Mythical Monsters
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Title: Mythical Monsters
Author: Charles Gould
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MYTHICAL MONSTERS.
[Illustration: THE FUNG WANG. _ACCORDING TO_ FANG HENG.]
MYTHICAL MONSTERS.
by
CHARLES GOULD, B.A.,
Member of the Royal Society of Tasmania;
Late Geological Surveyor of Tasmania.
With Ninety-Three Illustrations.
[Illustration]
London:
W. H. Allen & Co., 13 Waterloo Place. S.W.
Publishers to the India Office.
1886.
(All rights reserved.)
London:
Printed By W H Allen and Co., 13 Waterloo Place, Pall Mall S.W.
PREFACE.
The Author has to express his great obligations to many gentlemen who have
assisted him in the preparation of this volume, either by affording access
to their libraries, or by furnishing or revising translations from the
Chinese, &c.; and he must especially tender them to J. Haas, Esq., the
Austro-Hungarian Vice-Consul at Shanghai, to Mr. Thomas Kingsmill and the
Rev. W. Holt of Shanghai, to Mr. Falconer of Hong-Kong, and to Dr. N. B.
Dennys of Singapore.
For the sake of uniformity, the author has endeavoured to reduce all the
romanised representations of Chinese sounds to the system adopted by S. W.
Williams, whose invaluable dictionary is the most available one for
students. No alteration, however, has been made when quotations from
eminent sinologues like Legge have been inserted.
Should the present volume prove sufficiently interesting to attract
readers, a second one will be issued at a future date, in continuation of
the subject.
_June, 1884._
NOTE BY THE PUBLISHERS.
The Publishers think it right to state that, owing to the Author's absence
in China, the work has not had the advantage of his supervision in its
passage through the press. It is also proper to mention that the MS. left
the Author's hands eighteen months ago.
13, WATERLOO PLACE. S.W.
_January, 1886._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
LIST OF AUTHORS CITED 27
CHAPTER I.--ON SOME REMARKABLE ANIMAL FORMS 31
CHAPTER II.--EXTINCTION OF SPECIES 42
CHAPTER III.--ANTIQUITY OF MAN 78
CHAPTER IV.--THE DELUGE NOT A MYTH 101
CHAPTER V.--ON THE TRANSLATION OF MYTHS BETWEEN
THE OLD AND THE NEW WORLD 137
CHAPTER VI.--THE DRAGON 159
CHAPTER VII.--THE CHINESE DRAGON 212
CHAPTER VIII.--THE JAPANESE DRAGON 248
CHAPTER IX.--THE SEA-SERPENT 260
CHAPTER X.--THE UNICORN 338
CHAPTER XI.--THE CHINESE PHŒNIX 366
APPENDICES 375
MYTHICAL MONSTERS.
INTRODUCTION.
It would have been a bold step indeed for anyone, some thirty years ago,
to have thought of treating the public to a collection of stories
ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them the consideration
due to genuine realities, or to have advocated tales, time-honoured as
fictions, as actual facts; and those of the nursery as being, in many
instances, legends, more or less distorted, descriptive of real beings or
events.
Now-a-days it is a less hazardous proceeding. The great era of advanced
opinion, initiated by Darwin, which has seen, in the course of a few
years, a larger progress in knowledge in all departments of science than
decades of centuries preceding it, has, among other changes, worked a
complete revolution in the estimation of the value of folk-lore; and
speculations on it, which in the days of our boyhood would have been
considered as puerile, are now admitted to be not merely interesting but
necessary to those who endeavour to gather up the skeins of unwritten
history, and to trace the antecedents and early migrations from parent
sources of nations long since alienated from each other by customs,
speech, and space.
I have, therefore, but little hesitation in gravely proposing to submit
that many of the so-called mythical animals, which throughout long ages
and in all nations have been the fertile subjects of fiction and fable,
come legitimately within the scope of plain matter-of-fact Natural
History, and that they may be considered, not as the outcome of exuberant
fancy, but as creatures which really once existed, and of which,
unfortunately, only imperfect and inaccurate descriptions have filtered
down to us, probably very much refracted, through the mists of time.
I propose to follow, for a certain distance only, the path which has been
pursued in the treatment of myths by mythologists, so far only, in fact,
as may be necessary to trace out the homes and origin of those stories
which in their later dress are incredible; deviating from it to dwell upon
the possibility of their having preserved to us, through the medium of
unwritten Natural History, traditions of creatures once co-existing with
man, some of which are so weird and terrible as to appear at first sight
to be impossible. I propose stripping them of those supernatural
characters with which a mysteriously implanted love of the wonderful has
invested them, and to examine them, as at the present day we are
fortunately able to do, by the lights of the modern sciences of Geology,
Evolution, and Philology.
For me the major part of these creatures are not chimeras but objects of
rational study. The dragon, in place of being a creature evolved out of
the imagination of Aryan man by the contemplation of lightning flashing
through the caverns which he tenanted, as is held by some mythologists, is
an animal which once lived and dragged its ponderous coils, and perhaps
flew; which devastated herds, and on occasions swallowed their shepherd;
which, establishing its lair in some cavern overlooking the fertile plain,
spread terror and destruction around, and, protected from assault by dread
or superstitious feeling, may even have been subsidised by the
terror-stricken peasantry, who, failing the power to destroy it, may have
preferred tethering offerings of cattle adjacent to its cavern to having
it come down to seek supplies from amongst their midst.[1]
To me the specific existence of the unicorn seems not incredible, and, in
fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its origin to a lunar
myth.[2]
Again, believing as I do in the existence of some great undescribed
inhabitant of the ocean depths, the much-derided sea-serpent, whose home
seems especially to be adjacent to Norway, I recognise this monster as
originating the myths of the midgard serpent which the Norse Elder Eddas
have collected, this being the contrary view to that taken by
mythologists, who invert the derivation, and suppose the stories current
among the Norwegian fishermen to be modified versions of this important
element of Norse mythology.[3]
I must admit that, for my part, I doubt the general derivation of myths
from "the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature."[4] It
seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled the
utterance of these oft-told tales until their original appearance is
almost unrecognisable, than that uncultured savages should possess powers
of imagination and poetical invention far beyond those enjoyed by the most
instructed nations of the present day; less hard to believe that these
wonderful stories of gods and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons
and monsters of all descriptions, are transformations than to believe them
to be inventions.[5]
The author of _Atlantis_,[6] indeed, claims that the gods and goddesses of
the ancient Greeks, the Phœnicians, the Hindoos, and the Scandinavians
were simply the kings, queens, and heroes of Atlantis, and the acts
attributed to them in mythology a confused recollection of real historical
events. Without conceding the _locus_ of the originals, which requires
much greater examination than I am able to make at the present time, I
quite agree with him as to the principle. I believe that the mythological
deities represent a confused chronology of far-distant times, and that the
destruction of the Nemean lion, the Lernean hydra, and the Minotaur are
simply the records of acts of unusual bravery in combating ferocious
animals.
On the first landing of Pizarro the Mexicans entertained the opinion that
man and horse were parts of one strange animal,[7] and we have thus a clue
to the explanation of the origin of the belief in centaurs from a distant
view of horsemen, a view possibly followed by the immediate flight of the
observer, which rendered a solution of the extraordinary phenomenon
impossible.
ON THE CREDIBILITY OF REMARKABLE STORIES.
Ferdinand Mendez Pinto quaintly observes, in one of his earlier chapters,
"I will not speak of the Palace Royal, because I saw it but on the
outside, howbeit the Chinese tell such wonders of it as would amaze a man;
for it is my intent to relate nothing save what we beheld here with our
own eyes, and that was so much as that I am afraid to write it; not that
it would seem strange to those who have seen and read the marvels of the
kingdom of China, but because I doubt that they which would compare those
wondrous things that are in the countries they have not seen, with that
little they have seen in their own, will make some question of it, or, it
may be, give no credit at all to these truths, because they are not
conformable to their understanding and small experience."[8]
Now as some of the creatures whose existence I shall have to contend for
in these volumes are objects of derision to a large proportion of mankind,
and of reasonable doubt to another, I cannot help fortifying myself with
some such outwork of reasoning as the pith of Pinto's remarks affords, and
supplementing it by adding that, while the balance between scepticism and
credulity is undoubtedly always difficult to hold, yet, as Lord Bacon well
remarks, "There is nothing makes a man suspect much more than to know
little; and therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know
more."
Whately extends Bacon's proposition by adding, "This is equally true of
the suspicions that have reference to things as persons"; in other words,
ignorance and suspicion go hand-in-hand, and so travellers' tales, even
when supported by good evidence, are mostly denied credence or accepted
with repugnance, when they offend the experience of those who, remaining
at home, are thus only partially educated. Hence it is, not to go too far
back for examples, that we have seen Bruce, Mungo Park, Du Chaillu, Gordon
Cumming, Schliemann,[9] and Stanley treated with the most ungenerous
criticism and contemptuous disbelief by persons who, however well informed
in many subjects, lacked the extended and appreciative views which can
only be acquired by travel.
Nor is this incredulity limited to travellers' tales about savage life. It
is just as often displayed in reference to the surroundings of uneventful
life, provided they are different from those with which we are familiar.
Saladin rebuked the Knight of the Leopard for falsehood when the latter
assured him that the waters of lakes in his own country became at times
solidified, so that armed and mounted knights could cross them as if on
dry land. And the wise Indian who was taken down to see the large American
cities, with the expectation that, being convinced of the resources and
irresistible power of civilization he would influence his tribe to
submission on his return, to the surprise of the commissioners who had
conveyed him, spoke in directly contrary terms to those expected of him,
privately explaining in reply to their remonstrances, that had he told the
truth to his tribe he would have been indelibly branded for the remainder
of his life as an outrageous and contemptible liar. Chinese students,
despatched for education in American or European capitals, are compelled
on their return to make similar reservations, under pain of incurring a
like penalty; and officials who, from contact with Europeans at the open
ports, get their ideas expanded too quickly, are said to be liable to
isolation in distant regions, where their advanced and fantastic opinions
may do as little harm to right-thinking people as possible.[10]
Even scientific men are sometimes as crassly incredulous as the uncultured
masses. On this point hear Mr. A. R. Wallace.[11] "Many now living
remember the time (for it is little more than twenty years ago) when the
antiquity of man, as now understood, was universally discredited. Not only
theologians, but even geologists taught us that man belonged to the
existing state of things; that the extinct animals of the tertiary period
had finally disappeared, and that the earth's surface had assumed its
present condition before the human race first came into existence. So
prepossessed were scientific men with this idea, which yet rested on
purely negative evidence, and could not be supported by any argument of
scientific value, that numerous facts which had been presented at
intervals for half a century, all tending to prove the existence of man at
very remote epochs, were silently ignored, and, more than this, the
detailed statements of three distinct and careful observers confirming
each other were rejected by a great scientific society as too improbable
for publication, only because they proved (if they were true) the
co-existence of man with extinct animals."[12]
The travels of that faithful historian, Marco Polo, were for a long time
considered as fables, and the graphic descriptions of the Abbé Huc even
still find detractors continuing the _rôle_ of those who maintained that
he had never even visited the countries which he described.
Gordon Cumming was disbelieved when he asserted that he had killed an
antelope, out of a herd, with a rifle-shot at a distance of eight hundred
yards.
Madame Merian[13] was accused of deliberate falsehood in reference to her
description of a bird-eating spider nearly two hundred years ago. But
now-a-days Mr. Bates and other reliable observers have confirmed it in
regard to South America, India, and elsewhere.
Audubon was similarly accused by botanists of having invented the yellow
water-lily, which he figured in his _Birds of the South_ under the name of
Nymphæa lutea, and after having lain under the imputation for years, was
confirmed at last by the discovery of the long-lost flower, in Florida, by
Mrs. Mary Trent, in the summer of 1876;[14] and this encourages us to hope
that some day or other a fortunate sportsman may rediscover the Haliætus
Washingtonii, in regard to which Dr. Cover says: "That famous bird of
Washington was a myth; either Audubon was mistaken, or else, as some do
not hesitate to affirm, he lied about it."
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--FISHERMAN ATTACKED BY OCTOPUS.
(_Facsimile from a drawing by Hokusai, a celebrated Japanese artist who
lived about the beginning of the present century._)]
Victor Hugo was ridiculed for having exceeded the bounds of poetic license
when he produced his marvellous word-painting of the devil-fish, and
described a man as becoming its helpless victim. The thing was derided as
a monstrous impossibility; yet within a few years were discovered, on the
shores of Newfoundland, cuttle-fishes with arms extending to thirty feet
in length, and capable of dragging a good-sized boat beneath the surface;
and their action has been reproduced for centuries past, as the
representation of a well-known fact, in _net sukes_ (ivory carvings) and
illustrations by Japanese artists.[15]
Before the days of Darwinism, what courage was requisite in a man who
propounded any theory a little bit extravagant! Hark how, even less than
twenty years ago, the ghost of the unfortunate Lord Monboddo had bricks of
criticism pelted at it, half earnestly, half contemptuously, by one of our
greatest thinkers, whose thought happened to run in grooves different from
those travelled in by the mind of the unfortunate Scotchman.
"Lord Monboddo[16] had just finished his great work, by which he derives
all mankind from a couple of apes, and all the dialects of the world from
a language originally framed by some Egyptian gods, when the discovery of
Sanskrit came on him like a thunderbolt. It must be said, however, to his
credit, that he at once perceived the immense importance of the discovery.
He could not be expected to sacrifice his primordial monkeys or his
Egyptian idols, &c."
And again: "It may be of interest to give one other extract in order to
show how well, apart from his men with, and his monkeys without, tails,
Lord Monboddo could sift and handle the evidence that was placed before
him."
Max Müller also furnishes us with an amazing example of scepticism on the
part of Dugald Stewart. He says[17]: "However, if the facts about Sanskrit
were true, Dugald Stewart was too wise not to see that the conclusions
drawn from them were inevitable. He therefore denied the reality of such a
language as Sanskrit altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that
Sanskrit had been put together, after the model of Greek and Latin, by
those archforgers and liars, the Brahmans, and that the whole of Sanskrit
literature was an imposition."
So Ctesias attacked Herodotus. The very existence of Homer has been
denied, and even the authorship of Shakespeare's plays questioned.[18]
We are all familiar enough now with the black swan, but Ovid[19]
considered it as so utterly impossible that he clinched, as it were, an
affirmation by saying, "If I doubted, O Maximus, of thy approval of these
words, I could believe that there are swans of the colour of Memnon"
[_i.e._ black]; and even so late as the days of Sir Thomas Browne, we find
them classed by him with flying horses, hydras, centaurs, harpies, and
satyrs, as monstrosities, rarities, or else poetical fancies.[20]
Now that we have all seen the great hippopotamus disport himself in his
tank in the gardens of the Zoological Society, we can smile at the grave
arguments of the savant who, while admitting the existence of the animal,
disputed the possibility of his walking about on the bed of a river,
because his great bulk would prevent his rising again.[21] But I daresay
it passed muster in his days as a very sound and shrewd observation, just
as, possibly, but for the inconvenient waggery of Peter Pindar, might have
done the intelligent inquiry, which he records, after the seam in the
apple-dumpling.
Poor Fray Gaspar de Jan Bernardine who, in 1611, undertook the journey by
land from India to Portugal, was unfortunate enough to describe the mode
in which the captain of the caravan communicated intelligence to Bagdad by
carrier pigeon. "He had pigeons whose young and nests were at his house in
that city, and every two days he let fly a pigeon with a letter tied to
its foot containing the news of his journey. This account met with but
little belief in Europe, and was treated there as a matter of
merriment."[22]
The discredit under which this traveller fell is the more surprising
because the same custom had already been noted by Sir John Mandeville,
who, in speaking of Syria and adjacent countries, says: "In that contree,
and other contrees beyond, thei have custom, whan thei schulle usen warre,
and when men holden sege abouten Cytee or Castelle, and thei withinen dur
not senden messagers with lettres frō Lord to Lord for to ask Sokour, thei
maken here Lettres and bynden hem to the Nekke of a Colver and leten the
Colver flee, and the Colveren ben so taughte, that thei flun with the
Lettres to the very place that men wolde send hem to. For the Colveres
ben norrysscht in the Places Where thei been sent to, and thei senden them
there, for to beren here Lettres, and the Colveres retournen agen, where
as thei ben norrischt, and so thei dou commonly."
While, long before, Pliny had referred to it in his _Natural History_[23]
as follows: "In addition to this, pigeons have acted as messengers in
affairs of importance. During the siege of Mutina, Decimus Brutus, who was
in the town, sent despatches to the camp of the Consuls, fastened to
pigeons' feet. Of what use to Antony, then, were his entrenchments? and
all the vigilance of the besieging army? his nets, too, which he had
spread in the river, while the messenger of the besieged was cleaving the
air?"
The pace of railways; steam communication across the Atlantic; the Suez
Canal[24]; were not all these considered in former days to be impossible?
With these examples of failure of judgment before us, it may be fairly
asked whether, in applying our minds to the investigation of the reality
of creatures apparently monstrous, we duly reflect upon the extraordinary,
almost miraculous, events which incessantly occur in the course of the
short existence of all animated nature? Supposing the history of insects
were unknown to us, could the wildest imagination conceive such a
marvellous transformation as that which takes place continually around us
in the passage from the larva through the chrysalis to the butterfly? or
human ingenuity invent one so bizarre as that recorded by Steenstrup in
his theory of the alternation of generation?
We accept as nothing marvellous, only because we see them daily, the
organization and the polity of a community of ants; their collaboration,
their wars, and their slaveries have been so often stated that they cease
to astonish. The same may be said of the marvellous architecture of birds,
their construction of houses to live in, of bowers to play in, and even of
gardens to gratify their sense of beauty.[25]
We admire the ingenious imagination of Swift, and essayists dwell upon his
happy conceits and upon the ability with which, in his celebrated work, he
has ordered all things to harmonise in dimensions with the enlarged and
reduced scales on which he has conceived the men and animals of Brobdignag
and Lilliput. So much even has this quaint idea been appreciated, that his
story has achieved a small immortality, and proved one of the numerous
springs from which new words have been imported into our language. Yet the
peculiar and essential singularities of the story are quite equalled, or
even surpassed, by creatures which are, or have been, found in nature. The
imaginary diminutive cows which Gulliver brought back from Lilliput, and
placed in the meadows at Dulwich, are not one bit more remarkable, in
respect to relative size, than the pigmy elephant (_E. Falconeri_) whose
remains have been found in the cave-deposits of Malta, associated with
those of pigmy hippopotami, and which was only two feet six inches high;
or the still existing _Hippopotamus (Chæropsis) liberiensis_, which M.
Milne Edwardes[26] figures as little more than two feet in height.
The lilliputian forests from which the royal navy was constructed
contained even large trees in comparison with the dwarf oaks of
Mexico,[27] or with the allied, even smaller species, which crawls like
heather about the hill-slopes of China and Japan, and still more so in
comparison with that singular pine, the most diminutive known (_Dacrydium
taxifolium_), fruiting specimens of which, according to Kirk, are
sometimes only two inches high, while the average height is only six to
ten inches; while even among the forests of Brobdignag, a very respectable
position could be held by the mammoth trees of California (_Sequoia
gigantea_), or by the loftier white gums of Australia (_Eucalyptus
amygdalina_), which occasionally reach, according to Von Mueller,[28] the
enormous height of 480 feet. Nor could more adequate tenants (in point of
size) be found to occupy them than the gigantic reptilian forms lately
discovered by Marsh among the deposits of Colorado and Texas.
