Part 34

[29] MM. de Marschall, in their Researches respecting the Origin and Development of the present order of the World. Giessen, 1802.

[30] Bertrand,--Periodical Renewal of the Terrestrial Continents. Hamburgh, 1799.

[31] My work has, in fact, proved how far this inquiry was yet new when I commenced it, notwithstanding the excellent labours of Camper, Pallas, Blumenbach, Merk, Sömmering, Rosenmüller, Fischer, Faujas, Home, and other learned men, whose works I have most scrupulously cited in such of my chapters as their researches are connected with.

[32] This is more particularly noticed in the Chapter on Elephants in the first volume of Professor Cuvier’s _Recherches_.

[33] See the history of the Rhinoceros in the first part of the second volume of Professor Cuvier’s _Recherches_.

[34] See the chapter on the Hippopotamus, in the first volume of _Recherches_.

[35] Hist. Anim. Lib. ii. cap. 1.

[36] Jul. Capitol., Gord. iii. cap. 23.

[37] Antilope Gnu, Gmel.

[38] Pliny, Lib. viii. cap. 32.; and Ælian, Lib. vii. cap. 5.

[39] Ælian, Anim. v. 27.

[40] Pliny, lib. viii. cap. 15.; and lib. xi. cap. 37.

[41] Ælian, Anim. xiv. 14.

[42] Opp. Cyneg., ii. v. 445. et seq.

[43] Pliny, lib. viii. cap. 21.

[44] See the great Work upon Egypt, Antiq. iv. pl. 49.; and pl. 66.

[45] Ælian, Anim. xv. 14.

[46] Idem, Anim. iii. 34.

[47] Arist. Hist. Anim. lib. ii. cap. 5.

[48] Ælian, ii. 53.

[49] Idem, ii. 20.

[50] Idem, xv. 24.

[51] Idem, xv. 24.

[52] Idem, Anim. iii. 3.

[53] Idem, iv. 32.

[54] This is more particularly explained in the chapters upon Deer and Oxen, in the fourth volume of Professor Cuvier’s _Recherches_.

[55] Aurochs is Bos Urus, Lin., not the Urus of the ancients, which latter appears now to be extinct.

[56] Buffon having read in Du Fouilloux a mutilated passage of Gaston-Phébus, Count de Foix, in which that prince describes the chase of the rein-deer, imagined that, in the time of Gaston, this animal lived in the Pyrenees; and the printed editions of Gaston were so faulty, that it was difficult to make out, with certainty, what the author had intended to say; but having had recourse to his original manuscript, which is preserved in the Royal Library, I have ascertained that it was in _Xueden_ and _Nourvègue_, (Sweden and Norway), that he relates having seen and hunted the rein-deer.

[57] Athenæis, lib. v.

[58] The only error committed, is that of giving it a claw too much to the hind foot. Augustus exhibited thirty-six of them; Dion, lib. lv.

[59] Caracalla killed one of them in the Circus; Dion, lib. lxxvii. Consult also Gisb. Cuperi de Eleph. in nummis obviis, ex. ii. cap. vii.

[60] See Lichtenstein, Comment. de Simiarum quotquot veteribus innotuerunt formis. Hamburgh, 1791.

[61] The Jerboa is impressed upon the medals of Cyrene, and indicated by Aristotle under the name of _Two-legged Rat_.

[62] Plin. viii. 31. Arist. lib. ii. cap. 40. Phot. Bibl., Art. 72; Ctes. Indic. Ælian, Anim., iv. 21.

[63] Ælian, Anim. iv. 27.

[64] Ælian, xvi. 20. Photius, Bibl., art. 72. Ctes. Indic.

[65] See Corneille Lebrun, Voyage en Muscovie, en Perse et aux Indes, tom. ii. See also the German work by M. Heeren, on the Commerce of the Ancients.

[66] Photius, Bibl., art. 250. Agatharchid., Excerpt. hist., cap. xxxix. Ælian, Anim. xvii. 45. Plin. viii. 21.

[67] I have even seen, in the collection of the late Mr Addrien Camper, a skeleton of a hyena, in which several of the vertebræ of the neck were anchylosed. It was probably from seeing some similar individual that the character in question was attributed to all hyenas. This animal ought to be more subject than any other to such an accident, on account of the prodigious power of the muscles of its neck, and the frequent use which it makes of them. When the hyena has laid hold of any thing, it is easier to drag it along by it than to wrest it from its jaws; and it is this circumstance which has caused the Arabs to consider it as the emblem of invincible obstinacy.

