beings upon the planet which he inhabits, with which we are this evening attempting to deal,--and to antic.i.p.ate at least one succession more, in that still future state in which he himself is again to appear, in happier circ.u.mstances than now, and in a worthier character. We possess another history of the primeval age and subsequent chronology of the human family than that which we find inscribed in the rocks. And it is well that we do so. From various causes, the geologic evidence regarding the period of man's first appearance on earth is singularly obscure. That custom of "burying his dead out of his sight,"

which obtained, we know, in the patriarchal times, and was probably in use ever since man came first under the law of death, has had the effect of mingling his remains with those of creatures that were extinct for ages ere he began to be. The cavern, once a haunt of carnivorous animals, that in the first simple ages of his history had furnished him with a shelter when living, became his burying-place when dead; and thus his bones, and his first rude attempts in pottery and weapon-making, have been found a.s.sociated with the remains of the cave-hyaena and cave-tiger, with the teeth of the ancient hippopotamus, and the tusks of the primeval elephant. The evidence on the point, too,--from the great paucity of human remains of a comparatively remote period, and from the circ.u.mstance that they are rarely seen by geologists in the stratum in which they occur,--is usually very imperfect in its details. Further, it is an evidence obnoxious to suspicion, from the fact that a keen controversy has arisen on the subject of man's antiquity, that such fragments of man himself or of his works as manifest great age have been pressed to serve as weapons in the fray,--that, occurring always in superficial and local deposits, their true era may be greatly antedated, under the influence of prejudice, by men who have no design wilfully to deceive,--and that while, respecting the older formations, with their abundant organisms, the conclusions of any one geologist may be tested by all the others, the geologist who once in a lifetime picks up in a stratified sand or clay a stone arrow-head or a human bone, finds that the data on which he founds his conclusions may be received or rejected by his contemporaries, but not re-examined. It may be safely stated, however, that that ancient record in which man is represented as the lastborn of creation, is opposed by no geologic fact; and that if, according to Chalmers, "the Mosaic writings do not fix the antiquity of the globe," they at least _do_ fix--making allowance, of course, for the varying estimates of the chronologer--"the antiquity of the human species." The great column of being, with its base set in the sea, and inscribed, like some old triumphal pillar, with many a strange form,--at once hieroglyphic and figure,--bears, as the ornately sculptured capital, which imparts beauty and finish to the whole, reasoning, responsible man. There is surely a very wonderful harmony manifested in the proportions of that nice sequence in which the invertebrates--the fishes, the reptiles, the birds, the marsupials, the placental mammals, and, last of all, man himself--are so exquisitely arranged. It reminds us of the fine figure employed by Dryden in his first Ode for St.

Cecilia's Day,--a figure which, viewed in the light cast on it by the modern science of Palaeontology, stands out in bolder relief than that in which it could have appeared to the poet himself:--

"From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began; From harmony to harmony, Through all the compa.s.s of the notes it ran, The _diapason_ closing full in man."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 77.