Surely a profound acquaintance with the different branches of natural
history should render a man credulous rather than incredulous, for there
is hardly conceivable a creature so monstrous that it may not be
paralleled by existing ones in every-day life.[29]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--PTERODACTYLUS. (_After Figuier._)]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--RHAMPHORYNCHUS. (_From "Nature."_)]
Are the composite creatures of Chaldæan mythology so very much more
wonderful than the marsupial kangaroo, the duck-billed platypus, and the
flying lizard of Malaysia which are, or the pterodactylus, rhamphorynchus,
and archæopteryx which have been? Does not geological science, day by day,
trace one formation by easy gradation to another, bridge over the gaps
which formerly separated them, carry the proofs of the existence of man
constantly further and further back into remote time, and disclose the
previous existence of intermediate types (satisfying the requirements of
the Darwinian theory) connecting the great divisions of the animal
kingdom, of reptile-like birds and bird-like reptiles? Can we suppose that
we have at all exhausted the great museum of nature? Have we, in fact,
penetrated yet beyond its ante-chambers?
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--ARCHÆOPTERYX.]
Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years, embrace
the whole course of his intelligent existence? or have we in the long
mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of years and recorded
in the chronologies of Chaldæa and of China, shadowy mementoes of
pre-historic man, handed down by tradition, and perhaps transported by a
few survivors to existing lands from others which, like the fabled (?)
Atlantis of Plato, may have been submerged, or the scene of some great
catastrophe which destroyed them with all their civilization.
The six or eight thousand years which the various interpreters of the
Biblical record assign for the creation of the world and the duration of
man upon the earth, allow little enough space for the development of his
civilization--a civilization which documental evidence carries almost to
the verge of the limit--for the expansion and divergence of stocks, or the
obliteration of the branches connecting them.
But, fortunately, we are no more compelled to fetter our belief within
such limits as regards man than to suppose that his appearance on the
globe was coeval with or immediately successive to its own creation at
that late date. For while geological science, on the one hand, carries
back the creation of the world and the appearance of life upon its surface
to a period so remote that it is impossible to estimate it, and difficult
even to faintly approximate to it, so, upon the other, the researches of
palæontologists have successively traced back the existence of man to
periods variously estimated at from thirty thousand to one million
years--to periods when he co-existed with animals which have long since
become extinct, and which even excelled in magnitude and ferocity most of
those which in savage countries dispute his empire at the present day. Is
it not reasonable to suppose that his combats with these would form the
most important topic of conversation, of tradition, and of primitive song,
and that graphic accounts of such struggles, and of the terrible nature of
the foes encountered, would be handed down from father to son, with a
fidelity of description and an accuracy of memory unsuspected by us, who,
being acquainted with reading and writing, are led to depend upon their
artificial assistance, and thus in a measure fail to cultivate a faculty
which, in common with those of keenness of vision and hearing, are
essential to the existence of man in a savage or semi-savage
condition?[30]
The illiterate backwoodsman or trapper (and hence by inference the savage
or semi-civilized man), whose mind is occupied merely by his
surroundings, and whose range of thought, in place of being diffused over
an illimitable horizon, is confined within very moderate limits, develops
remarkable powers of observation and an accuracy of memory in regard to
localities, and the details of his daily life, surprising to the scholar
who has mentally to travel over so much more ground, and, receiving daily
so many and so far more complex ideas, can naturally grasp each less
firmly, and is apt to lose them entirely in the haze of a period of time
which would still leave those of the uneducated man distinguishable or
even prominent landmarks.[31] Variations in traditions must, of course,
occur in time, and the same histories, radiating in all directions from
centres, vary from the original ones by increments dependent on
proportionately altered phases of temperament and character, induced by
change of climate, associations and conditions of life; so that the early
written history of every country reproduces under its own garb, and with a
claim to originality, attenuated, enriched, or deformed versions of
traditions common in their origin to many or all.[32]
Stories of divine progenitors, demigods, heroes, mighty hunters, slayers
of monsters, giants, dwarfs, gigantic serpents, dragons, frightful beasts
of prey, supernatural beings, and myths of all kinds, appear to have been
carried into all corners of the world with as much fidelity as the sacred
Ark of the Israelites, acquiring a moulding--graceful, weird or
uncouth--according to the genius of the people or their capacity for
superstitious belief; and these would appear to have been materially
affected by the varied nature of their respective countries. For example,
the long-continuing dwellers in the open plains of a semi-tropical region,
relieved to a great extent from the cares of watchfulness, and nurtured in
the grateful rays of a genial but not oppressive sun, must have a more
buoyant disposition and more open temperament than those inhabiting vast
forests, the matted overgrowth of which rarely allows the passage of a
single ray, bathes all in gloom, and leaves on every side undiscovered
depths, filled with shapeless shadows, objects of vigilant dread, from
which some ferocious monster may emerge at any moment. Again, on the one
hand, the nomad roaming in isolation over vast solitudes, having much
leisure for contemplative reflection, and on the other, the hardy dwellers
on storm-beaten coasts, by turns fishermen, mariners, and pirates, must
equally develop traits which affect their religion, polity, and customs,
and stamp their influences on mythology and tradition.
The Greek, the Celt, and the Viking, descended from the same Aryan
ancestors, though all drawing from the same sources their inspirations of
religious belief and tradition, quickly diverged, and respectively settled
into a generous martial race--martial in support of their independence
rather than from any lust of conquest--polite, skilled, and learned; one
brave but irritable, suspicious, haughty, impatient of control; and the
last, the berserker, with a ruling passion for maritime adventure, piracy,
and hand-to-hand heroic struggles, to be terminated in due course by a
hero's death and a welcome to the banqueting halls of Odin in Walhalla.
The beautiful mythology of the Greek nation, comprising a pantheon of gods
and demigods, benign for the most part, and often interesting themselves
directly in the welfare of individual men, was surely due to, or at least
greatly induced by, the plastic influences of a delicious climate, a
semi-insular position in a sea comparatively free from stormy weather, and
an open mountainous country, moderately fertile. Again, the gloomy and
sanguinary religion of the Druids was doubtless moulded by the depressing
influences of the seclusion, twilight haze, and dangers of the dense
forests in which they hid themselves--forests which, as we know from
Cæsar, spread over the greater part of Gaul, Britain, and Spain; while the
Viking, having from the chance or choice of his ancestors, inherited a
rugged seaboard, lashed by tempestuous waves and swept by howling winds, a
seaboard with only a rugged country shrouded with unsubdued forests at its
back, exposed during the major portion of the year to great severity of
climate, and yielding at the best but a niggard and precarious harvest,
became perforce a bold and skilful mariner, and, translating his belief
into a language symbolic of his new surroundings, believed that he saw and
heard Thor in the midst of the howling tempests, revealed majestic and
terrible through rents in the storm-cloud. Pursuing our consideration of
the effects produced by climatic conditions, may we not assume, for
example, that some at least of the Chaldæans, inhabiting a pastoral
country, and being descended from ancestors who had pursued, for hundreds
or thousands of years, a nomadic existence in the vast open steppes in the
highlands of Central Asia, were indebted to those circumstances for the
advance which they are credited with having made in astronomy and kindred
sciences. Is it not possible that their acquaintance with climatology was
as exact or even more so than our own? The habit of solitude would induce
reflection, the subject of which would naturally be the causes influencing
the vicissitudes of weather. The possibilities of rain or sunshine, wind
or storm, would be with them a prominent object of solicitude; and the
necessity, in an unfenced country, of extending their watch over their
flocks and herds throughout the night, would perforce more or less rivet
their attention upon the glorious constellations of the heavens above, and
lead to habits of observation which, systematized and long continued by
the priesthood, might have produced deductions accurate in the result even
if faulty in the process.
The vast treasures of ancient knowledge tombed in the ruins of Babylon and
Assyria, of which the recovery and deciphering is as yet only initiated,
may, to our surprise, reveal that certain secrets of philosophy were known
to the ancients equally with ourselves, but lost through intervening ages
by the destruction of the empire, and the fact of their conservancy having
been entrusted to a privileged and limited order, with which it
perished.[33]
We hail as a new discovery the knowledge of the existence of the so-called
spots upon the surface of the sun, and scientists, from long-continued
observations, profess to distinguish a connection between the character of
these and atmospheric phenomena; they even venture to predict floods and
droughts, and that for some years in anticipation; while pestilences or
some great disturbance are supposed to be likely to follow the period when
three or four planets attain their apogee within one year, a supposition
based on the observations extended over numerous years, that similar
events had accompanied the occurrence of even one only of those positions
at previous periods.
May we not speculate on the possibility of similar or parallel knowledge
having been possessed by the old Chaldæan and Egyptian priesthood; and may
not Joseph have been able, by superior ability in its exercise, to have
anticipated the seven years' drought, or Noah, from an acquaintance with
meteorological science, to have made an accurate forecast of the great
disturbances which resulted in the Deluge and the destruction of a large
portion of mankind?[34]
Without further digression in a path which opens the most pleasing
speculations, and could be pursued into endless ramifications, I will
merely, in conclusion, suggest that the same influences which, as I have
shown above, affect so largely the very nature of a people, must similarly
affect its traditions and myths, and that due consideration will have to
be given to such influences, in the case of some at least of the
remarkable animals which I propose to discuss in this and future volumes.
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF SOME AUTHORS WRITING ON, AND WORKS RELATING TO
NATURAL HISTORY, TO WHICH REFERENCES ARE MADE IN THE PRESENT VOLUME;
EXTRACTED TO A GREAT EXTENT, AS TO THE WESTERN AUTHORS, FROM KNIGHT'S
"CYCLOPÆDIA OF BIOGRAPHY."
_The Shan Hai King_--According to the commentator Kwoh P'oh (A.D.
276-324), this work was compiled three thousand years before this time, or
at seven dynasties' distance. Yang Sun of the Ming dynasty (commencing
A.D. 1368), states that it was compiled by Kung Chia (and Chung Ku?) from
engravings on nine urns made by the Emperor Yü, B.C. 2255. Chung Ku was an
historiographer, and at the time of the last Emperor of the Hia dynasty
(B.C. 1818), fearing that the Emperor might destroy the books treating of
the ancient and present time, carried them in flight to Yin.
_The 'Rh Ya_--Initiated according to tradition, by Chow Kung; uncle of Wu
Wang, the first Emperor of the Chow dynasty, B.C. 1122. Ascribed also to
Tsze Hea, the disciple of Confucius.
_The Bamboo Books_--Containing the Ancient Annals of China, said to have
been found A.D. 279, on opening the grave of King Seang of Wei [died B.C.
295]. Age prior to last date, undetermined. Authenticity disputed,
favoured by Legge.
_Confucius_--Author of Spring and Autumn Classics, &c., B.C. (551-479).
_Ctesias_--Historian, physician to Artaxerxes, B.C. 401.
_Herodotus_--B.C. 484.
_Aristotle_--B.C. 384.
_Megasthenes_--About B.C. 300. In time of Seleucus Nicator. His work
entitled _Indica_ is only known by extracts in those of Strabo, Arrian,
and Ælian.
_Eratosthenes_--Born B.C. 276. Mathematician, Astronomer, and Geographer.
_Posidonius_--Born about B.C. 140. Besides philosophical treatises, wrote
works on geography, history, and astronomy, fragments of which are
preserved in the works of Cicero, Strabo, and others.
_Nicander_--About B.C. 135. Wrote the _Theriaca_, a poem of 1,000 lines,
in hexameter, on the wounds caused by venomous animals, and the treatment.
Is followed in many of his errors by Pliny. Plutarch says the _Theriaca_
cannot be called a poem, because there is in it nothing of fable or
falsehood.
_Strabo_--Just before the Christian era. Geographer.
_Cicero_--Born B.C. 106.
_Propertius (Sextus Aurelius)_--Born probably about B.C. 56.
_Diodorus Siculus_--Wrote the _Bibliotheca Historica_ (in Greek), after
the death of Julius Cæsar (B.C. 44). Of the 40 books composing it only 15
remain, viz. Books 1 to 5 and 11 to 20.
_Juba_--Died A.D. 17. Son of Juba I., King of Numidia. Wrote on Natural
History.
_Pliny_--Born A.D. 23.
_Lucan_--A.D. 38. The only work of his extant is the _Pharsalia_, a poem
on the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey.
_Ignatius_--Either an early Patriarch, A.D. 50, or Patriarch of
Constantinople, 799.
_Isidorus_--Isidorus of Charaux lived probably in the first century of our
era. He wrote an account of the Parthian empire.
_Arrian_--Born about A.D. 100. His work on the Natural History, &c. of
India is founded on the authority of Eratosthenes and Megasthenes.
_Pausanias_--Author of the Description or Itinerary of Greece. In the 2nd
century.
_Philostratus_--Born about A.D. 182.
_Solinus, Caius Julius_--Did not write in the Augustan age, for his work
entitled _Polyhistor_ is merely a compilation from Pliny's _Natural
History_. According to Salmasius, he lived about two hundred years after
Pliny.
_Ælian_--Probably middle of the 3rd century A.D. _De Naturâ Animalium._ In
Greek.
_Ammianus Marcellinus_--Lived in 4th century.
_Cardan, Jerome A._--About the end of 4th century A.D.
Printing invented in China, according to Du Halde, A.D. 924.
Block-printing used in A.D. 593.
_Marco Polo_--Reached the Court of Kublai Khan in A.D. 1275.
_Mandeville, Sir John de_--Travelled for thirty-three years in Asia dating
from A.D. 1327. As he resided for three years in Peking, it is probable
that many of his fables are derived from Chinese sources.
Printing invented in Europe by John Koster of Haarlem, A.D. 1438.
_Scaliger, Julius Cæsar_--Born April 23rd, 1484. Wrote _Aristotelis Hist.
Anim. liber decimus cum vers. et comment_. 8vo. Lyon, 1584, &c.
_Gesner_--Born 1516. _Historiæ Animalium_, &c.
_Ambrose Paré_--Born 1517. Surgeon.
_Belon, Pierre_--Born 1518. Zoologist, Geographer, &c.
_Aldrovandus_--Born 1552. Naturalist.
_Tavernier, J. B._--Born 1605.
_Păn Ts'ao Kang Muh_--By Li Shê-chin of the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1368-1628).
_Yuen Kien Léi Han_--A.D. 1718.
CHAPTER I.
ON SOME REMARKABLE ANIMAL FORMS.
The reasoning upon the question whether dragons, winged snakes,
sea-serpents, unicorns, and other so-called fabulous monsters have in
reality existed, and at dates coeval with man, diverges in several
independent directions.
We have to consider:--
1.--Whether the characters attributed to these creatures are or are not so
abnormal in comparison with those of known types, as to render a belief in
their existence impossible or the reverse.
2.--Whether it is rational to suppose that creatures so formidable, and
apparently so capable of self-protection, should disappear entirely, while
much more defenceless species continue to survive them.
3.--The myths, traditions, and historical allusions from which their
reality may be inferred require to be classified and annotated, and full
weight given to the evidence which has accumulated of the presence of man
upon the earth during ages long prior to the historic period, and which
may have been ages of slowly progressive civilization, or perhaps cycles
of alternate light and darkness, of knowledge and barbarism.
4.--Lastly, some inquiry may be made into the geographical conditions
obtaining at the time of their possible existence.
It is immaterial which of these investigations is first entered upon, and
it will, in fact, be more convenient to defer a portion of them until we
arrive at the sections of this volume treating specifically of the
different objects to which it is devoted, and to confine our attention for
the present to those subjects which, from their nature, are common and in
a sense prefatory to the whole subject.
I shall therefore commence with a short examination of some of the most
remarkable reptilian forms which are known to have existed, and for that
purpose, and to show their general relations, annex the accompanying
tables, compiled from the anatomy of vertebrated animals by Professor
Huxley:--
_Amphibia._
REPTILES CLASSIFIED BY HUXLEY.
---------------------------------------------------
ORDER. | ---- | SUB-ORDER. |GROUPS. |
| | | |
-----------|----------|------------------|--------|
Chelonia. |Land |1. Testudinea | |
| tortoises| | |
" |River and |2. Emydea |a Terra-|
| marsh do.| | penes|
| | |b Chelo-|
| | | dines|
|Mud |3. Trionychoidea | |
| tortoises| | |
" |Turtles |4. Euereta | |
| | | |
Plesiosaur-| |5. |Post |
ia. | | | Trias- |
| | | sic |
" | |6. |Triassic|
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
Lacertilia.|Geckos |7. Ascalabota | |
| | | |
" | |8. Rhynchocephala | |
| | | |
" | |9. Homœosauria | |
| | | |
| | | |
" | |10. Protosauria | |
| | | |
" |Monitor |11. Platynota | |
| | | |
" | |12. Eunota | |
| | | |
" | |13. Lacertina | |
| | | |
" | |14. Chalcidea | |
| | | |
" | |15. Scincoidea | |
" | |16. Dolichosauria | |
" | |17. Mosasauria | |
" | |18. Amphisbænoida | |
" | |19. Chamæleonida | |
Ophidia. |Non-vene- |20. Aglyphodontia | |
| mous con-| | |
" | stricting|21. Opisthoglyphia| |
" | |22. Proteroglyphia| |
" |Vipers and|23. Solenoglyphia | |
| Rattle- | | |
" | snakes |24. Typhlopidæ | |
Icthyosaur-| | . . . . | |
ia. | | | |
Crocodile. |Alligator |26. Alligatoridæ | |
| | | |
| | | |
" |Crocodiles|27. Crocodilidæ | |
| | | |
" |Gavials |28. Gavialidæ | |
" | | | |
| |29. Teleosauidæ | |
" | |30. Belodontidæ | |
Dicynodont-| |31. . . . | |
ia. | | | |
Ornitho- | |32. Dinosauria | |
scelida | | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| |33. Compsognatha | |
| | | |
Pterosaur- |Flying |34. Pterodactylidæ| |
ia. | reptile | | |
| | | |
| | | |
---------------------------------------------------
_Aves._
-------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIVE | RANGE OF THE
GENERA. | ORDER.
--------------|----------------
Pyxis, Cinyxis|}The
|} Chelonia
Emys, Cistudo |} are first
|} known to
Chelys, |} occur in
Chelodina |}
Gymnopus |} the Lias.
Cryptopus |}
Sphargis, |}To recent.
Chelone |
Plesiosaurus |}
Pliosaurus |}Trias to
|} Chalk
Nothosaurus |} inclu-
Simosaurus |} sive.
Pistosaurus |}
|
|recent }
| }
Sphenodon or | }
Rhyncocepha-| }
lus |Solenhofen}
| slates to}
| Trias }
|Permian }
| }Permian
|recent }to
| }recent.
| " }
| }
| " }
| }
| " }
| }
|Recent }Permian
Dolichosaurus|Chalk }to
Mososaurus |Chalk }recent.
Chirotes | }
Amphisbæna |
Python, |}
Tortrix |}
|}
|} Older
Crotalus |} Tertiary
|} to recent.
|}
Icthyosaurus |Trias(?) to
|chalk inclusive.
Alligator |}
Caiman |}
Jacare |}
Crocodilus |}
Mecistops |}
Rhynchosuchus |} Trias to
Gavialis |} recent.
Teleosaurus |}
Belodon |}
Dicynodon | } Trias.
Oudenodon | }
Thecodonto- |Trias }
saurus | }Mesozoic
Scelidosaurus |Lias }forma-
Megalosaurus {| Middle & } tions.
Iguanodon {| Upper }
{| Mesozoic }
|Solenhofen}
|slates }
Ornithopterus |}
Pterodactylus |}Lias to Chalk
Rhamphorynchus|}inclusive.