[68] It does not in reality change its sex, but it has an orifice in the perineum, which might make it be supposed to be hermaphrodite.

[69] Arist. Anim. ii. 1. iii. 1. Plin. xl. 46.

[70] Herod. iv. 192.

[71] Oppian, Cyneg. ii. vers. 551.

[72] Plin. viii. 53.

[73] Philostorg. iii. 11.

[74] Plin. viii. 21.

[75] Onesicrit, ap. Strab. lib. xv. Ælian, xiii. 42.

[76] Plin. viii. 31.

[77] Barrow’s Voyage to the Cape, Fr. transl. ii. 178.

[78] Oppian, Cyneg, lib. II. v. 468. and 471.

[79] De Anim. lib. xv. cap. 14.

[80] Ælian, Anim. iv. 52; Photius, Bibl. p. 154.

[81] I do not intend by this remark, as I have already observed on a former occasion, to detract from the merit of the observations of Camper, Pallas, Blumenbach, Sœmmering, Merk, Faugas, Rosenmüller, Home, &c.; but their excellent works, which have been very useful to me, and which I quote throughout, are incomplete; and several of these works have only been published since the first editions of this Essay.

[82] See M. Frederick Cuvier’s memoir upon the varieties of dogs, in the Annales du Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, which he drew up at the request of Professor Cuvier, from a series of skeletons of all the varieties of the dog prepared in the Professor’s collection.

[83] The first figure made of it from nature is in the Description de la Menagerie, a work composed by M. Cuvier. It is seen perfectly represented in the great work on Egypt.--Antiq. t. iv. pl. xlix.

[84] See the Journal de Marseille et des Bouches-du-Rhône, of the 27th Sept. 25th Oct. and 1st Nov. 1820.

[85] I am confirmed in this opinion by the sketches transmitted to me by M. Cottard, one of the Professors of the College of Marseilles.

[86] These skeletons, more or less mutilated, are found near Port de Moule, on the north-west coast of the mainland of Guadaloupe, in a kind of slope resting against the steep edges of the island. This slope is, in a great measure, covered by the sea at high-water, and is nothing else than a tufa, formed, and daily augmented, by the very small debris of shells and corals, which the waves detach from the rocks, and the accumulated mass of which assumes a great degree of cohesion in the places that are most frequently left dry. We find, on examining them with a lens, that several of these fragments have the same red tint as a part of the corals contained in the reefs of the island. Formations of this kind are common in the whole archipelago of the Antilles, where they are known to the Negroes under the name of _Maçonne-bon-dieu_. Their augmentation is proportioned to the violence of the surge. They have extended the plain of the Cayes to St Domingo, the situation of which has some resemblance to the Plage du Moule, and there are sometimes found in it fragments of earthen vessels, and of other articles of human fabrication, at a depth of twenty feet. A thousand conjectures have been made, and even events imagined, to account for these skeletons of Guadaloupe. But, from all the circumstances of the case, M. Moreau de Jonnès, correspondent of the Academy of Sciences, who has been upon the spot, and to whom I am indebted for the above details, thinks that they are merely bodies of persons that have perished by shipwreck. They were discovered in 1805 by M. Manuel Cortès y Campomanès, at that time a general officer in the service of the colony. General Ernouf, the governor, caused one to be extracted with much labour, of which the head, and almost the whole superior extremities, were wanting. This had been deposited at Guadaloupe, in the expectation that another and more complete specimen would be procured, in order to send them together to Paris, when the island was taken by the English. Admiral Cochrane having found this skeleton at the headquarters, sent it to the English Admiralty, who presented it to the British Museum. It is still in that collection, and M. Kœnig, Keeper of the Mineralogical Department, has described it in the Phil. Trans. of 1814, and there I saw it in 1818. M. Kœnig observes, that the stone in which it is imbedded, has not been cut to its present shape, but that it seems to have been simply inserted, in the form of a distinct nodule, into the surrounding mass. The skeleton is so superficial, that its presence must have been perceived by the projection of some of its bones. They still contain some of their animal matter, and the whole of their phosphate of lime. The rock being entirely formed of pieces of corals, and of compact limestone, readily dissolves in nitric acid. M. Kœnig has detected fragments of _Millepora miniacea_, of several madrepores, and of shells, which he compares to _Helix acuta_ and _Turbo pica_. This fossil skeleton is represented in Plate I. More recently, General Donzelot has caused another of these skeletons to be extracted, which is now in the Royal Cabinet, and of which a figure is given in Plate II. It is a body which has the knees bent. A small portion of the upper jaw, the left half of the lower, nearly the whole of one side of the trunk and pelvis, and a large portion of the left upper and lower extremities, are what remain of it. The rock which contains it, is evidently a travertin, in which are imbedded shells of the neighbouring sea, and land-shells, which are still found alive in the island, namely, the _Bulimus guadalupensis_ of Ferussac.