Dimorphodon |}
----------------------------------
The most bird-like of reptiles, the Pterosauria, appear to have possessed
true powers of flight; they were provided with wings formed by an
expansion of the integument, and supported by an enormous elongation of
the ulnar finger of the anterior limb. The generic differences are based
upon the comparative lengths of the tail, and upon the dentition. In
_Pterodactylus_ (see Fig. 2, p. 18), the tail is very short, and the jaws
strong, pointed, and toothed to their anterior extremities. In
_Rhamphorynchus_ (see Fig. 8, p. 18), the tail is very long and the teeth
are not continuous to the extremities of the jaws, which are produced into
toothless beaks. The majority of the species are small, and they are
generally considered to have been inoffensive creatures, having much the
habits and insectivorous mode of living of bats. One British species,
however, from the white chalk of Maidstone, measures more than sixteen
feet across the outstretched wings; and other forms recently discovered by
Professor Marsh in the Upper Cretaceous deposits of Kansas, attain the
gigantic proportions of nearly twenty-five feet for the same measurements;
and although these were devoid of teeth (thus approaching the class Aves
still more closely), they could hardly fail, from their magnitude and
powers of flight, to have been formidable, and must, with their weird
aspects, and long outstretched necks and pointed heads, have been at least
sufficiently alarming.
We need go no farther than these in search of creatures which would
realise the popular notion of the winged dragon.
The harmless little flying lizards, belonging to the genus Draco,
abounding in the East Indian archipelago, which have many of their
posterior ribs prolonged into an expansion of the integument, unconnected
with the limbs, and have a limited and parachute-like flight, need only
the element of size, to render them also sufficiently to be dreaded, and
capable of rivalling the Pterodactyls in suggesting the general idea of
the same monster.
It is, however, when we pass to some of the other groups, that we find
ourselves in the presence of forms so vast and terrible, as to more than
realise the most exaggerated impression of reptilian power and ferocity
which the florid imagination of man can conceive.
We have long been acquainted with numerous gigantic terrestrial Saurians,
ranging throughout the whole of the Mesozoic formations, such as
_Iguanodon_ (characteristic of the Wealden), _Megalosaurus_ (Great
Saurian), and _Hylæosaurus_ (Forest Saurian), huge bulky creatures, the
last of which, at least, was protected by dermal armour partially produced
into prodigious spines; as well as with remarkable forms essentially
marine, such as _Icthyosaurus_ (Fish-like Saurian), _Plesiosaurus_, &c.,
adapted to an oceanic existence and propelling themselves by means of
paddles. The latter, it may be remarked, was furnished with a long slender
swan-like neck, which, carried above the surface of the water, would
present the appearance of the anterior portion of a serpent.
To the related land forms the collective term Dinosauria (from δεινός
"terrible") has been applied, in signification of the power which their
structure and magnitude imply that they possessed; and to the others that
of Enaliosauria, as expressive of their adaptation to a maritime
existence. Yet, wonderful to relate, those creatures which have for so
many years commanded our admiration fade into insignificance in comparison
with others which are proved, by the discoveries of the last few years, to
have existed abundantly upon, or near to, the American continent during
the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods, by which they are surpassed, in point
of magnitude, as much as they themselves exceed the mass of the larger
Vertebrata.
Take, for example, those referred to by Professor Marsh in the course of
an address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in
1877, in the following terms:--"The reptiles most characteristic of our
American cretaceous strata are the Mososauria, a group with very few
representatives in other parts of the world. In our cretaceous seas they
rule supreme, as their numbers, size, and carnivorous habits enabled them
to easily vanquish all rivals. Some were at least sixty feet in length,
and the smallest ten or twelve. In the inland cretaceous sea from which
the Rocky Mountains were beginning to emerge, these ancient 'sea-serpents'
abounded, and many were entombed in its muddy bottom; on one occasion, as
I rode through a valley washed out of this old ocean-bed, I saw no less
than seven different skeletons of these monsters in sight at once. The
Mososauria were essentially swimming lizards with four well-developed
paddles, and they had little affinity with modern serpents, to which they
have been compared."
Or, again, notice the specimens of the genus Cidastes, which are also
described as veritable sea-serpents of those ancient seas, whose huge
bones and almost incredible number of vertebræ show them to have attained
a length of nearly two hundred feet. The remains of no less than ten of
these monsters were seen by Professor Mudge, while riding through the
Mauvaise Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains, their whitened bones
bleached in the suns of centuries, and their gaping jaws armed with
ferocious teeth, telling a wonderful tale of their power when alive.
The same deposits have been equally fertile in the remains of terrestrial
animals of gigantic size. The _Titanosaurus montanus_, believed to have
been herbivorous, is estimated to have reached fifty or sixty feet in
length; while other Dinosaurians of still more gigantic proportions, from
the Jurassic beds of the Rocky Mountains, have been described by Professor
Marsh. Among the discovered remains of _Atlantosaurus immanis_ is a femur
over six feet in length, and it is estimated from a comparison of this
specimen with the same bone in living reptiles that this species, if
similar in proportions to the crocodile, would have been over one hundred
feet in length.
But even yet the limit has not been reached, and we hear of the discovery
of the remains of another form, of such Titanic proportions as to possess
a thigh-bone over twelve feet in length.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--MONSTER BONES OF EXTINCT GIGANTIC SAURIANS FROM
COLORADO, SHOWING RELATIVE PROPORTIONS TO CORRESPONDING BONE IN THE
CROCODILE (A). (_From the "Scientific American."_)]
From these considerations it is evident that, on account of the dimensions
usually assigned to them, no discredit can be attached to the existence of
the fabulous monsters of which we shall speak hereafter; for these, in the
various myths, rarely or never equal in size creatures which science shows
to have existed in a comparatively recent geological age, while the
quaintest conception could hardly equal the reality of yet another of the
American Dinosaurs, _Stegosaurus_, which appears to have been herbivorous,
and more or less aquatic in habit, adapted for sitting upon its hinder
extremities, and protected by bony plate and numerous spines. It reached
thirty feet in length. Professor Marsh considers that this, when alive,
must have presented the strangest appearance of all the Dinosaurs yet
discovered.
The affinities of birds and reptiles have been so clearly demonstrated of
late years, as to cause Professor Huxley and many other comparative
anatomists to bridge over the wide gap which was formerly considered to
divide the two classes, and to bracket them together in one class, to
which the name Sauropsidæ has been given.[35]
There are, indeed, not a few remarkable forms, as to the class position of
which, whether they should be assigned to birds or reptiles, opinion was
for a long time, and is in a few instances still, divided. It is, for
example, only of late years that the fossil form Archæopteryx[36] (Fig. 4,
p. 19) from the Solenhofen slates, has been definitely relegated to the
former, but arguments against this disposal of it have been based upon the
beak or jaws being furnished with true teeth, and the feather of the tail
attached to a series of vertebræ, instead of a single flattened one as in
birds. It appears to have been entirely plumed, and to have had a moderate
power of flight.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--SIVATHERIUM (RESTORED), FROM THE UPPER MIOCENE
DEPOSITS OF THE SIWALIK HILLS. (_After Figuier._)]
On the other hand, the Ornithopterus is only provisionally classed with
reptiles, while the connection between the two classes is drawn still
closer by the copious discovery of the birds from the Cretaceous
formations of America, for which we are indebted to Professor Marsh.
The Lepidosiren, also, is placed mid-way between reptiles and fishes.
Professor Owen and other eminent physiologists consider it a fish;
Professor Bischoff and others, an amphibian reptile. It has a two-fold
apparatus for respiration, partly aquatic, consisting of gills, and partly
aerial, of true lungs.
So far, then, as abnormality of type is concerned, we have here instances
quite as remarkable as those presented by most of the strange monsters
with the creation of which mythological fancy has been credited.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--SKELETON OF MEGATHERIUM. (_After Figuier._)]
Among mammals I shall only refer to the Megatherium, which appears to have
been created to burrow in the earth and to feed upon the roots of trees
and shrubs, for which purpose every organ of its heavy frame was adapted.
This Hercules among animals was as large as an elephant or rhinoceros of
the largest species, and might well, as it has existed until a late date,
have originated the myths, current among the Indians of South America, of
a gigantic tunnelling or burrowing creature, incapable of supporting the
light of day.[37]
CHAPTER II.
EXTINCTION OF SPECIES.
In reviewing the past succession of different forms of ancient life upon
the globe, we are reminded of a series of dissolving views, in which each
species evolves itself by an imperceptible gradation from some
pre-existing one, arrives at its maximum of individuality, and then slowly
fades away, while another type, either higher or lower, evolved in turn
from it, emerges from obscurity, and succeeds it on the field of view.
Specific individuality has in all cases a natural term, dependent on
physical causes, but that term is in many cases abruptly anticipated by a
combination of unfavourable conditions.
Alteration of climate, isolation by geological changes, such as the
submergence of continents and islands, and the competition of other
species, are among the causes which have at all times operated towards its
destruction; while, since the evolution of man, his agency, so far as we
can judge by what we know of his later history, has been especially active
in the same direction.
The limited distribution of many species, even when not enforced by
insular conditions, is remarkable, and, of course, highly favourable to
their destruction. A multiplicity of examples are familiar to naturalists,
and possibly not a few may have attracted the attention of the ordinary
observer.
For instance, it is probably generally known, that in our own island, the
red grouse (which, by the way, is a species peculiar to Great Britain) is
confined to certain moorlands, the ruffs and reeves to fen districts, and
the nightingale,[38] chough, and other species to a few counties; while
Ireland is devoid of almost all the species of reptiles common to Great
Britain. In the former cases, the need of or predilection for certain
foods probably determines the favourite locality, and there are few
countries which would not furnish similar examples. In the latter, the
explanation depends on biological conditions dating prior to the
separation of Ireland from the main continent. Among birds, it might
fairly be presumed that the power of flight would produce unlimited
territorial expansion, but in many instances the reverse is found to be
the case: a remarkable example being afforded by the island of Tasmania, a
portion of which is called the unsettled waste lands, or Western Country.
This district, which comprises about one-third of the island upon the
western side, and is mainly composed of mountain chains of granites,
quartzite, and mica schists, is entirely devoid of the numerous species of
garrulous and gay-plumaged birds, such as the Mynah mocking-bird, white
cockatoo, wattle bird, and Rosella parrot, though these abundantly enliven
the eastern districts, which are fertilized by rich soils due to the
presence of ranges of basalt, greenstone, and other trappean rocks.
Another equally striking instance is given by my late father, Mr. J.
Gould, in his work on the humming-birds. Of two species, inhabiting
respectively the adjacent mountains of Pichincha and Chimborazo at
certain elevations, each is strictly confined to its own mountain; and, if
my memory serves me correctly, he mentions similar instances of species
peculiar to different peaks of the Andes.
Limitation by insular isolation is intelligible, especially in the case of
mammals and reptiles, and of birds possessing but small power of flight;
and we are, therefore, not surprised to find Mr. Gosse indicating, among
other examples, that even the smallest of the Antilles has each a fauna of
its own, while the humming-birds, some of the parrots, cuckoos, and
pigeons, and many of the smaller birds are peculiar to Jamaica. He states
still further, that in the latter instance many of the animals are not
distributed over the whole island, but confined to a single small
district.
Continental limitation is effected by mountain barriers. Thus, according
to Mr. Wallace, almost all the mammalia, birds, and insects on one side of
the Andes and Rocky Mountains are distinct in species from those on the
other; while a similar difference, but smaller in degree, exists with
reference to regions adjacent to the Alps and Pyrenees.
Climate, broad rivers, seas, oceans, forests, and even large desert
wastes, like the Sahara or the great desert of Gobi, also act more or less
effectively as girdles which confine species within certain limits.
Dependence on each other or on supplies of appropriate food also form
minor yet practical factors in the sum of limitation; and a curious
example of the first is given by Dr. Van Lennep with reference to the
small migratory birds that are unable to perform the flight of three
hundred and fifty miles across the Mediterranean. He states that these are
carried across on the backs of cranes.[39]
In the autumn many flocks of cranes may be seen coming from the North,
with the first cold blast from that quarter, flying low, and uttering
a peculiar cry, as if of alarm, as they circle over the cultivated
plains. Little birds of every species may be seen flying up to them,
while the twittering cries of those already comfortably settled upon
their backs may be distinctly heard. On their return in the spring
they fly high, apparently considering that their little passengers can
easily find their way down to the earth.
The question of food-supply is involved in the more extended subject of
geological structure, as controlling the flora and the insect life
dependent on it. As an example we may cite the disappearance of the
capercailzie from Denmark with the decay of the pine forests abundant
during late Tertiary periods.
Collision, direct or indirect, with inimical species often has a fatal
ending. Thus the dodo was exterminated by the swine which the early
visitors introduced to the Mauritius and permitted to run wild there;
while the indigenous insects, mollusca, and perhaps some of the birds of
St. Helena, disappeared as soon as the introduction of goats caused the
destruction of the whole flora of forest trees.
The Tsetse fly extirpates all horses, dogs, and cattle, from certain
districts of South Africa, and a representative species in Paraguay is
equally fatal to new-born cattle and horses.
Mr. Darwin[40] shows that the struggle is more severe between species of
the same genus, when they come into competition with each other, than
between species of distinct genera. Thus one species of swallow has
recently expelled another from part of the United States; and the
missel-thrush has driven the song-thrush from part of Scotland. In
Australia the imported hive-bee is rapidly exterminating the small
stingless native bee, and similar cases might be found in any number.
Mr. Wallace, in quoting Mr. Darwin as to these facts, points the
conclusion that "any slight change, therefore, of physical geography or
of climate, which allows allied species hitherto inhabiting distinct areas
to come into contact, will often lead to the extermination of one of
them."
It is the province of the palæontologist to enumerate the many remarkable
forms which have passed away since man's first appearance upon the globe,
and to trace their fluctuations over both hemispheres as determined by the
advance and retreat of glacial conditions, and by the protean forms
assumed by past and existing continents under oscillations of elevation
and depression. Many interesting points, such as the dates of the
successive separation of Ireland and Great Britain from the main
continent, can be determined with accuracy from the record furnished by
the fossil remains of animals of those times; and many interesting
associations of animals with man at various dates, in our present island
home and in other countries, have been traced by the discovery of their
remains in connection with his, in bone deposits in caverns and elsewhere.
Conversely, most valuable deductions are drawn by the zoologist from the
review which he is enabled to take, through the connected labours of his
colleagues in all departments, of the distinct life regions now mapped out
upon the face of the globe. These, after the application of the necessary
corrections for various disturbing or controlling influences referred to
above, afford proof reaching far back into past periods, of successive
alterations in the disposition of continents and oceans, and of
connections long since obliterated between distant lands.
The palæontologist reasons from the past to the present, the zoologist
from the present to the past; and their mutual labours explain the
evolution of existing forms, and the causes of the disparity or connection
between those at present characterizing the different portions of the
surface of the globe.
The palæontologist, for example, traces the descent of the horse, which,
until its reintroduction by the Spaniards was unknown in the New World,
through a variety of intermediate forms, to the genus Orohippus occurring
in Eocene deposits in Utah and Wyoming. This animal was no larger than a
fox, and possessed four separated toes in front, and three behind.
Domestic cattle he refers to the Bos primigenius, and many existing
Carnivora to Tertiary forms such as the cave-bear, cave-lion, sabre-tiger,
and the like.
The zoologist groups the existing fauna into distinct provinces, and
demands, in explanation of the anomalies which these exhibit, the
reconstruction of large areas, of which only small outlying districts
remain at the present date, in many instances widely separated by oceans,
though once forming parts of the same continent; and so, for the simile
readily suggests itself, the workers in another branch of science,
Philology, argue from words and roots scattered like fossils through the
various dialects of very distant countries, a mutual descent from a common
Aryan language: the language of a race of which no historical record
exists, though in regard to its habits, customs, and distribution much may
be affirmed from the large collection of word specimens stored in
philological museums.
Thus Mr. Sclater, on zoological grounds, claims the late existence of a
continent which he calls Lemuria, extending from Madagascar to Ceylon and
Sumatra; and for similar reasons Mr. Wallace extends the Australia of
Tertiary periods to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and perhaps to
Fiji, and from its marsupial types infers a connection with the northern
continent during the Secondary period.
Again, the connection of Europe with North Africa during a late geological
period is inferred by many zoologists from the number of identical species
of mammalia inhabiting the opposite sides of the Mediterranean, and
palæontologists confirm this by the discovery of the remains of elephants
in cave-deposits in Malta, and of hippopotami in Gibraltar; while
hydrographers furnish the supplemental suggestive evidence that an
elevation of only fifteen hundred feet would be sufficient to establish
two broad connections between the two continents--so as to unite Italy
with Tripoli and Spain with Morocco, and to convert the Mediterranean Sea
into two great lakes, which appears, in fact, to have been its condition
during the Pliocene and Post Pliocene periods.
It was by means of these causeways that the large pachyderms entered
Britain, then united to the continent; and it was over them they retreated
when driven back by glacial conditions, their migration northward being
effectually prevented by the destruction of the connecting arms of land.
Some difference of opinion exists among naturalists as to the extent to
which zoological regions should be subdivided, and as to their respective
limitations.
But Mr. A. R. Wallace, who has most recently written on the subject, is of
opinion that the original division proposed by Mr. Sclater in 1857 is the
most tenable, and he therefore adopts it in the very exhaustive work upon
the geographical distribution of animals which he has recently issued. Mr.
Sclater's Six Regions are as follows:--
1.--_The Palæarctic Region_, including Europe, Temperate Asia, and
North Africa to the Atlas mountains.
2.--_The Ethiopian Region_, Africa south of the Atlas, Madagascar, and
the Mascarene islands, with Southern Arabia.
3.--_The Indian Region_, including India south of the Himalayas, to
South China, and to Borneo and Java.
4.--_The Australian Region_, including Celebes and Lombok, Eastward to
Australia and the Pacific islands.
5.--_The Nearctic Region_, including Greenland, and North America, to
Northern Mexico.
6.--_The Neotropical Region_, including South America, the Antilles,
and Southern Mexico.
This arrangement is based upon a detailed examination of the chief genera
and families of birds, and also very nearly represents the distribution of
mammals and of reptiles. Its regions are not, as in other subsequently
proposed and more artificial systems, controlled by climate; for they
range, in some instances, from the pole to the tropics. It probably
approaches more nearly than any other yet proposed to that desideratum, a
division of the earth into regions, founded on a collation of the groups
of forms indigenous to or typical of them, and upon a selection of those
peculiar to them; with a disregard of, or only admitting with caution, any
which, though common to and apparently establishing connection between two
or more regions, may have in fact but little value for the purpose of such
comparison; from the fact of its being possible to account for their
extended range by their capability of easy transport from one region to
another by common natural agencies.[41]
Such an arrangement should be consistent with the retrospective
information afforded by palæontology; and, taking an extended view of the
subject, be not merely a catalogue of the present, but also an index of
the past. It should afford an illustration of an existing phase of the
distribution of animal life, considered as the last of a long series of
similar phases which have successively resulted from changes in the
disposition of land and water, and from other controlling agencies,
throughout all time. A reconstruction of the areas respectively occupied
by the sea and the land at different geological periods will be possible,
or at least greatly facilitated, when a complete system of similar
groupings, illustrative of each successive period, has been compiled.
It is obvious that any great cosmical change, affecting to a wide extent
any of the regions, might determine a destruction of specific existence;
and this on a large scale, in comparison with the change which is always
progressing in a smaller degree in the different and isolated divisions.
The brief remarks which I have made on this subject are intended to
suggest, rather than to demonstrate--which could only be done by a lengthy
series of examples--the causes influencing specific existence and its in
many cases extreme frailty of tenure. And I shall now conclude by citing
from the works of Lyell and Wallace a short list of notable species, now
extinct, whose remains have been collected from late Tertiary, and Post
Tertiary deposits--that is to say, at a time subsequent to the appearance
of man. From other authors I have extracted an enumeration of species
which have become locally or entirely extinct within the historic period.
These instances will, I think, be sufficient to show that, as similar
destructive causes must have been in action during pre-historic times, it
is probable that, besides those remarkable animals of which remains have
been discovered, many others which then existed may have perished without
leaving any trace of their existence. There is, consequently, a
possibility that some at least of the so-called _myths_ respecting
extraordinary creatures, hitherto considered fabulous, may merely be
distorted accounts--_traditions_--of species as yet unrecognised by
Science, which have actually existed, and that not remotely, as man's
congener.
_Extinct Post Tertiary Mammalia._
THE MAMMOTH.--Among other remarkable forms whose remains have been
discovered in those later deposits, in which geologists are generally
agreed that remains of man or traces of his handicraft have also been
recognised, there is one which stands out prominently both for its
magnitude and extensive range in time and space. Although the animal
itself is now entirely extinct, delineations by the hand of Palæolithic
man have been preserved, and even frozen carcases, with the flesh
uncorrupted and fit for food, have been occasionally discovered.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--THE MAMMOTH. (_After Jukes._)]
This is the mammoth, the _Elephas primigenius_ of Blumenbach, a gigantic
elephant nearly a third taller than the largest modern species, and twice
its weight. Its body was protected from the severity of the semi-arctic
conditions under which it flourished by a dense covering of reddish wool,
and long black hair, and its head was armed or ornamented with tusks
exceeding twelve feet in length, and curiously curved into three parts of
a circle. Its ivory has long been, and still is, a valuable article of
commerce, more especially in North-eastern Asia, and in Eschscholtz Bay in
North America, near Behring's straits, where entire skeletons are
occasionally discovered, and where even the nature of its food has been
ascertained from the undigested contents of its stomach.
There is a well-known case recorded of a specimen found (1799), frozen and
encased in ice, at the mouth of the Lena. It was sixteen feet long, and
the flesh was so well preserved that the Yakuts used it as food for their
dogs. But similar instances occurred previously, for we find the
illustrious savant and Emperor Kang Hi [A.D. 1662 to 1723] penning the
following note[42] upon what could only have been this species:--
"The cold is extreme, and nearly continuous on the coasts of the northern
sea beyond Tai-Tong-Kiang. It is on this coast that the animal called Fen
Chou is found, the form of which resembles that of a rat, but which equals
an elephant in size. It lives in obscure caverns, and flies from the
light. There is obtained from it an ivory as white as that of the
elephant, but easier to work, and which will not split. Its flesh is very
cold and excellent for refreshing the blood. The ancient work Chin-y-king
speaks of this animal in these terms: 'There is in the depths of the north
a rat which weighs as much as a thousand pounds; its flesh is very good
for those who are heated.' The Tsée-Chou calls it Tai-Chou and speaks of
another species which is not so large. It says that this is as big as a
buffalo, buries itself like a mole, flies the light, and remains nearly
always under ground; it is said that it would die if it saw the light of
the sun or even that of the moon."
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--TOOTH OF THE MAMMOTH. (_After Figuier._)]
It seems probable that discoveries of mammoth tusks formed in part the
basis for the story which Pliny tells in reference to fossil ivory. He
says[43]:--"These animals [elephants] are well aware that the only spoil
that we are anxious to procure of them is the part which forms their
weapon of defence, by Juba called their horns, but by Herodotus, a much
older writer, as well as by general usage, and more appropriately, their
teeth. Hence it is that, when these tusks have fallen off, either from
accident or old age, they bury them in the earth."
Nordenskjöld[44] states that the savages with whom he came in contact
frequently offered to him very fine mammoth tusks, and tools made of
mammoth ivory. He computes that since the conquest of Siberia, useful
tusks from more than twenty thousand animals have been collected.
Mr. Boyd Dawkins,[45] in a very exhaustive memoir on this animal, quotes
an interesting notice of its fossil ivory having been brought for sale to
Khiva. He derives[46] this account from an Arabian traveller,
Abou-el-Cassim, who lived in the middle of the tenth century.
Figuier[47] says: "New Siberia and the Isle of Lachon are for the most
part only an agglomeration of sand, of ice, and of elephants' teeth. At
every tempest the sea casts ashore new quantities of mammoth's tusks, and
the inhabitants of New Siberia carry on a profitable commerce in this
fossil ivory. Every year during the summer innumerable fishermen's barks
direct their course to this isle of bones, and during winter immense
caravans take the same route, all the convoys drawn by dogs, returning
charged with the tusks of the mammoth, weighing each from one hundred and
fifty to two hundred pounds. The fossil ivory thus withdrawn from the
frozen north is imported into China and Europe."
In addition to its elimination by the thawing of the frozen grounds of the
north, remains of the mammoth are procured from bogs, alluvial deposits,
and from the destruction of submarine beds.[48] They are also found in
cave deposits, associated with the remains of other mammals, and with
flint implements. This creature appears to have been an object of the
chase with Palæolithic man.
Mr. Dawkins, reviewing all the discoveries, considers that its range, at
various periods, extended over the whole of Northern Europe, and as far
south as Spain; over Northern Asia, and North America down to the Isthmus
of Darien. Dr. Falconer believes it to have had an elastic constitution,
which enabled it to adapt itself to great change of climate.
Murchison, De Verneuil, and Keyserling believed that this species, as well
as the woolly rhinoceros, belonged to the Tertiary fauna of Northern Asia,
though not appearing until the Quaternary period in Europe.
Mr. Dawkins shows it to have been pre-glacial, glacial, and post-glacial
in Britain and in Europe, and, from its relation to the intermediate
species _Elephas armeniacus_, accepts it as the ancestor of the existing
Indian elephant. Its disappearance was rapid, but not in the opinion of
most geologists cataclysmic, as suggested by Mr. Howorth.
Another widely distributed species was the _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_--the
smooth-skinned rhinoceros--also called the woolly rhinoceros and the
Siberian rhinoceros, which had two horns, and, like the mammoth, was
covered with woolly hair. It attained a great size; a specimen, the
carcase of which was found by Pallas imbedded in frozen soil near Wilui,
in Siberia (1772), was eleven and a half feet in length. Its horns are
considered by some of the native tribes of northern Asia to have been the
talons of gigantic birds; and Ermann and Middendorf suppose that their
discovery may have originated the accounts by Herodotus of the
gold-bearing griffons and the arimaspi.
Its food, ascertained by Von Brandt, and others, from portions remaining
in the hollows of its teeth, consisted of leaves and needles of trees
still existing in Siberia. The range of this species northwards was as
extensive as that of the mammoth, but its remains have not yet been
discovered south of the Alps and Pyrenees.
The investigation,[49] made by M. E. Lartet in 1860, of the contents of
the Grotto of Aurignac, in the department of the Haute Garonne, from which
numerous human skeletons had been previously removed in 1852, shows that
this animal was included among the species used as ordinary articles of
food, or as exceptional items at the funeral feasts of the Palæolithic
troglodytes. In the layers of charcoal and ashes immediately outside the
entrance to the grotto, and surrounding what is supposed to have been the
hearth, the bones of a young _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_ were found, which
had been split open for the extraction of the marrow. Numerous other
species had been dealt with in the same manner; and all these having
received this treatment, and showing marks of the action of fire, had
evidently been carried to the cave for banqueting purposes. The remains of
Herbivora associated with those of this rhinoceros, consisted of bones of
the mammoth, the horse (_Equus caballus_), stag (_Cervus elaphus_), elk
(_Megaceros hibernicus_), roebuck (_C. capreolus_), reindeer (_C.
tarandus_), auroch (_Bison europæus_). Among carnivora were found remains
of _Ursus spelæus_ (cave-bear), _Ursus arctos_? (brown bear), _Meles
taxus_ (badger), _Putorius vulgaris_ (polecat), _Hyæna spelæa_
(cave-hyæna), _Felis spelæa_ (cave-lion), _Felis catus ferus_ (wild cat),
_Canis lupus_ (wolf), _Canis vulpis_ (fox). Within the grotto were also
found remains of _Felis spelæa_ (cave-lion) and _Sus scrofa_ (pig). The
cave-bear, the fox, and indeed most of these, probably also formed
articles of diet, but the hyæna seems to have been a post attendant at the
feast, and to have rooted out and gnawed off the spongy parts of the
thrown-away bones after the departure of the company.
In the Pleistocene deposits at Würzburg, in Franconia, a human
finger-bone occurs with bones of this species, and also of other large
mammalia, such as the mammoth, cave-bear, and the like.
And flint implements, and pointed javelin-heads made of reindeer horn, are
found associated with it in the vicinity of the old hearths established by
Palæolithic man in the cave called the Trou du Sureau, on the river
Malignée in Belgium.
In the cavern of Goyet, also in Belgium, there are five bone layers,
alternating with six beds of alluvial deposits, showing that the cave had
been inhabited by different species at various periods. The lion was
succeeded by the cave-bear, and this by hyænas; then Palæolithic man
became a tenant and has left his bones there, together with flint
implements and remains of numerous species, including those already
enumerated as his contemporaries.
THE SABRE-TOOTHED TIGER OR LION.--This species, _Machairodus[50]
latifrons_ of Owen, was remarkable for having long sabre-shaped canines.
It belongs to an extinct genus, of which four other species are known,
characterised by the possession of serrated teeth. The genus is known to
be represented in the Auvergne beds between the Eocene and Miocene, in the
Miocene of Greece and India, in the Pliocene of South America and Europe,
and in the Pleistocene. Mr. Dawkins believes that this species survived to
post-glacial times. It is one of the numerous animals whose remains have
been found with traces of man and flint implements in cave deposits at
Kent's Hole, near Torquay, and elsewhere.
THE CAVE-BEAR, _Ursus spelæus_, of Rosenmüller.--The appearance of this
species has been preserved to us in the drawing by Palæolithic man found
in the cave of Massat (Arieze).
It occurs in the Cromer Forest Bed, a deposit referred by Mr. Boyd Dawkins
to the early part of the Glacial period, and generally regarded as
transitional between the Pliocene and Quaternary. It is also found in the
caves of Perigaud, which are considered to belong to the reindeer era of
M. Lartet or the opening part of the Recent period, and numerous
discoveries of its remains at dates intermediate to these have been made
in Britain and in Europe. Carl Vogt, indeed, is of opinion that this
species is the progenitor of our living brown bear, _Ursus arctos_, and
Mr. Boyd Dawkins also says that those "who have compared the French,
German, and British specimens, gradually realize the fact that the fossil
remains of the bears form a graduated series, in which all the variations
that at first sight appear specific vanish away."
It has been identified by Mr. Busk among the associated mammalian bones of
the Brixham cave. Its remains are very abundant in the bone deposit of the
Trou de Sureau in Belgium, and in the cavern of Goyet, which it tenanted
alternately with the lion and hyæna, and, like them, appears to have
preyed on man and the larger mammalia.
Mr. Prestwich has obtained it in low-level deposits of river gravels in
the valleys of the north of France and south of England, and it has been
obtained from the Löss, a loamy, usually unstratified deposit, which is
extensively distributed over central Europe, in the valleys of the Rhine,
Rhone, Danube, and other great rivers. This deposit is considered by Mr.
Prestwich to be equivalent to other high-level gravels of the Pleistocene
period.
THE MASTODON.--The generic title Mastodon has been applied to a number of
species allied to the elephants, but distinguished from them by a peculiar
structure of the molar teeth; these are rectangular, and in their upper
surfaces exhibit a number of great conical tuberosities with rounded
points disposed in pairs, to the number of four or five, according to the
species; whereas in the elephants they are broad and uniform, and
regularly marked with furrows of large curvature. The mastodons, in
addition to large tusks in the premaxillæ, like those of the elephant, had
also in most instances, a pair of shorter ones in the mandible.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--MASTODON'S TOOTH (WORN). (_After Figuier._)]
Cuvier established the name Mastodon,[51] or teat-like toothed animals,
for the gigantic species from America which Buffon had already described
under the name of the animal or elephant of the Ohio.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--MASTODON'S TOOTH. (_After Figuier._)]
The form first appears in the Upper Miocene of Europe, five species being
known, two of them from Pikermi, near Athens, and one, _M. angustidens_,
from the Miocene beds of Malta. Mastodon remains have also been found in
the beds of the Sivalik hills, and four species of mastodon in all are
known to have ranged over India during those periods.
In Pliocene deposits we have abundant remains of _M. arvernensis_, and _M.
longirostris_ from the Val d'Arno in Italy, and the _M. Borsoni_ from
central France.
The _M. arvernensis_ may be considered as a characteristic Pliocene
species in Italy, France, and Europe generally. In Britain it occurs in
the Norwich Crag and the Red Crag of Suffolk.
Species of mastodon occur in the Pliocene of La Plata, and of the
temperate regions of South America; on the Pampas, and in the Andes of
Chili.
The _Mastodon mirificus_ of Leidy is the earliest known species in
America; this occurs in Pliocene deposits on the Niobrara and the Loup
fork, west of the Mississippi.
The remains of the _Mastodon americanus_ of Cuvier occur abundantly in the
Post Pliocene deposits throughout the United States, but more especially
in the northern half; they are also found in Canada and Nova Scotia.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--THE MASTODON.]
Perfect skeletons are occasionally procured from marshes, where the
animals had become mired. In life this species appears to have measured
from twelve to thirteen feet in height and twenty-four to twenty-five
feet in length, including seven feet for the tusks. Undigested food found
with its remains show that it lived partly on spruce and fir-trees. A
distinct species characterised the Quaternary deposits of South America.
THE IRISH ELK.--The species (_Megaceros hibernicus_), commonly but
erroneously called the Irish Elk, was, as professor Owen[52] has pointed
out, a true deer, whose place is between the fallow and reindeer.
Though now extinct, it survived the Palæolithic period, and may possibly
have existed down to historic times. Mr. Gosse adduces some very strong
testimony on this point, and is of opinion that its extinction cannot have
taken place more than a thousand years ago.
It had a flattened and expanded form of antler, with peculiarities unknown
among existing deer, and was, in comparison with these, of gigantic size;
the height to the summit of the antlers being from ten to eleven feet in
the largest individuals, and the span of the antlers, in one case, over
twelve feet.
Although its remains have been found most abundantly in Ireland, it was
widely distributed over Britain and middle Europe. It has been found in
peat swamps, lacustrine marls, bone caverns, fen deposits, and the Cornish
gravels. It has been obtained from the cavern of Goyet in Belgium, and
from the burial-place at Aurignac, in the department of the Haute Garonne.
Its known range in time is from the early part of the Glacial period down
to, possibly, historic periods.
The CAVE-HYÆNA.--_Hyæna spelæa_ of Goldfuss--is, like the cave-bear,
characteristic of Europe during the Palæolithic age. It has been found in
numerous caves in Britain, such as Kent's Hole, the Brixham cave, and one
near Wells in Somersetshire, explored by Dawkins in 1859; in all of these
the remains are associated with those of man, or with his implements. This
species is closely related to the _H. crocuta_ of Zimm, at present
existing in South Africa, and is by some geologists considered identical
with it. It is, however, larger.
It appears to have to some extent replaced the cave-bear in Britain; we
are also, doubtless, greatly indebted to it for some of the extensive
collections of bones in caverns, resulting from the carcases which it had
dragged thither, and imperfectly destroyed.
In a cave at Kirkdale, in the vale of Pickering, the bones of about three
hundred individuals--hyænas--were found mingled with the remains of the
mammoth, bear, rhinoceros, deer, cave-lion, brown bear, horse, hare, and
other species. Mr. Dawkins,[53] in describing it, says: "The pack of
hyænas fell upon reindeer in the winter, and at other times on horses and
bisons, and were able to master the hippopotamus, the lion, the
slender-nosed rhinoceros, or the straight-tusked elephant, and to carry
their bones to their den, where they were found by Dr. Buckland. The
hyænas also inhabiting the 'Dukeries,' dragged back to their dens
fragments of lion."
Notable Quaternary forms (now extinct) on the American continent are the
gigantic sloth-like animals _Megatherium_, which reached eighteen feet in
length, and _Mylodon_, one species of which (_M. robustus_) was eleven
feet in length; Armadillos, such as _Glyptodon_, with a total length of
nine feet; _Chlamydotherium_, as big as a rhinoceros; and _Pachytherium_,
equalling an ox.
In Australia we find marsupial forms as at the present day; but they were
gigantic in comparison with the latter. As for example, the _Diprotodon_,
which equalled in size a hippopotamus, and the _Nototherium_, as large as
a bullock.
I may mention a few other species, the remains of which are associated
with some of those commented on in the last few pages; but which, as they
have undoubtedly continued in existence down to the present period, are
external to the present portion of my argument, and are either treated of
elsewhere, or need only to be referred to in a few words.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--MYLODON ROBUSTUS. (_After Figuier._)]
It must also be borne in mind that the linking together of species by the
discovery of intermediate graduated forms, is daily proceeding; so that
some even of those spoken of in greater detail may shortly be generally
recognised, as at present they are held by a few, to be identical with
existing forms.
The HIPPOPOTAMUS.--The _Hippopotamus major_, now considered identical with
the larger of the two African species--_H. amphibia_, has been found
associated with _E. antiquus_ and _R. hemitæchus_ of Falc in Durdham Down
and Kirkdale caves, and in those at Kent's Hole and Ravenscliff. It has
also been found in river gravels at Grays, Ilford, and elsewhere, in the
lower part of the river-border deposits of Amiens with flint implements,
and in Quaternary deposits on the continent of Europe.
THE CAVE-LION--_Felis spelæa_--is now considered to be merely a variety of
the African lion (_Felis leo_), although of larger size; it had a very
wide range over Britain and Europe during the Post Pliocene period, as
also did the leopard (_F. pardus_) and probably the lynx (_Lyncus_).
The REINDEER or CARIBOO--_Cervus tarandus_--which still exists, both
domesticated and wild, in northern Europe and America, is adapted for
northern latitudes. It formerly extended over Europe, and in the British
Isles probably survived in the north of Scotland until the twelfth
century.
Its remains have been found in Pleistocene deposits in numerous
localities, but most abundantly in those which M. Lartet has assigned to
the period which he calls the Reindeer age.
Other Pleistocene mammals still existing, but whose range is much
restricted, are the musk ox (_Ovibos moschatus_), familiar to us, from the
accounts of arctic expeditions, as occurring in the circumpolar regions of
North America; the glutton (_Gulo luscus_), the auroch (_Bison europæus_),
the wild horse (_E. fossilis_), the arctic fox (_Canis lagopus_), the
bison (_Bison priscus_), the elk or moose (_Alces malchis_), found in
Norway and North America, the lemming, the lagomys or tail-less hare, &c.
As examples of total extinction in late years, we may mention the dodo,
the solitaire, and species allied to them, in the islands of Mauritius,
Bourbon, and Reunion; the moa in New Zealand; the _Æpiornis_ in
Madagascar; the great auk, _Alca impennis_, in northern seas, and the
_Rhytina Stelleri_, common once in the latitude of Behring's Straits, and
described by Steller in 1742.
[Illustration: FIG. 15.--SKELETON OF RHYTINA STELLERI. (_From "The Voyage
of the 'Vega.'"_)]
The Dodo, a native of the island of Mauritius, was about 50 lbs. in
weight, and covered with loose downy plumage, it was unable to rise from
the ground in consequence of the imperfect development of its wings; it
was minutely described by Sir Thomas Herbert in 1634, and specimens of the
living bird and of its skin were brought to Europe. Its unwieldiness led
to its speedy destruction by the early voyagers.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--RHYTINA STELLERI. (_From "The Voyage of the
'Vega.'"_)]
The Solitaire was confined to the island of Mascaregue or Bourbon. It is
fully described by Francis Leguat, who, having fled from France into
Holland in 1689, to escape religious persecution consequent on the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, engaged under the Marquis de Quesne in
an expedition for the purpose of settlement on that island. This bird also
speedily became extinct.