[87] See M. de Schlotheim’s Treatise on Petrifactions, Gotha, 1820, p. 57; and his Letter in the Isis of 1820, 8th Number, No. 6. of Supplement.

[88] It is perhaps proper that I take notice of those fragments of sandstone, regarding which some noise was attempted to be made last year (1824), and in which a man and a horse were alleged to have been found petrified. The mere circumstance of its being a man and a horse, with their flesh and skin, that these fragments must have represented, might have enabled every one to perceive that the whole was a mere _lusus naturæ_, and not a true petrifaction.--Note L.

[89] Fourcroy has given an analysis of them in the Annales du Museum, vol. x. p. 1.

[90] Journal de Physique, t. xlii, p. 40. _et seq._

[91] Herod. Euterpe, v. and xxv.

[92] Arist. Meteor. lib. i. cap. 14.

[93] Demaillet, Description of Egypt, p. 102-3.

[94] Herod. Euterpe, xiii.

[95] See M. Girard’s Observations on the valley of Egypt; and on the secular increase of the soil which covers it, in the great work upon Egypt, and Mod. Mem. t. ii. p. 343. On this subject we may further observe that Dolomieu, Shaw, and other respectable authors, have estimated these secular elevations much higher than M. Girard. It is to be lamented, that nowhere has it been tried to examine the depth of these deposits over the original soil, or the natural rock.

[96] See M. Forfait’s Memoir on the lagunes of Venice, inserted in the Mém. de la Classe Phys. de l’Institut, t. v. p. 213.

[97] Note M.

[98] In various parts of the two last volumes of his Letters to the Queen of England.

[99] Melpom. lxxxvi.

[100] Ibid. lvi.

[101] This supposed diminution of the Black Sea and Sea of Asoph, has also been attributed to the rupture of the Bosphorus, which had taken place at the pretended period of the deluge of Deucalion; and yet, in order to establish the fact itself, recourse is had to successive diminutions of the extent attributed to these seas by Herodotus, Strabo, and others. But it is very obvious, that, if this diminution had arisen from the rupture of the Bosphorus, it would necessarily have been completed long before the time of Herodotus, and even at the period at which Deucalion is supposed to have lived.

[102] See the Geography of Herodotus by M. Rennel, p. 56. _et seq._; and the Physical Geography of the Black Sea, &c. by M. Dureau de Lamalle. There is only at present the small river of Kamennoipost, that could represent the Gerrhus and Hypacyris, such as they are described by Herodotus.

M. Dureau, p. 170, supposes Herodotus to have made the Borysthenes and Hypanis discharge themselves into the Palus Mæotis; but Herodotus (in Melpom. liii.) only says that these two rivers fall together into the same lake, that is, into the Liman, as at the present day. Herodotus does not carry the Gerrhus and Hypacyris any farther.

[103] For example, M. Dureau de Lamalle, in his Physical Geography of the Black Sea, quotes Aristotle (Meteor. lib. i. cap. 13.) as “apprising us, that, in his time, there still existed several ancient periods and peripli, attesting that there had been a canal leading from the Caspian Sea into the Palus Mæotis.” Now, Aristotle’s words at the place mentioned (Duval’s edition, i. 545. B.) are merely these: “From the Paropamisus, descend, among other rivers, the Bactrus, the Choaspes, and the Araxis, from which the Tanais, which is a branch of it, takes its origin, into the Palus Mæotis.” Who does not see that this nonsense, which is neither founded upon peripli nor periods, is nothing else than the strange idea of Alexander’s soldiers, who took the Jaxartes or Tanais of the Transoxian for the Don or Tanais of Scythia? Arrian and Pliny distinguish these two rivers from each other, but the distinction does not appear to have been made in the time of Aristotle. How, then, could such geographers as these furnish us with geological documents?

[104] See the Report upon the Downs of the Gulf of Gascony (or Bay of Biscay) by M. Tassin.--Mont. de-Marsan, an x.

[105] Memoir on the means of fixing Downs, by M. Bremontier.

[106] Report of M. Tassin, loc. cit.

[107] See M. Bremontier’s Memoir.

[108] Denon, Voyage en Egypte.

[109] We might cite in confirmation all the travellers who have visited the western border of Egypt.