The Moa (_Dinornis giganteus_, Owen) reached from twelve to fourteen feet
in height, and survived for a long period after the migration of the
Maories to New Zealand. Bones of it have been found along with charred
wood, showing that it had been killed and eaten by the natives; and its
memory is preserved in many of their traditions, which also record the
existence of a much larger bird, a species of eagle or hawk, which used to
prey upon it.[54]
Rapidly approaching total extinction are the several species of _Apteryx_
in the same country--remarkable birds with merely rudimentary wings: as
also the _Notornis_, a large Rail--at first, and for a long time, only
known in the fossil state, but of which a living specimen was secured by
Mr. Walter Mantell in 1849: and the _Kapapo_ (_Strigops habroptilus_) of
G. R. Gray--a strange owl-faced nocturnal ground-parrot.
The _Æpyornis maximus_ was almost as large as the Moa; of this numerous
fossil bones and a few eggs have been discovered, but there are not, I
believe, any traditions extant among the natives of Madagascar of its
having survived to a late period.
The Great Auk (_Alca impennis_) is now believed to be extinct. It formerly
occurred in the British Isles, but more abundantly in high latitudes; and
its remains occur in great numbers on the shores of Iceland, Greenland,
and Denmark, as also of Labrador and Newfoundland.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--RHYTINA STELLERI. (_After J. Fr. Brandt._)]
Steller's Sea-cow (_Rhytina Stelleri_ of Cuvier) was a mammal allied to
the Manatees and Dugongs; it was discovered by Behring in 1768 on a small
island lying off the Kamtchatkan coast. It measured as much as from
twenty-eight to thirty-five feet in length, and was soon nearly
exterminated by Behring's party and other voyagers who visited the island.
The last one of which there is any record was killed in 1854.[55]
To the above may be added the _Didunculus_, a species of ground-pigeon
peculiar to the Samoa Islands, and the _Nestor productus_, a parrot of
Norfolk Island. An extended list might be prepared, from fossil evidences,
of other species which were at one time associated with those I have
enumerated.
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--RHYTINA STELLERI. (_From "The Voyage of the
'Vega.'"_)]
In conclusion, I may point out that that excellent naturalist Pliny[56]
records the disappearance, in his days, of certain species formerly known.
He mentions the Incendiary, the Clivia, and the Subis (species of birds),
and states that there were many other birds mentioned in the Etruscan
ritual, which were no longer to be found in his time. He also says that
there had been a bird in Sardinia resembling the crane, and called the
Gromphæna, which was no longer known even by the people of the country.
_Local Extinction._
Of local extinction we may note in our own island the cases of the beaver,
the bear, the wolf, the wild cattle, the elk, the wild boar, the bustard,
and the capercailzie; of these the beaver survived in Wales and Scotland
until the time of Giraldus Cambrensis in 1188, and Pennant notes
indications of its former existence in the names of several streams and
lakes in Wales. It was not uncommon throughout the greater part of Europe
down to the Middle Ages.
The bear, still common in Norway and the Pyrenees, is alluded to, as Mr.
Gosse points out, in the Welsh Triads,[57] which are supposed to have been
compiled in the seventh century. They say that "the Kymri, a Celtic tribe,
first inhabited Britain; before them were no men here, but only bears,
wolves, beavers, and oxen with high prominences." Mr. Gosse adds, "The
Roman poets knew of its existence here. Martial speaks of the robber
Laureolis being exposed on the cross to the fangs of the Caledonian bear;
and Claudian alludes to British bears. The Emperor Claudius, on his return
to Rome after the conquest of this island, exhibited, as trophies, combats
of British bears in the Arena. In the Penitential of Archbishop Egbert,
said to have been compiled about A.D. 750, bears are mentioned as
inhabiting the English forests, and the city of Norwich is said to have
been required to furnish a bear annually to Edward the Confessor, together
with six dogs, no doubt for baiting him."
The wolf, though greatly reduced in numbers during the Heptarchy, when
Edgar laid an annual tribute of three hundred wolf-skins upon the Welsh,
still occurred in formidable numbers in England in 1281, and not
unfrequently until the reign of Henry VII. The last wolf was killed in
Scotland in the year 1743, and in Ireland in 1770.[58]
The wild cattle are now only represented by the small herds in Chartley
Castle, Chillingham, and Cadgow parks; the spare survivors probably of the
species referred to by Herodotus when he speaks of "large ferocious and
fleet white bulls" which abounded in the country south of Thrace, and
continued in Poland, Lithuania, and Muscovy until the fifteenth century,
or perhaps of the Urus described by Cæsar as little inferior to the
elephant in size, and inhabiting the Hercynian forest, and believed to be
identical with the _Bos primigenius_ found in a fossil state in Britain.
The wild boar was once abundant in Scotland and England. The family of
Baird derives its heraldic crest from a grant of David I. of Scotland, in
recognition of his being saved from an infuriated boar which had turned on
him. In England only nobles and gentry were allowed to hunt it, and the
slaughter of one by an unauthorized person within the demesnes of William
the Conqueror was punished by the loss of both eyes.[59]
The bustard, once abundant, is now extinct in Britain, so far as the
indigenous race is concerned. Occasionally a chance visitant from the
continent is seen; but there, also, its numbers have been greatly
diminished. It was common in Buffon's time in the plains of Poitou and
Champagne, though now extremely rare, and is still common in Eastern Asia.
The capercailzie, or cock of the woods, after complete extinction, has
been reintroduced from Norway, and, under protection, is moderately
abundant in parts of Scotland.
In America, the process of extermination marches with the settlement of
the various states. W. J. J. Allen records the absolute disappearance of
the walrus from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and of the moose, the elk, and
the Virginian deer, from many of the states in which they formerly
abounded. This also is true, to some extent, of the bear, the beaver, the
grey wolf, the panther, and the lynx.
The buffalo (_Bos americanus_) is being destroyed at the rate of two
hundred and fifty thousand annually, and it is estimated that the number
slain by hunters for their hides during the last forty years amounts to
four millions. It has disappeared in the eastern part of the continent
from many extensive tracts which it formerly inhabited.
Among the ocean whales, both the right and the sperm have only been
preserved from extinction by the fortunate discovery of petroleum, which
has reduced the value of their oil, and thus lessened considerably the
number of vessels equipped for the whale fishery.
In South Africa, elephants and all other large game are being steadily
exterminated within the several colonies.
In Australia, we find that the seals which thronged the islands of Bass's
Straits in countless thousands, at the period when Bass made his
explorations there, have utterly disappeared. The bulk of them were
destroyed by seal-hunters from Sydney within a few years after his
discovery. The lamentable records of the _Sydney Gazette_ of that period
show this, for they detail the return to port, after a short cruise, of
schooners laden with from twelve to sixteen thousand skins each. The
result of this has been that for many years past the number of seals has
been limited to a few individuals, to be found on one or two isolated
rocks off Clarke's Island, and on Hogan's group.
The great sea-elephant, which, in Peron's time, still migrated for
breeding purposes from antarctic regions to the shores of King's Island,
where it is described by him as lining the long sandy beaches by hundreds,
has been almost unseen there since the date of his visit, and its memory
is only preserved in the names of Sea-Elephant Bay, Elephant Rock, &c.
which are still inscribed on our charts.
The introduction of the Dingo, by the Australian blacks in their southward
migration, is supposed to have caused the extinction of the Thylacinus
(_T. cynocephalus_), or striped Australian wolf, on the main land of
Australia, where it was once abundant; it is now only to be found in the
remote portions of the island of Tasmania. This destruction of one species
by another is paralleled in our own country by the approaching extinction
of the indigenous and now very rare black rat, which has been almost
entirely displaced by the fierce grey rat from Norway.
We learn from incidental passages in the _Bamboo Books_[60] that the
rhinoceros, which is now unknown in China, formerly extended throughout
that country. We read of King Ch'aou, named Hĕa (B.C. 980), that "in his
sixteenth year [of reign] the king attacked Ts'oo, and in crossing the
river Han met with a large rhinoceros." And, again, of King E, named Sëĕ
(B.C. 860), that "in his sixth year, when hunting in the forest of Shay,
he captured a rhinoceros and carried it home." There is also mention
made--though this is less conclusive--that in the time of King Yiu, named
Yeu (B.C. 313), the King of Yueh sent Kung-sze Yu with a present of three
hundred boats, five million arrows, together with rhinoceros' horns and
elephants' teeth.
Elephants are now unknown in China except in a domesticated state, but
they probably disputed its thick forest and jungly plains with the
Miaotsz, Lolos, and other tribes which held the country before its present
occupants. This may be inferred from the incidental references to them in
the _Shan Hai King_, a work reputed to be of great antiquity, of which
more mention will be made hereafter, and from evidence contained in other
ancient Chinese works which has been summarized by Mr. Kingsmill[61] as
follows:--
"The rhinoceros and elephant certainly lived in Honan B.C. 600. The
_Tso-chuen_, commenting on the C‘hun T‘siu of the second year of the Duke
Siuen (B.C. 605), describes the former as being in sufficient abundance to
supply skins for armour. The want, according to the popular saying, was
not of rhinoceroses to supply skins, but of courage to animate the
wearers. From the same authority (Duke Hi XIII., B.C. 636) we learn that
while T‘soo (Hukwang) produced ivory and rhinoceros' skins in abundance,
Tsin, lying north of the Yellow River, on the most elevated part of the
Loess, was dependent on the other for its supplies of those commodities.
The _Tribute of Yu_ tells the same tale. Yang-chow and King (Kiangpeh and
Hukwang), we are told, sent tribute of ivory and rhinoceros' hide, while
Liang (Shensi) sent the skins of foxes and bears. Going back to mythical
times, we find Mencius (III. ii. 9) telling how Chow Kung expelled from Lu
(Shantung) the elephants and rhinoceroses, the tigers and leopards."
Mr. Kingsmill even suggests that the species referred to were the mammoth
and the Siberian rhinoceros (_R. tichorhinus_).
M. Chabas[62] publishes an Egyptian inscription showing that the elephant
existed in a feral state in the Euphrates Valley in the time of Thothmes
III. (16th century B.C.). The inscription records a great hunting of
elephants in the neighbourhood of Nineveh.
Tigers still abound in Manchuria and Corea, their skins forming a regular
article of commerce in Vladivostock, Newchwang, and Seoul. They are said
to attain larger dimensions in these northern latitudes than their
southern congener, the better-known Bengal tiger. They are generally
extinct in China Proper; but Père David states that he has seen them in
the neighbourhood of Pekin, in Mongolia, and at Moupin, and they are
reported to have been seen near Amoy. Within the last few years[63] a
large specimen was killed by Chinese soldiery within a few miles of the
city of Ningpo; and it is probable that at no distant date they ranged
over the whole country from Hindostan to Eastern Siberia, as they are
incidentally referred to in various Chinese works--the _Urh Yah_ specially
recording the capture of a white tiger in the time of the Emperor Süen of
the Han dynasty, and of a black one, in the fourth year of the reign of
Yung Kia, in a netted surround in Kien Ping Fu in the district of Tsz
Kwei.
The tailed deer or Mi-lu (_Cervus Davidianus_ of Milne Edwardes), which
Chinese literature[64] indicates as having once been of common occurrence
throughout China, is now only to be found in the Imperial hunting grounds
south of Peking, where it is restricted to an enclosure of fifty miles in
circumference. It is believed to exist no longer in a wild state, as no
trace of it has been found in any of the recent explorations of Asia. The
_Ch‘un ts‘iu_ (B.C. 676) states that this species appeared in the winter
of that year, in such numbers that it was chronicled in the records of Lu
(Shantung), and that in the following autumn it was followed by an inroad
of "Yih," which Mr. Kingsmill believes to be the wolf.
There also appears reason to suppose that the ostrich had a much more
extended range than at present; for we find references in the
_Shi-Ki_,[65] or book of history of Szema Tsien, to "large birds with eggs
as big as water-jars" as inhabiting T‘iaou-chi, identified by Mr.
Kingsmill as Sarangia or Drangia; and, in speaking of Parthia, it says,
"On the return of the mission he sent envoys with it that they might see
the extent and power of China. He sent with them, as presents to the
Emperor, eggs of the great bird of the country, and a curiously deformed
man from Samarkand."
The gigantic Chelonians which once abounded in India and the Indian seas
are now entirely extinct; but we have had little difficulty in believing
the accounts of their actual and late existence contained in the works of
Pliny and Ælian since the discovery of the Colossochelys, described by Dr.
Falconer, in the Upper Miocene deposits of the Siwalik Hills in
North-Western India. The shell of _Colossochelys Atlas_ (Falconer and
Cautley) measured twelve feet, and the whole animal nearly twenty.
Pliny,[66] who published his work on Natural History about A.D. 77, states
that the turtles of the Indian Sea are of such vast size that a single
shell is sufficient to roof a habitable cottage, and that among the
islands of the Red Sea the navigation is mostly carried on in boats formed
from this shell.
Ælian,[67] about the middle of the third century of our era, is more
specific in his statement, and says that the Indian river-tortoise is very
large, and in size not less than a boat of fair magnitude; also, in
speaking of the Great Sea, in which is Taprobana (Ceylon), he says: "There
are very large tortoises generated in this sea, the shell of which is
large enough to make an entire roof; for a single one reaches the length
of fifteen cubits, so that not a few people are able to live beneath it,
and certainly secure themselves from the vehement rays of the sun; they
make a broad shade, and so resist rain that they are preferable for this
purpose to tiles, nor does the rain beating against them sound otherwise
than if it were falling on tiles. Nor, indeed, do those who inhabit them
have any necessity for repairing them, as in the case of broken tiles, for
the whole roof is made out of a solid shell so that it has the appearance
of a cavernous or undermined rock, and of a natural roof."
El Edrisi, in his great geographical work,[68] completed A.D. 1154, speaks
of them as existing down to his day, but as his book is admitted to be a
compilation from all preceding geographical works, he may have been simply
quoting, without special acknowledgment, the statements given above. He
says, speaking of the Sea of Herkend (the Indian Ocean west of Ceylon),
"It contains turtles twenty cubits long, containing within them as many as
one thousand eggs." Large tortoises formerly inhabited the Mascarene
islands, but have been destroyed on all of them, with the exception of the
small uninhabited Aldabra islands, north of the Seychelle group; and those
formerly abundant on the Galapagos islands are now represented by only a
few survivors, and the species rapidly approaches extinction.
I shall close this chapter with a reference to a creature which, if it may
not be entitled to be called "the dragon," may at least be considered as
first cousin to it. This is a lacertilian of large size, at least twenty
feet in length, panoplied with the most horrifying armour, which roamed
over the Australian continent during Pleistocene times, and probably until
the introduction of the aborigines.
Its remains have been described by Professor Owen in several
communications to the Royal Society,[69] under the name of _Megalania
prisca_. They were procured by Mr. G. F. Bennett from the drift-beds of
King's Creek, a tributary of the Condamine River in Australia. It was
associated with correspondingly large marsupial mammals, now also extinct.
From the portions transmitted to him Professor Owen determined that it
presented in some respects a magnified resemblance of the miniature
existing lizard, _Moloch horridus_, found in Western Australia,[70] of
which Dr. Gray remarks, "The external appearance of this lizard is the
most ferocious of any that I know." In Megalania the head was rendered
horrible and menacing by horns projecting from its sides, and from the tip
of the nose, which would be "as available against the attacks of
Thylacoleo as the buffalo's horns are against those of the South African
lion." The tail consisted of a series of annular segments armed with horny
spikes, represented by the less perfectly developed ones in the existing
species _Uromastix princeps_ from Zanzibar, or in the above-mentioned
moloch. In regard to these the Professor says, "That the horny sheaths of
the above-described supports or cores arming the end of the tail may have
been applied to deliver blows upon an assailant, seems not improbable, and
this part of the organization of the great extinct Australian dragon may
be regarded, with the cranial horn, as parts of both an offensive and
defensive apparatus."
The gavial of the Ganges is reported to be a fish-eater only, and is
considered harmless to man. The Indian museums, however, have large
specimens, which are said to have been captured after they had destroyed
several human beings; and so we may imagine that this structurally
herbivorous lizard (the Megalania having a horny edentate upper jaw) may
have occasionally varied his diet, and have proved an importunate
neighbour to aboriginal encampments in which toothsome children abounded,
and that it may, in fact, have been one of the sources from which the myth
of the Bunyip, of which I shall speak hereafter, has been derived.
CHAPTER III.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
I do not propose to bestow any large amount of space upon the enumeration
of the palæontological evidence of the antiquity of man. The works of the
various eminent authors who have devoted themselves to the special
consideration of this subject exhaust all that can be said upon it with
our present data, and to these I must refer the reader who is desirous of
acquainting himself critically with its details, confining myself to a few
general statements based on these labours.
In the early days of geological science when observers were few, great
groups of strata were arranged under an artificial classification, which,
while it has lost to a certain extent the specific value which it then
assumed to possess, is still retained for purposes of convenient
reference. Masters of the science acquired, so to say, a possessive
interest in certain regions of it, and the names of Sedgwick, Murchison,
Jukes, Phillips, Lyell, and others became, and will remain, inseparably
associated with the history of those great divisions of the materials of
the earth's crust, which, under the names of the Cambrian, Silurian,
Devonian, Carboniferous, and Tertiary formations, have become familiar to
us.
In those days, when observations were limited to a comparatively small
area, the lines separating most of these formations were supposed to be
hard and definite; forms of life which characterized one, were presumed to
have become entirely extinct before the inauguration of those which
succeeded them, and breaks in the stratigraphical succession appeared to
justify the opinion, held by a large and influential section, that great
cataclysms or catastrophes had marked the time when one age or formation
terminated and another commenced to succeed it.
By degrees, and with the increase of observers, both in England and in
every portion of the world, modifications of these views obtained; passage
beds were discovered, connecting by insensible gradations formations which
had hitherto been supposed to present the most abrupt separations;
transitional forms of life connecting them were unearthed; and an opinion
was advanced, and steadily confirmed, which at the present day it is
probable no one would be found to dispute, that not all in one place or
country, but discoverable in some part or other of the world, a perfect
sequence exists, from the very earliest formations of which we have any
cognizance, up to the alluvial and marine deposits in process of formation
at the present day.[71]
Correlatively it was deduced that the same phenomena of nature have been
in action since the earliest period when organic existence can be
affirmed. The gradual degradation of pre-existing continents by normal
destructive agencies, the upheaval and subsidence of large areas, the
effusion from volcanic vents, into the air or sea, of ashes and lavas, the
action of frost and ice, of heat, rain, and sunshine--all these have acted
in the past as they are still acting before our eyes.
In earlier days, arguing from limited data, a progressive creation was
claimed which confined the appearance of the higher form of vertebrate
life to a successive and widely-stepped gradation.
Hugh Miller, and other able thinkers, noted with satisfaction the
appearance, first of fish, then of reptiles, next of birds and mammals,
and finally, as the crowning work of all, both geologically and actually,
quite recently of man.
This wonderful confirmation of the Biblical history of creation appealed
so gratefully to many, that it caused for a time a disposition to cramp
discovery, and even to warp the facts of science, in order to make them
harmonize with the statements of Revelation. The alleged proofs of the
existence of pre-historic man were for a long time jealously disputed, and
it was only by slow degrees that they were admitted, that the tenets of
the Darwinian school gained ground, and that the full meaning was
appreciated of such anomalies as the existence at the present day of
Ganoid fishes both in America and Europe, of true Palæozoic type, or of
Oolitic forms on the Australian continent and in the adjacent seas.
But step by step marvellous palæontological discoveries were made, and the
pillars which mark the advent of each great form of life have had to be
set back, until now no one would, I think, be entirely safe in affirming
that even in the Cambrian, the oldest of all fossiliferous formations,
vestiges of mammals, that is to say, of the highest forms of life, may
not at a future day be found, or that the records contained between the
Cambrian and the present day, may not in fact be but a few pages as
compared with the whole volume of the world's history.[72]
It is with the later of these records that we have to deal, in which
discoveries have been made sufficiently progressive to justify the
expectation that they have by no means reached their limit, and
sufficiently ample in themselves to open the widest fields for philosophic
speculation and deduction.
Before stating these, it may be premised that estimates have been
attempted by various geologists of the collective age of the different
groups of formations.[73] These are based on reasonings which for the most
part it is unnecessary to give in detail, in so much as these can scarcely
yet be considered to have passed the bounds of speculation, and very
different results can be arrived at by theorists according to the relative
importance which they attach to the data employed in the calculation.
Thus Mr. T. Mellard Reade, in a paper communicated to the Royal Society in
1878, concludes that the formation of the sedimentary strata must have
occupied at least six hundred million years: which he divides in round
numbers as follows:--
Millions of Years.
Laurentian, Cambrian, and Silurian 200
Old Red, Carboniferous, Permian, and New Red 200
Jurassic, Wealden, Cretaceous, Eocene, Miocene,
Pliocene, and Post Pliocene 200
---
600
He estimates the average thickness of the sedimentary crust of the earth
to be at least one mile, and from a computation of the proportion of
carbonate and sulphate of lime to materials held in suspension in various
river-waters from a variety of formations, infers that one-tenth of this
crust is calcareous.
He estimates the annual flow of water in all the great river-basins, the
proportion of rain-water running off the granitic and trappean rocks, the
percentage of lime in solution which they carry down, and arrives at the
conclusion that the minimum time requisite for the elimination of the
calcareous matter contained in the sedimentary crust of the earth, is at
least six hundred millions of years.
A writer in the _Gentleman's Magazine_[74] (Professor Huxley?), whose
article I am only able to quote at second-hand, makes an estimate which,
though much lower than the above, is still of enormous magnitude, as
follows:--
Feet. Years.
Laurentian 30,000 30,000,000
Cambrian 25,000 25,000,000
Silurian 6,000 6,000,000
Old Red and Devonian 10,000 10,000,000
Carboniferous 12,000 12,000,000
Secondary 10,000 10,000,000
Tertiary and Post Tertiary 1,000 1,000,000
Gaps and unrepresented strata 6,000 6,000,000
-----------
Total 100,000,000
Mr. Darwin, arguing upon Sir W. Thompson's estimate of a minimum of
ninety-eight and maximum of two hundred millions of years since the
consolidation of the crust, and on Mr. Croll's estimate of sixty millions,
as the time elapsed since the Cambrian period, considers that the latter
is quite insufficient to permit of the many and great mutations of life
which have certainly occurred since then. He judges from the small amount
of organic change since the commencement of the glacial epoch, and adds
that the previous one hundred and forty million years can hardly be
considered as sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life
which certainly existed towards the close of the Cambrian period.
On the other hand, Mr. Croll considers that it is utterly impossible that
the existing order of things, as regards our globe, can date so far back
as anything like five hundred millions of years, and, starting with
referring the commencement of the Glacial epoch to two hundred and fifty
thousand years ago, allows fifteen millions since the beginning of the
Eocene period, and sixty millions of years in all since the beginning of
the Cambrian period. He bases his arguments on the limit to the age of the
sun's heat as detailed by Sir William Thompson.
Sir Charles Lyell and Professor Haughton respectively estimated the
expiration of time from the commencement of the Cambrian at two hundred
and forty and two hundred millions of years, basing their calculations on
the rate of modification of the species of mollusca, in the one case, and
on the rate of formation of rocks and their maximum thickness, in the
other.
This, moreover, is irrespective of the vast periods during which life must
have existed, which on the development theory necessarily preceded the
Cambrian, and, according to Mr. Darwin, should not be less than in the
proportion of five to two.
In fine, one school of geologists and zoologists demand the maximum
periods quoted above, to account for the amount of sedimentary deposit,
and the specific developments which have occurred; the other considers the
periods claimed as requisite for these actions to be unnecessary, and to
be in excess of the limits which, according to their views, the physical
elements of the case permit.
Mr. Wallace, in reviewing the question, dwells on the probability of the
rate of geological changes having been greater in very remote times than
it is at present, and thus opens a way to the reconciliation of the
opposing views so far as one half the question is concerned.
Having thus adverted to the principles upon which various theorists have
in part based their attacks on the problem of the estimation of the
duration of geological ages, I may now make a few more detailed
observations upon those later periods during which man is, now, generally
admitted to have existed, and refer lightly to the earlier times which
some, but not all, geologists consider to have furnished evidences of his
presence.
I omit discussing the doubtful assertions of the extreme antiquity of man,
which come to us from American observers, such as are based on supposed
footprints in rocks of secondary age, figured in a semi-scientific and
exceedingly valuable popular journal. There are other theories which I
omit, both because they need further confirmation by scientific
investigators, and because they deal with periods so remote as to be
totally devoid of significance for the argument of this work.
Nor, up to the present time, are the evidences of the existence of man
during Miocene and Pliocene times admitted as conclusive. Professor
Capellini has discovered, in deposits recognised by Italian geologists as
of Pliocene age, cetacean bones, which are marked with incisions such as
only a sharp instrument could have produced, and which, in his opinion,
must be ascribed to human agency. To this view it is objected that the
incisions might have been made by the teeth of fishes, and further
evidence is waited for.
Not a few discoveries have been made, apparently extending the existence
of man to a much more remote antiquity, that of Miocene times. M. l'Abbé
Bourgeois has collected, from undoubted Miocene strata at Thenay, supposed
flint implements which he conceives to exhibit evidences of having been
fashioned by man, as well as stones showing in some cases traces of the
action of fire, and which he supposes to have been used as pot-boilers. M.
Carlos Ribeiro has made similar discoveries of worked flints and
quartzites in the Pliocene and Miocene of the Tagus; worked flint has been
found in the Miocene of Aurillac (Auvergne) by M. Tardy, and a cut rib of
_Halitherium fossile_, a Miocene species, by M. Delaunay at Pouancé.
Very divided opinions are entertained as to the interpretation of the
supposed implements discovered by M. l'Abbé Bourgeois. M. Quatrefages,
after a period of doubt, has espoused the view of their being of human
origin, and of Miocene age. "Since then," he says, "fresh specimens
discovered have removed my last doubts. A small knife or scraper, among
others, which shows a fine regular finish, can, in my opinion, only have
been shaped by man. Nevertheless, I do not blame those of my colleagues
who deny or still doubt. In such a matter there is no very great urgency,
and, doubtless, the existence of Miocene man will be proved, as that of
Glacial and Pliocene has been, by facts." Mr. Geikie, from whose
work--_Prehistoric Europe_--I have summarized the above statements, says,
in reference to this question: "There is unquestionably much force in what
M. Quatrefages says; nevertheless, most geologists will agree with him
that the question of man's Miocene age still remains to be demonstrated by
unequivocal evidence. At present, all that we can safely say is, that man
was probably living in Europe near the close of the Pliocene period, and
that he was certainly an occupant of our continent during glacial and
interglacial times."
Professor Marsh considers that the evidence, as it stands to-day, although
not conclusive, "seems to place the first appearance of man [in America]
in the Pliocene, and that the best proofs of this are to be found on the
Pacific coast." He adds: "During several visits to that region many facts
were brought to my knowledge which render this more than probable. Man, at
this time, was a savage, and was doubtless forced by the great volcanic
outbreaks to continue his migration. This was at first to the south, since
mountain chains were barriers on the east," and "he doubtless first came
across Behring's Straits."
I have hitherto assumed a certain acquaintance, upon the part of the
general reader, with the terms Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, happily
invented by Sir Charles Lyell to designate three of the four great
divisions of the Tertiary age. These, from their universal acceptation and
constant use, have "become familiar in our mouths as household words." But
it will be well, before further elaborating points in the history of these
groups, bearing upon our argument, to take into consideration their
subdivisions, and the equivalent or contemporary deposits composing them
in various countries. This can be most conveniently done by displaying
these, in descending order, in a tabular form, which I accordingly annex
below. This is the more desirable as there are few departments in
geological science which have received more attention than this; or in
which greater returns, in the shape of important and interesting
discoveries relative to man's existence, have been made.
Comparatively recent--comparatively, that is to say, with regard to the
vast æons that preceded them, but extending back over enormous spaces of
time when contrasted with the limited duration of written history,--they
embrace the period during which the mainly existing distribution of land
and ocean has obtained, and the present forms of life have appeared by
evolution from preceding species, or, as some few still maintain, by
separate and special creation.
THE TERTIARY OR CAINOZOIC AGE.
| | |
| | | 1. Recent }
| | | }
| |Man's | 2. Post Glacial }
| |range |Man's } Post }
|Man's |according |range, 3. Pleistocene or}Tertiary}
|range, |to |generally Quaternary } }
|according |Capellini,|admitted (including } }
|to l'Abbé |Marsh, | Glacial } }
|Bourgeois, |and | formation) } }
|Quatrefages,|others. | }
|and | 4. Newer Pliocene} }
|others. | }Pliocene}Tertiary
| +--------------------- 5. Older Pliocene} }or
| }Cainozoic
| 6. Upper Miocene } }
| }Miocene }
+---------------------------------- 7. Lower Miocene } }
}
8. Upper Eocene } }
} }
9. Middle do. }Eocene }
}
10. Lower do. }
PLIOCENE.
BRITAIN.
Norwich
P _Sand loam and gravel_
N l Marine, land, and fresh-water
e i shells
w o Many { Fusus striatus
e c shells { " antiquus
r e abundant, { Tunitella communis
n such as { Cardium edule, still existing
e in adjacent sea.
Norwich Crag.
P
O l { Red
l i {
d o Crag { White,
e c { or
r e { Coralline
n
e
MIOCENE.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
BRITAIN. | FRANCE. | OTHER COUNTRIES OF |
| | EUROPE. |
| | |
{Ferruginous |Faluns of Touraine and |Edgehem beds } |
{ sands of | Bordeaux. |Diest sands }Belgium |
{ the North |_Dinotherium._ |Boldeberg beds} |
{ downs. | | |
{ |_Mastodon._ |Superga beds Italy |
U{_Terebratula | | |
P{ grandis._ |_Lamantine._ |Deposits of |
P{ | | Pikermé Greece |
E{ |Marine shells such as | with |
R{_Astarte | _Cypræa, Oliva_, |_Mastodon_ |
{ pyrula_ with | _Mitra, Conus_, |_Dinotherium_ |
M{ other shells | indicative of an |_Hipparion_ |
I{ common to | elevated temperature.|_Antelope_ |
O{ the Crag. |Fresh-water deposits of |_Camelopardalis_ |
C{ | Gers near the base of | |
E{ | the Pyrenees. |Beds above the} |
N{ |_Dinotherium giganteum._ | brown coal }Croatia |
E{ | | with Marine } |
{ |Mastodon angustidens. | shells } |
{ | |Fresh-water } |
{ | | Molasse at }Switzerland|
{ | | Oeningen } |
{ | |_Abundant } |
{ | | flora_ } |
| |Marine Molasse} |
| | |
{Hempstead beds,|Calcaire de la Beauce, |Kleyn Spawn } |
{ Isle of Wight.| fresh-water deposits of| beds and }Belgium |
{ | Auvergne, Sandstone, |Limburg beds } |
L{ | indusial limestone of | |
O{ | Cantal. | |
W{Marine and | | |
E{ fresh water |Fluvio-marine strata of |Marine and Fluvialite |
R{ _Voluta_ | Merignac and Bazas? | shells |
{ _Cyrena_ | | |
{ _Cerithium_ | | |
{ _&c. &c._ |_Cerithium, Pyrula, &c._ |Most of the } |
M{ | | Lignites are}Germany |
I{ | | Lower } |
O{Lignite |_Asterias limestone._ | Miocene } |
C{ deposits of | |Lower (fresh-water) |
E{ Bovey Tracey.| | Molasse |
N{ |_Nummulites._ | |
E{Numerous | | |
{ plants, such |Fresh-water strata of | |
{ as _Sequoia | Fontainebleau. | |
{ Nysa Annona_, |Grès de Fontainebleau | |
indicating a | (Marine). | |
sub-tropical | | |
climate. | | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------
| INDIA. | AMERICA.
| |
| |
|Fresh-water |Fresh-water
| | deposits
|deposits of | in Oregon
| |
|Siwalik hills |
| |
|with |White river
|_Mastodon_ | group in
| | the Upper
|_Sivatherium_ | Missouri
| | Regions
|_Colossochelys_ |
| |
|_Rhinoceros_ |_Oreodont_
| |
|_Felis_ |_Brontether-
| | ium._
|_Machairodus_ |
| |Wind river
|_Equus_ | group
| |(Fresh-water
|_Hippotherium_ | deposit).
| |
|_Camelopardalis_|
| |
| |Miocene
| | deposits
| | over a
| | large part
| | of the
| | Atlantic
| | Tertiary
| | border.
| |
| |
| |In
| | California
| | Miocene
| | marine
| | deposits
| | reach
| | from 4,000
| | to 5,000
| | feet
| | in
| | thickness.
| |
| |
| |
--------------------------
EOCENE.
The subdivisions of the Eocene have been worked out in great detail in
Britain, France, and America. Those of most other countries have either
not yet been fully studied or their exact equivalence remains
undetermined.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| |
BRITAIN. | FRANCE. |
| |
| |
| _Land and |
{ {Palæotherium | fresh-water |
{A1 Bembridge {Anoplotherium|Gypseous Series shells_ |
{ Series {Chæropotamus | of Montmatre _Many quadrupeds |
U{ { &c. | (4/5ths of them |
P{ | Perrissodactyls),|
P{A2 Osborne {Fresh-water |} Trionyx, Emys_ |
E{ Series { & brackish |} |
R{ { genera |}Calcaire Siliceux |
{ |} |
E{ {_Do._ |} |
O{ {_Emys_ |} |
C{A3 Headon {_Trionyx_ | |
E{ Series {_Alligator_ | |
N{ {_Crocodilus_ | |
E{ {_Lepidosteus_| |
{ | |
{A4 Barton {_Voluta_ | }|
{ Clay {_Mitra_ |Grès de Beauchamp _Nummulites_ }|
| }|
M{B1 Bagshot and _Cerithium_ |Calcaire Grossier _Miliolite }|
I{ Bracklesham _Voluta_ | limestone }|
D{ Sands and _Cowries_ | of minute }|
D{ Clays _Marine | Foraminifera._ }|
L{ Serpents_ | _Nummulites_ }|
E{ _Nummulites_ | _Cerithium_, }|
{ indicating a warm climate | &c. &c. }|
E{ with a vegetation | }|
O{ reminding the botanist of | }|
C{ the types of tropical | }|
E{ India and Australia |Soissonnais Sands _Nummulites_ }|
N{ | _Nerita_, &c. }|
E{B2 Wanting | &c. }|
| |
{C1 London Clay _Palms_ |Argile de Londres |
L{ and _Turtles_ | |
O{ Bognor beds _Sea Snakes_ | |
W{ _Crocodiles_ | |
E{ _Conus_, | |
R{ _Voluta_, | |
{ _Cyprina_, | |
{ _Nautilus_, | |
E{ and other shells | |
O{ indicating a semi- | |
C{ tropical climate | |
E{C2 Plastic and Mottled |Argile plastique _Fluviatile |
N{ Clays and Sands | and lignite shells_ |
E{ | _Large bird |
{C3 Thanet Sands _Pholadomya_ | Gastornis |
{ _Cyprina_, | Parisiensis_ |
{ &c. |Sables de Bracheux |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTINENT | | |
OF EUROPE | INDIA. | N. AMERICA. | S. AMERICA.
AND ASIA | | |
| | East of the West of the |
| | Rocky Mts. Rocky Mts. |
| | |
| |The Claiborne beds are considered |
| |by Lyell as the equivalent of the |
| |Middle Eocene of Britain; the |
| |parallelism of the other American |
| |deposits has not yet been |
| |completed. |
| | Uinta group |
| | _Uintatherium_ |
| | |
| | |
| | Bridger group |
| | Vicksburg |
| | beds |Deposits
| |T _Orohippus_ |believed
| |h M _Dinoceras_ |to be of
| |e a d _Uintatherium_|Tertiary
| | r e _Tinocoras_ |age, in
| |A i p Claiborne _Tillotherium_ |the Pampas,
Nummulitic |Nummulitic|l n o beds |contain
Limestone |formation |a e s |Palæotherium
of the | of Cutch,|b i |and
Alps, | portions |a t Green River |Anoplotherium,
Carpathians| of the |m s _Zeuglodon group |and other
N. Africa | Himalaya,|a cetoides_ |forms
Asia Minor| and | |presenting a
Western | frontiers|p |resemblance to
Thibet. | of China.|e |the fauna of
| |r |that period in
| |i |Europe.
| |o |
| |d |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | Wahsatch |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | _Coryphodon_ |
| | _Eohippus_ |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | Laramic or Lignitic Period.|
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We learn, both from the nature of these deposits and from their organic
contents, that climatic oscillations have been passing during the whole
period of their deposition over the surface of the globe, and inducing
corresponding fluctuations in the character of the vegetable and animal
life abounding on it. A complete collation of these varying conditions at
synchronous periods remains to be achieved, but the study of our own
country, and those adjacent to it, shows that alternations of tropical,
boreal, and temperate climate have occurred in it; a remarkable series of
conditions which has only lately been thoroughly and satisfactorily
accounted for.
Thus, during a portion of the Eocene period a tropical climate prevailed,
as is evidenced by deposits containing remains of palms of an equatorial
type, crocodiles, turtles, tropical shells, and other remains attesting
the existence of a high temperature. The converse is proved of the
Pleistocene by the existence of a boreal fauna, and the widespread
evidences of glacial action. The gradations of climate during the Miocene
and Pliocene, and the amelioration subsequent to the glacial period, have
resulted in the gradual development or appearance of specific life as it
exists at present.
Corresponding indications of secular variability of climate are derived
from all quarters: during the Miocene age, Greenland (in N. Lat. 70°)
developed an abundance of trees, such as the yew, the Redwood, a Sequoia
allied to the Californian species, beeches, planes, willows, oaks,
poplars, and walnuts, as well as a Magnolia and a Zamia. In Spitzbergen
(N. Lat. 78° 56') flourished yews, hazels, poplars, alders, beeches, and
limes. At the present day, a dwarf willow and a few herbaceous plants form
the only vegetation, and the ground is covered with almost perpetual ice
and snow.
Many similar fluctuations of climate have been traced right back through
the geological record; but this fact, though interesting in relation to
the general solution of the causes, has little bearing on the present
purpose.
Sir Charles Lyell conceived that all cosmical changes of climate in the
past might be accounted for by the varying preponderance of land in the
vicinity of the equator or near the poles, supplemented, of course, in a
subordinate degree by alteration of level and the influence of ocean
currents. When, for example, at any geological period the excess of land
was equatorial, the ascent and passage northwards of currents of heated
air would, according to his view, render the poles habitable; while, _per
contrâ_, the excessive massing of land around the pole, and absence of it
from the equator, would cause an arctic climate to spread far over the now
temperate latitudes.