[110] These phenomena are very well treated of in M. Deluc’s Letters to the Queen of England, in the parts where he describes the peat-mosses of Westphalia; and in his Letters to Lametherie, inserted in the Journal de Physique for 1791, &c. as well as in those which he has addressed to Blumenbach. We may refer also to the very interesting details which are given in note F, respecting the islands of the west coast of the Duchy of Sleswick, and the manner in which they have been joined, whether to one another, or to the continent, by alluvial depositions and peat-mosses, as well as respecting the irruptions of the sea which from time to time have destroyed or separated some of their parts.

[111] The period of Cyrus, about 650 years before the Christian era.

[112] The period of Ninus, about 2348 years before Christ, according to Ctesias, and those who have followed him; but only 1250, according to Volney, after Herodotus.

[113] Herodotus lived 440 years before Christ.

[114] Cadmus, Pherecydes, Aristæus of Proconnesus, Acusilaus, Hecatæus of Miletum, Charon of Lampsacus, &c. See Vossius, Histor. Græc. lib. i., and especially his fourth book.

[115] Note N.

[116] The Septuagint, 5345 years; the Samaritan text, 4869; the Hebrew text, 4174.

[117] There is a difference of several years among chronologists with respect to each of these events; but these migrations form, notwithstanding, the peculiar and very remarkable feature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries before the christian era. Thus, according to the calculations of Usserius, Cecrops came from Egypt to Athens about 1556 years before Christ; Deucalion settled on Parnassus about 1548; Cadmus arrived from Phenicia at Thebes about 1493; Danaus came to Argos about 1485; and Dardanus established himself on the Hellespont about 1449. All these founders of nations must therefore have been nearly contemporary with Moses, whose migration took place in 1491. Consult further, regarding the synchronism of Moses, Danaus and Cadmus, _Diodorus_, lib. xi; in Photius, p. 1152.

[118] The genealogies of Apollodorus are generally known, and that portion of them upon which Clavier endeavoured to establish a sort of primitive history of Greece; but, when we become acquainted with the genealogies of the Arabs, those of the Tartars, and all those which our old chronicling monks invented for the different sovereigns of Europe, and even for individuals, we readily comprehend that Greek writers must have done for the early periods of their nation what has been done for all the other nations, at periods when criticism had not been used to throw light upon history.

[119] 1856 or 1823 years before Christ, or other dates still, but always about 350 years before the principal Phœnician or Egyptian colonies.

[120] The common date of Ogyges, according to Acusilaus, followed by Eusebius, is 1796 years before Christ, consequently several years after Inachus.

[121] Varro places the deluge of Ogyges, which he calls the _first deluge_, 400 years before Inachus, and consequently 1600 years before the first Olympiad. This would refer it to a period of 2376 years before Christ; and the deluge of Noah, according to the Hebrew text, is 2349, there being only 27 years of difference. This testimony of Varro is mentioned by Censorinus, _De Die Natali_, cap. xxi. In reality, Censorinus wrote only 238 years after Christ; and, it appears, from Julius Africanus, _ap. Euseb._ Præp. cv. that Acusilaus, the first author who placed a deluge in the reign of Ogyges, made this prince cotemporary with Phoronæus, which would have brought him very near the first Olympiad. Julius Africanus makes only an interval of 1020 years between the two epochs; and there is even a passage in Censorinus conformable to this opinion. Some also read _erogitium_ in place of _ogygium_, in the passage of Varro, which we have quoted above from Censorinus. But what would this be but an Erogitian Cataclysm, of which nobody has ever heard?

[122] Neither Homer nor Hesiod knew any thing of the deluge of Deucalion, any more than that of Ogyges. The first author, whose works are extant, by whom mention is made of the former, is Pindar (Od. Olymp. ix.) He speaks of Deucalion as landing upon Parnassus, establishing himself in the city of Protogene (first growth or birth), and re-creating his people from stones; in a word, he relates, but confining it to a single nation only, the fable afterwards generalized by Ovid, and applied to the whole human race. The first historians who wrote after Pindar, namely, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, make no mention of any deluge, whether of the time of Ogyges, or that of Deucalion, although they speak of the latter as one of the first kings of the Hellenes.

Plato, in his Timæus, says only a few words of the deluge, as well as of Deucalion and Pyrrha, in order to commence the recital of the great catastrophe, which, according to the priests of Sais, destroyed the Atlantis; but, in these few words, he speaks of the deluge in the singular number, as if it had been the only one. He even expressly mentions farther on, that the Greeks knew only one. He places the name of Deucalion immediately after that of Phoroneus, the first of the human race, without making mention of Ogyges. Thus, with him, it is still a general event, a true universal deluge, and the only one which had happened. He regards it, therefore, as identical with that of Ogyges.