The correctness of these inferences has been objected to by Mr. James
Geikie and Dr. Croll, who doubt whether the northward currents of air
would act as successful carriers of heat to the polar regions, or whether
they would not rather dissipate it into space upon the road. On the other
hand, Mr. Geikie, though admitting that the temperature of a large
_unbroken_ arctic continent would be low, suggests that, as the winds
would be stripped of all moisture on its fringes, the interior would
therefore be without accumulations of snow and ice; and in the more
probable event of its being deeply indented by fjords and bays, warm
sea-currents (the representatives of our present Gulf and Japan streams,
but possessing a higher temperature than either, from the greater extent
of equatorial sea-surface originating them, and exposed to the sun's
influence) would flow northward, and, ramifying, carry with them warm and
heated atmospheres far into its interior, though even these, he thinks,
would be insufficient in their effects under any circumstances to produce
the sub-tropical climates which are known to have existed in high
latitudes.
Mr. John Evans[75] has thrown out the idea that possibly a complete
translation of geographical position with respect to polar axes may have
been produced by a sliding of the whole surface crust of the globe about a
fluid nucleus. This, he considers, would be induced by disturbances of
equilibrium of the whole mass from geological causes. He further points
out that the difference between the polar and equatorial diameters of the
globe, which constitutes an important objection to his theory, is
materially reduced when we take into consideration the enormous depth of
the ocean over a large portion of the equator, and the great tracts of
land elevated considerably above the sea-level in higher latitudes. He
also speculates on the general average of the surface having in bygone
geological epochs approached much more nearly to that of a sphere than it
does at the present time.
Sir John Lubbock favoured the idea of a change in the position of the axis
of rotation, and this view has been supported by Sir H. James[76] and many
later geologists.[77] If I apprehend their arguments correctly, this
change could only have been produced by what may be termed geological
revolutions. These are great outbursts of volcanic matter, elevations,
subsidences, and the like. These having probably been almost continuous
throughout geological time, incessant changes, small or great, would be
demanded in the position of the axis, and the world must be considered as
a globe rolling over in space with every alteration of its centre of
gravity. The possibility of this view must be left for mathematicians and
astronomers to determine.
Sounder arguments sustain the theory propounded by Dr. Croll (though this,
again, is not universally accepted), that all these alterations of climate
can be accounted for by the effects of nutation, and the precession of the
equinoxes. From these changes, combined with the eccentricity of the
ecliptic from the first, it results that at intervals of ten thousand five
hundred years, the northern and southern hemispheres are alternately in
aphelion during the winter, and in perihelion during the summer months,
and _vice versâ_; or, in other words, that if at any given period the
inclination of the earth's axis produces winter in the northern
hemisphere, while the earth is at a maximum distance from that focus of
its orbit in which the sun is situated, then, after an interval of ten
thousand five hundred years, and as a result of the sum of the backward
motion of the equinoxes along the ecliptic, at the rate of 50' annually,
the converse will obtain, and it will be winter in the northern hemisphere
while the earth is at a minimum distance from the sun.
The amount of eccentricity of the ecliptic varies greatly during long
periods, and has been calculated for several million years back. Mr.
Croll[78] has demonstrated a theory explaining all great secular
variations of climate as indirectly the result of this, through the action
of sundry physical agencies, such as the accumulation of snow and ice, and
especially the deflection of ocean currents. From a consideration of the
tables which he has computed of the eccentricity and longitude of the
earth's orbit, he refers the glacial epoch to a period commencing about
two hundred and forty thousand years back, and extending down to about
eighty thousand years ago, and he describes it as "consisting of a long
succession of cold and warm periods; the warm periods of the one
hemisphere corresponding in time with the cold periods of the other, and
_vice versâ_."
Having thus spoken of the processes adopted for estimating the duration of
geological ages, and the results which have been arrived at, with great
probability of accuracy, in regard to some of the more recent, it now
only remains to briefly state the facts from which the existence of man,
during these latter periods, has been demonstrated. The literature of this
subject already extends to volumes, and it is therefore obviously
impossible, in the course of the few pages which the limits of this work
admit, to give anything but the shortest abstract, or to assign the credit
relatively due to the numerous progressive workers in this rich field of
research. I therefore content myself with taking as my text-book Mr. James
Geikie's _Prehistoric Europe_, the latest and most exhaustive work upon
the subject, and summarizing from it the statements essential to my
purpose.
From it we learn that, long prior to the ages when men were acquainted
with the uses of bronze and iron, there existed nations or tribes,
ignorant of the means by which these metals are utilized, whose weapons
and implements were formed of stone, horn, bone, and wood.
These, again, may be divided into an earlier and a later race, strongly
characterized by the marked differences in the nature of the stone
implements which they respectively manufactured, both in respect to the
material employed and the amount of finish bestowed upon it. To the two
periods in which these people lived the terms Palæolithic and Neolithic
have been respectively applied, and a vast era is supposed to have
intervened between the retiring from Europe of the one and the appearance
there of the other.
Palæolithic man was contemporaneous with the mammoth (_Elephas
primigenius_), the woolly rhinoceros (_Rhinoceros primigenius_), the
_Hippopotamus major_, and a variety of other species, now quite extinct,
as well as with many which, though still existing in other regions, are no
longer found in Europe; whereas the animals contemporaneous with Neolithic
man were essentially the same as those still occupying it.
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--ENGRAVING BY PALÆOLITHIC MAN ON REINDEER
ANTLER.[79]
(The two sides of the same piece of antler are here represented.)]
The stone implements of Palæolithic man had but little variety of form,
were very rudely fashioned, being merely chipped into shape, and never
ground or polished; they were worked nearly entirely out of flint and
chert. Those of Neolithic man were made of many varieties of hard stone,
often beautifully finished, frequently ground to a sharp point or edge,
and polished all over.
Palæolithic men were unacquainted with pottery and the art of weaving, and
apparently had no domesticated animals or system of cultivation; but the
Neolithic lake dwellers of Switzerland had looms, pottery, cereals, and
domesticated animals, such as swine, sheep, horses, dogs, &c.
Implements of horn, bone, and wood were in common use among both races,
but those of the older are frequently distinguished by their being
sculptured with great ability or ornamented with life-like engravings of
the various animals living at the period; whereas there appears to have
been a marked absence of any similar artistic ability on the part of
Neolithic man.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.--REINDEER ENGRAVED ON ANTLER BY PALÆOLITHIC MAN.
(_After Geikie._)]
Again, it is noticeable that, while the passage from the Neolithic age
into the succeeding bronze age was gradual, and, indeed, that the use of
stone implements and, in some parts, weapons, was contemporaneous with
that of bronze in other places, no evidence exists of a transition from
Palæolithic into Neolithic times. On the contrary, the examination of bone
deposits, such as those of Kent's Cave and Victoria Cave in England, and
numerous others in Belgium and France, attest "beyond doubt that a
considerable period must have supervened after the departure of
Palæolithic man and before the arrival of his Neolithic successor." The
discovery of remains of Palæolithic man and animals in river deposits in
England and on the Continent, often at considerable elevations[80] above
the existing valley bottoms, and in Löss, and the identification of the
Pleistocene or Quaternary period with Preglacial and Glacial times, offer
a means of estimating what that lapse of time must have been.[81]
Skeletons or portions of the skeletons of human beings, of admitted
Palæolithic age, have been found in caverns in the vicinity of Liege in
Belgium, by Schmerling, and probably the same date may be assigned those
from the Neanderthal Cave near Düsseldorf. A complete skeleton, of tall
stature, of probable but not unquestioned Palæolithic age, has also been
discovered in the Cave of Mentone on the Riviera.
These positive remains yield us further inferences than can be drawn from
the mere discovery of implements or fragmentary bones associated with
remains of extinct animals.
The Mentone man, according to M. Rivière, had a rather long but large
head, a high and well-made forehead, and the very large facial angle of
85°. In the Liege man the cranium was high and short, and of good
Caucasian type; "a fair average human skull," according to Huxley.
Other remains, such as the jaw-bone from the cave of the Naulette in
Belgium, and the Neanderthal skeleton, show marks of inferiority; but even
in the latter, which was the lowest in grade, the cranial capacity is
seventy-five cubic inches or "nearly on a level with the mean between the
two human extremes."
We may, therefore, sum up by saying that evidences have been accumulated
of the existence of man, and intelligent man, from a period which even the
most conservative among geologists are unable to place at less than thirty
thousand years; while most of them are convinced both of his existence
from at least later Pliocene times, and of the long duration of ages which
has necessarily elapsed since his appearance--a duration to be numbered,
not by tens, but by hundreds of thousands of years.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--ENGRAVING BY PALÆOLITHIC MAN ON REINDEER
ANTLER.]
CHAPTER IV.
THE DELUGE NOT A MYTH.
If we assume that the antiquity of man is as great, or even approximately
as great, as Sir Charles Lyell and his followers affirm, the question
naturally arises, what has he been doing during those countless ages,
prior to historic times? what evidences has he afforded of the possession
of an intelligence superior to that of the brute creation by which he has
been surrounded? what great monuments of his fancy and skill remain? or
has the sea of time engulphed any that he erected, in abysses so deep that
not even the bleached masts project from the surface, to testify to the
existence of the good craft buried below?
These questions have been only partially asked, and but slightly answered.
They will, however, assume greater proportions as the science of
archæology extends itself, and perhaps receive more definite replies when
fresh fields for investigation are thrown open in those portions of the
old world which Asiatic reserve has hitherto maintained inviolable against
scientific prospectors.
If man has existed for fifty thousand years, as some demand, or for two
hundred thousand, as others imagine, has his intelligence gone on
increasing thoughout the period? and if so, in what ratio? Are the terms
of the series which involve the unknown quantity stated with sufficient
precision to enable us to determine whether his development has been slow,
gradual, and more or less uniform, as in arithmetical, or gaining at a
rapidly increasing rate, as in geometric progression. Or, to pursue the
simile, could it be more accurately expressed by the equation to a curve
which traces an ascending and descending path, and, though controlled in
reality by an absolute law, appears to exhibit an unaccountable and
capricious variety of positive and negative phases, of _points d'arrêt_,
nodes, and cusps.
These questions cannot yet be definitely answered; they may be proposed
and argued on, but for a time the result will doubtless be a variety of
opinions, without the possibility of solution by a competent arbiter.
For example, it is a matter of opinion whether the intelligence of the
present day is or is not of a higher order than that which animated the
_savans_ of ancient Greece. It is probable that most would answer in the
affirmative, so far as the question pertains to the culture of the masses
only, but how will scholars decide, who are competent to compare the works
of our present poets, sculptors, dramatists, logicians, philosophers,
historians, and statesmen, with those of Homer, Pindar, Œschylus,
Euripides, Herodotus, Aristotle, Euclid, Phidias, Plato, Solon, and the
like? Will they, in a word, consider the champions of intellect of the
present day so much more robust than their competitors of three thousand
years ago as to render them easy victors? This would demonstrate a decided
advance in human intelligence during that period; but, if this is the
case, how is it that all the great schools and universities still cling to
the reverential study of the old masters, and have, until quite recently,
almost ignored modern arts, sciences, and languages.
We must remember that the ravages of time have put out of court many of
the witnesses for the one party to the suit, and that natural decay,
calamity, and wanton destruction[82] have obliterated the bulk of the
philosophy of past ages. With the exceptions of the application of steam,
the employment of moveable type in printing,[83] and the utilization of
electricity, there are few arts and inventions which have not descended to
us from remote antiquity, lost, many of them, for a time, some of them for
ages, and then re-discovered and paraded as being, really and truly,
something new under the sun.
Neither must we forget the oratory and poetry, the masterpieces of logical
argument, the unequalled sculptures, and the exquisitely proportioned
architecture of Greece, or the thorough acquaintance with mechanical
principles and engineering skill evinced by the Egyptians, in the
construction of the pyramids, vast temples, canals[84] and hydraulic
works.[85]
Notice, also, the high condition of civilization possessed by the Chinese
four thousand years ago, their enlightened and humane polity, their
engineering works,[86] their provision for the proper administration of
different departments of the State, and their clear and intelligent
documents.[87]
[Illustration: FIG. 23.--VASE. HAN DYNASTY, B.C. 206 _to_ A.D. 23. (_From
the Poh Ku T'u._)]
[Illustration: FIG. 24.--CYATHUS OR CUP FOR LIBATIONS. SHANG DYNASTY, B.C.
1766 _to_ B.C. 1122. (_From the Poh Ku T'u._)]
In looking back upon these, I think we can hardly distinguish any such
deficiency of intellect, in comparison with ours, on the part of these our
historical predecessors as to indicate so rapid a change of intelligence
as would, if we were able to carry our comparison back for another similar
period, inevitably land us among a lot of savages similar to those who
fringe the civilization of the present period. Intellectually measured,
the civilized men of eight or ten thousand years ago must, I think, have
been but little inferior to ourselves, and we should have to peer very far
back indeed before we reached a status or condition in which the highest
type of humanity was the congener of the cave lion, disputing with him a
miserable existence, shielded only from the elements by an overhanging
rock, or the fortuitous discovery of some convenient cavern.
If this be so, we are forced back again to the consideration of the
questions with which this section opened; where are the evidences of man's
early intellectual superiority? are they limited to those deduced from the
discovery of certain stone implements of the early rude, and later
polished ages? and, if so, can we offer any feasible explanation either of
their non-existence or disappearance?
In the first place, it may be considered as admitted by archæologists that
no exact line can be drawn between the later of the two stone-weapon
epochs, the polished Neolithic stone epoch, and the succeeding age of
bronze. They are agreed that these overlap each other, and that the rude
hunters, who contented themselves with stone implements of war and the
chase, were coeval with people existing in other places, acquainted with
the metallurgical art, and therefore of a high order of intelligence. The
former are, in fact, brought within the limit of historic times.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--INCENSE BURNER(?). CHEN DYNASTY, B.C. 1122 _to_
B.C. 255. (_From the Poh Ku T'u._)]
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--TRIPOD OF THE SHANG DYNASTY. _Probable date_,
B.C. 1649. (_From the Poh Ku T'u._)]
[Illustration: FIG. 27.--TRIPOD OF FU YIH, SHANG DYNASTY. (_From the Poh
Ku T'u._)]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.--TRIPOD OF KWAI WAN, CHEN DYNASTY, B.C. 1122 _to_
B.C. 255 (_From the Poh Ku T'u._)]
A similar inference might not unfairly be drawn with regard to those
numerous discoveries of proofs of the existence of ruder man, at still
earlier periods. The flint-headed arrow of the North American Indian, and
the stone hatchet of the Australian black-fellow exist to the present day;
and but a century or two back, would have been the sole representatives of
the constructive intelligence of humanity over nearly one half the
inhabited surface of the world. No philosopher, with these alone to reason
on, could have imagined the settled existence, busy industry, and
superior intelligence which animated the other half; and a parallel
suggestive argument may be supported by the discovery of human relics,
implements, and artistic delineations such as those of the hairy mammoth
or the cave-bear. These may possibly be the traces of an outlying savage
who co-existed with a far more highly-organized people elsewhere,[88] just
as at the present day the Esquimaux, who are by some geologists considered
as the descendants of Palæolithic man, co-exist with ourselves. They, like
their reputed ancestors, have great ability in carving on bone, &c.; and
as an example of their capacity not only to conceive in their own minds a
correct notion of the relative bearings of localities, but also to impart
the idea lucidly to others, I annex a wood-cut of a chart drawn by them,
impromptu, at the request of Sir J. Ross, who, inferentially, vouches for
its accuracy.
[Illustration: FIG. 29. (_From Sir John Ross' Second Voyage to the Arctic
Regions._)]
There is but a little step between carving the figure of a mammoth or
horse, and using them as symbols. Multiply them, and you have the early
hieroglyphic written language of the Chinese and Egyptians. It is not an
unfair presumption that at no great distance, in time or space, either
some generations later among his own descendants, or so many nations'
distance among his coevals, the initiative faculty of the Palæolithic
savage was usefully applied to the communication of ideas, just as at a
much later date the Kououen symbolic language was developed or made use of
among the early Chinese.[89]
Such is, necessarily, the first stage of any written language, and it may,
as I think, perhaps have occurred, been developed into higher stages,
culminated, and perished at many successive epochs during man's existence,
presuming it to have been so extended as the progress of geology tends to
affirm.
May not the meandering of the tide of civilization westward during the
last three thousand years, bearing on its crest fortune and empire, and
leaving in its hollow decay and oblivion, possibly be the sequel of many
successive waves which have preceded it in the past, rising, some higher,
some lower, as waves will.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.--EARLY CHINESE HIEROGLYPHICS.]
[Illustration: FIG. 31.--EARLY CHINESE HIEROGLYPHICS.]
In comparison with the vast epochs of which we treat how near to us are
Nineveh, Babylon, and Carthage! Yet the very sites of the former two have
become uncertain, and of the last we only know by the presence of the few
scattered ruins on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Tyre, the vast
entrepôt of commerce in the days of Solomon, was stated, rightly or
wrongly, by Benjamin of Tudela, to be but barely discernible (in 1173) in
ruins beneath the waves; and the glory of the world, the temple of King
Solomon, was represented at the same date by two copper columns which had
been carried off and preserved in Rome. It is needless to quote the cases
of Persia, Greece, and Rome, and of many once famous cities, which have
dissolved in ruin; except as assisting to point the moral that conquest,
which is always recurring, means to a great extent obliteration, the
victor having no sympathy with the preservation of the time-honoured
relics of the vanquished.
When decay and neglect are once initiated, the hand of man largely assists
the ravages of time. The peasant carts the marbles of an emperor's palace
to his lime-kiln,[90] or an Egyptian monarch strips the casing of a
pyramid[91] to furnish the material for a royal residence.
Nor is it beyond the limits of possibility that the arrogant caprice of
some, perhaps Mongol, invader in the future, may level the imperishable
pyramids themselves for the purpose of constructing some defensive work,
or the gratification of an inordinate vanity.
In later dates how many comfortable modern residences have been erected
from the pillage of mediæval abbey, keep, or castle? and how many fair
cities[92] must have fallen to decay, in Central and Eastern Asia, and how
many numerous populations dwindled to insignificance since the days when
Ghenghis and Timour led forth their conquering hordes, and Nadun could
raise four hundred thousand horsemen[93] to contest the victory with
Kublai Khan.
The unconscious ploughman in Britain has for centuries guided his share
above the remains of Roman villas, and the inhabitants of the later city
of Hissarlik were probably as ignorant that a series of lost and buried
cities lay below them, as they would have been incredulous that within a
thousand years their own existence would have passed from the memory of
man, and their re-discovery been due only to the tentative researches of
an enthusiastic admirer of Homer. Men live by books and bards longer than
by the works of their hands, and impalpable tradition often survives the
material vehicle which was destined to perpetuate it. The name of Priam
was still a household word when the site of his palace had been long
forgotten.
The vaster a city is, the more likely is it to be constructed upon the
site of its own grave, or, in other words, to occupy the broad valley of
some important river beneath whose gravels it is destined to be buried.
Perched on an eminence, and based on solid rock, it may escape entombment,
but more swiftly and more certainly will it be destroyed by the
elements,[94] and by the decomposition of its own material furnish the
shroud for its envelopment.[95] It is not altogether surprising then that
no older discoveries than those already quoted have yet been made, for
these would probably never have resulted if tradition had not both
stimulated and guided the fortunate explorer.
It is, therefore, no unfair inference that the remains of equally
important, but very much more ancient cities and memorials of civilization
may have hitherto entirely escaped our observation, presuming that we can
show some reasonable grounds for belief that, subsequent to their
completion, a catastrophe has occurred of sufficiently universal a
character to have obliterated entirely the annals of the past, and to have
left in the possession of its few survivors but meagre and fragmentary
recollections of all that had preceded them.