Aristotle (Meteor. i. 14.) seems to be the first who considered this deluge only as a local inundation, which he places near Dodona and the river Achelous, but near the Achelous and Dodona of Thessaly. Apollodorus (Bibl. i. § 7.) restores to the deluge of Deucalion all its grandeur and mythological character. According to him, it took place at the period when the age of brass was passing into the age of iron. Deucalion is the son of Titan Prometheus, the fabricator of man; he forms anew the human race of stones; and yet Atlas, his uncle, Phoroneus, who lived before him, and several other personages anterior to him, preserve a lengthened posterity.

In proportion as we advance toward authors who approach nearer our own times, we find circumstances of detail added, which more resemble those related by Moses. Thus Apollodorus gives Deucalion a great chest as a means of safety; Plutarch speaks of the pigeons by which he sought to find out whether the waters had retired; and Lucian, of the animals of every kind which he had taken with him, &c.

With regard to the blending of traditions and hypotheses, by which it has recently been tried to infer the conclusion, that the rupture of the Thracian Bosphorus was the cause of Deucalion’s deluge, and even of the opening of the pillars of Hercules, by making the waters of the Euxine Sea discharge themselves into the Archipelago, supposing them to have been much higher and more extended than they have been since that event, it is not necessary for us to treat of it in detail, since it has been determined by the observations of M. Olivier, that if the Black Sea had been as high as it is imagined to have been, it would have found several passages for its waters, by hills and plains less elevated than the present banks of the Bosphorus; and by those of the Count Andreossy, that had it one day fallen suddenly in the manner of a cascade by this new passage, the small quantity of water that could have flowed at once through so narrow an aperture, would not only be diffused over the immense extent of the Mediterranean, without occasioning a tide of a few fathoms, but that the mere natural inclination necessary for the flowing of the waters, would have reduced to nothing their excess of height above the shores of Attica.

See further on this subject the note that I have published at the head of the third volume of Ovid, of M. Lemaire’s collection.

[123] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiq. Rom. lib. i. cap. lxi.

[124] Diodorus Siculus, lib. v. cap. xlvii.

[125] Stephen of Byzantium, under the word Iconium;--Zenodotus, Prov. cent. vi. No. 10.;--and Suidas, _voce_ Nannacus.

[126] Lucian, De Deâ Syrâ.

[127] Arnobius, Contra Gênt. lib. v. p. m. 158, even speaks of a rock in Phrygia, from which it was pretended that Deucalion and Pyrrha had taken their stones.

[128] This mutual resemblance in their institutions is carried to such an extent as to make it very natural to suppose that these nations had a common origin. It should not be forgotten, that many ancient authors thought that the Egyptian institutions came from Ethiopia; and that Syncellus, p. 151. says positively that the Ethiopians came from the banks of the Indus in the time of King Amenophtis.

[129] See Polier. Mythology of the Hindoos, vol. i. p. 89, 91.

[130] See the elaborate Memoir of Mr Wilfort, on the chronology of the kings of Magadha, and the Indian emperors, and on the epochs of Vicramaditya or Bikermadjit, and Salivahanna, in the Calcutta Memoirs, vol. ix. p. 82. 8vo. edit.

[131] See Sir William Jones on the chronology of the Hindoos, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 111. See also Wilfort on the same subject, Ibid. vol. v. p. 241. and the lists which he gives in his essay cited above, vol. ix. p. 116.

[132] Wilfort, Calcutta Mem. 8vo. vol. ix. p. 133.

[133] In the Ayeen-Acbery, vol. ii. p. 138, of the English transl. See also Heeren, Commerce of the Ancients, vol. i. part ii. p. 329.

[134] See Bentley, on the Astronomical Systems of the Hindoos, and their Connection with History; Calcutta Memoirs, vol. viii. p. 243. of the 8vo edition.

[135] See Mr Colebrooke’s Memoir on the Vedas, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. viii. p. 493. 8vo edition.

[136] Megasthenes apud Strabonem, lib. xv. p. 709. Almel.

[137] The epoch which gave birth to the present age, _Caliyug_ (the earthen age,) 4927 years before the present day, or 3200 years before Christ. See Legentil, Voyage aux Indes, t. i. p. 253.;--Bentley, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. viii. of the 8vo edition, p. 212. This period is only fifty-nine years farther back than the deluge of Noah, according to the Samaritan text.