Now this is precisely what the history and traditions of all nations
affirm to have occurred. However, as a variance of opinion exists as to
the credence which should be attached to these traditions, I shall, before
expressing my own views upon the subject, briefly epitomize those
entertained by two authors of sufficient eminence to warrant their being
selected as representatives of two widely opposite schools.
These gentlemen, to whom we are indebted for exhaustive papers,[96]
embracing the pith of all the information extant upon the subject, have
tapped the same sources of information, consulted the same authorities,
ranged their information in almost identical order, argued from the same
data, and arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions.
Mr. Cheyne, following the lead of Continental mythologists, deduces that
the Deluge stories were on the whole propagated from several independent
centres, and adopts the theory of Schirrer and Gerland that they are ether
myths, without any historical foundation, which have been transferred from
the sky to the earth.
M. Lenormant, upon the other hand, eliminating from the inquiry the great
inundation of China in the reign of Yao, and some others, as purely local
events, concludes as the result of his researches that the story of the
Deluge "is a universal tradition among all branches of the human race,"
with the one exception of the black. He further argues: "Now a
recollection thus precise and concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily
invented. No religious or cosmogenic myth presents this character of
universality. It must arise from the reminiscences of a real and terrible
event, so powerfully impressing the imagination of the first ancestors of
our race, as never to have been forgotten by their descendants. This
cataclysm must have occurred near the first cradle of mankind and before
the dispersion of families from which the different races of men were to
spring."
Lord Arundel of Wardour adopts a similar view in many respects to that of
M. Lenormant, but argues for the existence of a Deluge tradition in Egypt,
and the identity of the Deluge of Yu (in China) with the general
catastrophe of which the tradition is current in other countries.
The subject is in itself so inviting, and has so direct a bearing upon the
argument of this work that I propose to re-examine the same materials and
endeavour to show from them that the possible solutions of the question
have not yet been exhausted.
We have as data:--
1. _The Biblical account._
2. _That of Josephus._
3. _The Babylonian._
4. _The Hindu._
5. _The Chinese._
6. _The traditions of all nations in the northern hemisphere, and of
certain in the southern._
It is unnecessary to travel in detail over the well-worn ground of the
myths and traditions prevalent among European nations, the presumed
identity of Noah with Saturn, Janus, and the like, or the Grecian stories
of Ogyges and Deucalion. Nor is anyone, I think, disposed to dispute the
identity of the cause originating the Deluge legends in Persia and in
India. How far these may have descended from independent sources it is now
difficult to determine, though it is more than probable that their
vitality is due to the written Semitic records. Nor is it necessary to
discuss any unimportant differences which may exist between the text of
Josephus and that of the Bible, which agree sufficiently closely, but are
mere abstracts (with the omission of many important details) in comparison
with the Chaldæan account. This may be accounted for by their having been
only derived from oral tradition through the hands of Abraham. The
Biblical narrative shows us that Abraham left Chaldæa on a nomadic
enterprise, just as a squatter leaves the settled districts of Australia
or America at the present day, and strikes out with a small following and
scanty herd to search for, discover, and occupy new country; his destiny
leading him, may be for a few hundred, may be for a thousand miles. In
such a train there is no room for heavy baggage, and the stone tablets
containing the detailed history of the Deluge would equally with all the
rest of such heavy literature be left behind.
The tradition, however reverenced and faithfully preserved at first,
would, under such circumstances, soon get mutilated and dwarfed. We may,
therefore, pass at once to the much more detailed accounts presented in
the text of Berosus, and in the more ancient Chaldæan tablets deciphered
by the late Mr. G. Smith from the collation of three separate copies.
The account by Berosus (see Appendix) was taken from the sacred books of
Babylon, and is, therefore, of less value than the last-mentioned as being
second-hand. The leading incidents in his narrative are similar to those
contained in that of Genesis, but it terminates with the vanishing of
Xisuthros (Noah) with his wife, daughter, and the pilot, after they had
descended from the vessel and sacrificed to the gods, and with the return
of his followers to Babylon. They restored it, and disinterred the
writings left (by the pious obedience of Xisuthros) in Shurippak, the city
of the Sun.
The great majority of mythologists appear to agree in assigning a much
earlier date to the Deluge, than that which has hitherto been generally
accepted as the soundest interpretation of the chronological evidence
afforded by the Bible.
I have never had the advantage of finding the arguments on which this
opinion is based, formulated in association, although, as incidentally
referred to by various authors, they appear to be mainly deduced from the
references made, both by sacred and profane writers, to large populations
and important cities existing subsequently to the Deluge, but at so early
a date, as to imply the necessity of a very long interval indeed between
the general annihilation caused by the catastrophe, and the attainment of
so high a pitch of civilization and so numerous a population as their
existence implies.
Philologists at the same time declare that a similar inference may be
drawn from the vast periods requisite for the divergence of different
languages from the parent stock,[97] while the testimony of the monuments
and sculptures of ancient Egypt assures us that race distinction of as
marked a type as occurs at the present day existed at so early a date[98]
as to preclude the possibility of the derivation of present nations from
the descendants of Noah within the limited period usually allowed.
These difficulties vanish, if we consider the Biblical and Chaldean
narratives as records of a local catastrophe, of vast extent perhaps, and
resulting in general but not total destruction, whose sphere may have
embraced the greater portion of Western Asia, and perhaps Europe; but
which, while wrecking the great centres of northern civilization, did not
extend southwards to Africa and Egypt.[99] The Deluge legends indigenous
in Mexico at the date of the Spanish conquest, combining the Biblical
incidents of the despatch of birds from a vessel with the conception of
four consecutive ages terminating in general destruction, and
corresponding with the four ages or Yugas of India, supply in themselves
the testimony of their probable origin from Asia. The cataclysm which
caused what is called the Deluge may or may not have extended to America,
probably not. In a future page I shall enumerate a few of the
resemblances between the inhabitants of the New World and of the Old
indicative of their community of origin.
I refer the reader to M. Lenormant's valuable essay[100] for his critical
notice on the dual composition of the account in Genesis, derived as it
appears to be from two documents, one of which has been called the
Elohistic and the other the Jehovistic account, and for his comparison of
it with the Chaldean narrative exhumed by the late Mr. George Smith from
the Royal Library of Nineveh, the original of which is probably of
anterior date to Moses, and nearly contemporaneous with Abraham.
I transcribe from M. Lenormant the text of the Chaldean narrative, because
there are points in it which have not yet been commented on, and which, as
it appears to me, assist in the solution of the Deluge story:--
I will reveal to thee, O Izdhubar, the history of my preservation--and
tell to thee the decision of the gods.
The town of Shurippak, a town which thou knowest, is situated on the
Euphrates. It was ancient, and in it [men did not honour] the gods. [I
alone, I was] their servant, to the great gods--[The gods took counsel
on the appeal of] Anu--[a deluge was proposed by] Bel--[and approved
by Nabon, Nergal and] Adar.
And the god [Êa,] the immutable lord,--repeated this command in a
dream.--I listened to the decree of fate that he announced, and he
said to me:--"Man of Shurippak, son of Ubaratutu--thou, build a vessel
and finish it [quickly].--By a [deluge] I will destroy substance and
life.--Cause thou to go up into the vessel the substance of all that
has life.--The vessel thou shalt build--600 cubits shall be the
measure of its length--and 60 cubits the amount of its breadth and of
its height.--[Launch it] thus on the ocean and cover it with a
roof."--I understood, and I said to Êa, my lord:--"[The vessel] that
thou commandest me to build thus,--[when] I shall do it--young and old
[shall laugh at me]."--[Êa opened his mouth and] spoke.--He said to
me, his servant:--"[If they laugh at thee] thou shalt say to them:
[Shall be punished] he who has insulted me, [for the protection of the
gods] is over me.-- .... like to caverns .... ---- .... I will
exercise my judgment on that which is on high and that which is below
.... ---- .... Close the vessel .... ---- .... At a given moment that
I shall cause thee to know,--enter into it, and draw the door of the
ship towards thee.--Within it, thy grains, thy furniture, thy
provisions,--thy riches, thy men-servants, and thy maid-servants, and
thy young people--the cattle of the field and the wild beasts of the
plain that I will assemble--and that I will send thee, shall be kept
behind thy door."--Khasisatra opened his mouth and spoke;--he said to
Êa, his lord:--"No one has made [such a] ship.--On the prow I will fix
.... --I shall see .... and the vessel .... --the vessel thou
commandest me to build [thus]--which in ....[101]
On the fifth day [the two sides of the bark] were raised.--In its
covering fourteen in all were its rafters--fourteen in all did it
count above.--I placed its roof and I covered it.--I embarked in it on
the sixth day; I divided its floors on the seventh;--I divided the
interior compartments on the eighth. I stopped up the chinks through
which the water entered in;--I visited the chinks and added what was
wanting.--I poured on the exterior three times 3,600 measures of
asphalte,--and three times 3,600 measures of asphalte within.--Three
times 3,600 men, porters, brought on their heads the chests of
provisions.--I kept 3,600 chests for the nourishment of my
family,--and the mariners divided amongst themselves twice 3,600
chests.--For [provisioning] I had oxen slain;--I instituted [rations]
for each day.--In [anticipation of the need of] drinks, of barrels and
of wine--[I collected in quantity] like to the waters of a river, [of
provisions] in quantity like to the dust of the earth.--[To arrange
them in] the chests I set my hand to.-- .... of the sun .... the
vessel was completed.-- .... strong and--I had carried above and below
the furniture of the ship.--[This lading filled the two-thirds.]
All that I possessed I gathered together; all I possessed of silver I
gathered together; all that I possessed of gold I gathered--all that I
possessed of the substance of life of every kind I gathered
together.--I made all ascend into the vessel; my servants male and
female,--the cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the plains, and
the sons of the people, I made them all ascend.
Shamash (the sun) made the moment determined, and--he announced it in
these terms:--"In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from
heaven; enter into the vessel and close the door."--The fixed moment
had arrived, which he announced in these terms: "In the evening I will
cause it to rain abundantly from heaven."--When the evening of that
day arrived, I was afraid,--I entered into the vessel and shut my
door.--In shutting the vessel, to Buzurshadirabi, the pilot,--I
confided this dwelling with all that it contained.
Mu-sheri-ina-namari[102]--rose from the foundations of heaven in a
black cloud;--Ramman[103] thundered in the midst of the cloud--and
Nabon and Sharru marched before;--they marched, devastating the
mountain and the plain;--Nergal[104] the powerful, dragged
chastisements after him;--Adar[105] advanced, overthrowing before
him;--the archangels of the abyss brought destruction,--in their
terrors they agitated the earth.--The inundation of Ramman swelled up
to the sky,--and [the earth] became without lustre, was changed into a
desert.
They broke .... of the surface of the [earth] like .... ;--[they
destroyed] the living beings of the surface of the earth.--The
terrible [Deluge] on men swelled up to [heaven].--The brother no
longer saw his brother; men no longer knew each other. In heaven--the
gods became afraid of the waterspout, and--sought a refuge; they
mounted up to the heaven of Anu.[106]--The gods were stretched out
motionless, pressing one against another like dogs.--Ishtar wailed
like a child,--the great goddess pronounced her discourse:--"Here is
humanity returned into mud, and--this is the misfortune that I have
announced in the presence of the gods. So I announced the misfortune
in the presence of the gods,--for the evil I announced the terrible
[chastisement] of men who are mine.--I am the mother who gave birth to
men, and--like to the race of fishes, there they are filling the
sea;--and the gods by reason of that--which the archangels of the
abyss are doing, weep with me."--The gods on their seats were seated
in tears,--and they held their lips closed, [revolving] future things.
Six days and as many nights passed; the wind, the waterspout, and the
diluvian rain were in all their strength. At the approach of the
seventh day the diluvian rain grew weaker, the terrible
waterspout--which had assailed after the fashion of an
earthquake--grew calm, the sea inclined to dry up, and the wind and
the waterspout came to an end. I looked at the sea, attentively
observing--and the whole of humanity had returned to mud; like unto
sea-weeds the corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light
smote on my face. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and I
wept;--and my tears came over my face.
I looked at the regions bounding the sea; towards the twelve points of
the horizon; not any continent.--The vessel was borne above the land
of Nizir,--the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not
permit it to pass over.--A day and a second day the mountain of Nizir
arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;--the third
and fourth day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not
permit it to pass over;--the fifth and sixth day the mountain of Nizir
arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over.--At the
approach of the seventh day, I sent out and loosed a dove. The dove
went, turned, and--found no place to light on, and it came back. I
sent out and loosed a swallow; the swallow went, turned, and--found no
place to light on, and it came back. I sent out and loosed a raven;
the raven went, and saw the corpses on the waters; it ate, rested,
turned, and came not back.
I then sent out (what was in the vessel) towards the four winds, and I
offered a sacrifice. I raised the pile of my burnt-offering on the
peak of the mountain; seven by seven I disposed the measured
vases,[107]--and beneath I spread rushes, cedar, and juniper wood. The
gods were seized with the desire of it,--the gods were seized with a
benevolent desire of it;--and the gods assembled like flies above the
master of the sacrifice. From afar, in approaching, the great goddess
raised the great zones that Anu has made for their glory (the
gods').[108] These gods, luminous crystal before me, I will never
leave them; in that day I prayed that I might never leave them. "Let
the gods come to my sacrificial pile!--but never may Bel come to my
sacrificial pile! for he did not master himself, and he has made the
waterspout for the Deluge, and he has numbered my men for the pit."
From far, in drawing near, Bel--saw the vessel, and Bel stopped;--he
was filled with anger against the gods and the celestial
archangels:--"No one shall come out alive! No man shall be preserved
from the abyss!"--Adar opened his mouth and said; he said to the
warrior Bel:--"What other than Ea should have formed this
resolution?--for Ea possesses knowledge and [he foresees] all."--Ea
opened his mouth and spake; he said to the warrior Bel:--"O thou,
herald of the gods, warrior,--as thou didst not master thyself, thou
hast made the waterspout of the deluge.--Let the sinner carry the
weight of his sins, the blasphemer the weight of his
blasphemy.--Please thyself with this good pleasure, and it shall never
be infringed; faith in it never [shall be violated].--Instead of thy
making a new deluge, let hyænas appear and reduce the number of men;
instead of thy making a new deluge, let there be famine, and let the
earth be [devastated];--instead of thy making a new deluge, let
Dibbara[109] appear, and let men be [mown down].--I have not revealed
the decision of the great gods;--it is Khasisatra who interpreted a
dream and comprehended what the gods had decided."
Then, when his resolve was arrested, Bel entered into the vessel.--He
took my hand and made me rise.--He made my wife rise, and made her
place herself at my side.--He turned around us and stopped short; he
approached our group.--"Until now Khasisatra has made part of
perishable humanity;--but lo, now, Khasisatra and his wife are going
to be carried away to live like the gods,--and Khasisatra will reside
afar at the mouth of the rivers."--They carried me away and
established me in a remote place at the mouth of the streams.
This narrative agrees with the Biblical one in ascribing the inundation to
a deluge of rain; but adds further details which connect it with intense
atmospheric disturbance, similar to that which would be produced by a
series of cyclones, or typhoons, of unusual severity and duration.
The intense gloom, the deluge of rain, terrific violence of wind, and the
havoc both on sea and land, which accompany the normal cyclones occurring
annually on the eastern coast of China, and elsewhere, and lasting but a
few hours in any one locality, can hardly be credited, except by those who
have experienced them. They are, however, sufficient to render explicable
the general devastation and loss of life which would result from the
duration of typhoons, or analogous tempests, of abnormal intensity, for
even the limited period of six days and nights allotted in the text above,
and much more so for that of one hundred and fifty days assigned to it in
the Biblical account.
As illustrating this I may refer to a few calamities of recent date,
which, though of trivial importance in comparison with the stupendous
event under our consideration, bring home to us the terribly devastating
power latent in the elements.
In Bengal, a cyclone on October 31, 1876, laid under water three thousand
and ninety-three square miles, and destroyed two hundred and fifteen
thousand lives.
A typhoon which raged in Canton, Hongkong, and Macao on September 22,
1874, besides much other destruction, destroyed several thousand people in
Macao and the adjacent villages, the number of corpses in the town being
so numerous that they had to be gathered in heaps and burnt with
kerosene, the population, without the Chinese who refused to lend
assistance, being insufficient to bury them.
A tornado in Canton, on April 11, 1878, destroyed, in the course of a few
minutes, two thousand houses and ten thousand lives.
In view of these few historical facts, which might be greatly
supplemented, there appears to my mind to be no difficulty in believing
that the continuance, during even only six days and six nights, of
extraordinarily violent circular storms over a given area, would,
especially if accompanied by so-called tidal or earthquake waves, be
sufficient to wreck all sea-going and coasting craft, all river boats,
inundate every country embraced within it to a very great extent, submerge
each metropolis, city, or village, situate either in the deltas of rivers,
or higher up their course, sap, unroof, batter down, and destroy all
dwellings on the highlands, level forests, destroy all domestic animals,
sweep away all cultivated soil, or bury it beneath an enormous thickness
of _débris_, tear away the soil from the declivities of hills and
mountains, destroy all shelter, and hence, by exposure, most of those
wretched human beings who might have escaped drowning on the lower levels.
The few survivors would with difficulty escape starvation, or death from
subsequent exposure to the deadly malaria which would be liberated by the
rooting up of the accumulated _débris_ of centuries. This latter
supposition appears to me to be directly indicated by the passage towards
the end of the extract referring to famine, and to the devastation of the
earth by Dibbara (the god of epidemics).
It is noticeable that in this account there is no suggestion of complete
immersion, Khasisatra simply says there is not any continent (_i.e._ all
the hill ranges within sight would stand out from the inundation like
islands), while he speaks of his vessel being arrested by the mountain of
Nizir, which must consequently have been above the surface of the water.
Neither is there any such close limitation of the number of persons
preserved, as in the Biblical story, for Khasisatra took with him his
men-servants, maid-servants, and his young people, while the version
transmitted by Berosus (see Appendix to this Chapter), states that
Xisuthros embarked his wife, children, and his intimate friends, and that
these latter subsequently founded numerous cities, built temples, and
restored Babylon.
We have thus a fair nucleus for starting a fresh population in the
Euphrates valley, which may have received accessions from the gradual
concentration of scattered survivors, and from the enterprise of maritime
adventurers from the African coast and elsewhere, possibly also nomads
from the north, east, and west may have swelled the numbers, and a
polyglot community have been established, which subsequently, through race
distinctions, jealousies, and incompatibility of language, became again
dismembered, as recorded in the history of the attempted erection of the
Tower of Babel.
Confining our attention for the moment to this one locality, we may
imagine that the young population would not be deterred by any
apprehension of physical danger from reinhabiting such of the old cities
as remained recognizable; since we see that men do not hesitate to
recommence the building of cities overthrown by earthquake shocks almost
before the last tremblings are over; or, as in the case of Herculaneum and
Pompeii, within the range of volcanoes which may have already repeatedly
vomited destroying floods of lava. Yet, in this instance, they would
probably invest the calamity with a supernatural horror, and regard it, as
the text expresses it, as a chastisement from the gods for their impiety.
If this were so, the very memory of such cities would soon be lost, and
with it all the treasures of art and literature which they
contained.[110]
The Hindu account is taken from the _S'atapatha-Brâhmana_, a work of
considerable antiquity, being one of a series which Professor Max Müller
believes to have been written eight hundred years before Christ. A literal
translation of the legend, as given in this venerable work, is as
follows:--
"To Manu in the morning they brought water for washing, just as they bring
it for washing the hands. As he was using the water, a fish came into his
hand. This (fish) said to him, 'Preserve me, and I will save thee.' (Manu
said), 'F
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