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attracted to them, preserved them from destruction; and a few months after the discovery of the cave, Dr. Buckland, the great English geologist, visited Kirkdale, to examine its strange contents, which proved indeed stranger than any one had imagined; for many of these remains belonged to animals never before found in England. The bones of Hyenas, Tigers, Elephants, Rhinoceroses, and Hippopotamuses were mingled with those of Deer, Bears, Wolves, Foxes, and many smaller creatures. The bones were gnawed, and many were broken, evidently not by natural decay, but seemed to have been snapped violently apart. After the most complete investigation of the circumstances, Dr. Buckland convinced himself, and proved to the satisfaction of all scientific men, that the cave had been a den of Hyenas at a time when they, as well as Tigers, Elephants, Rhinoceroses, etc., existed in England in as great numbers as they now do in the wildest parts of tropical Asia cr Africa. The narrow entrance to the cave still retained the marks of grease and hair, such as one may see on the bars of a cage in a menagerie against which the imprisoned animals have been in the habit of rubbing themselves constantly, and there were marks of the same kind on the floor and walls.

It was evident that the Hyenas were the lords of this ancient cavern, and the other animals their unwilling guests; for the remains of the latter were those which had been most gnawed, broken, and mangled; and the head of an enormous Hyena, with gigantic fangs found complete, bore ample evidence to their great size and power. Some of the animals, such as the Elephants, Rhinoceroses, etc., could not have been brought into the cave without being first killed and torn to pieces, for it is not large enough to admit them. But their gnawed and broken bones attest, nevertheless, that they were devoured like the rest; and probably the Hyenas then had the same propensity which characterizes those of our own time, to tear in pieces the body of any dead animal, and carry it to their den to feed upon it apart.

While Kirkdale Cave was evidently the haunt of Hyenas chiefly, other caverns in Germany and France were tenanted in a similar manner by a gigantic species of Bear. Their remains, mingled with those of the animals on which they fed, have been found in great numbers in the Cavern of Gailenreuth, in Franconia. The subjoined wood-cut shows the head of this formidable beast, which must have exceeded in size any Bear now living.

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wood-cut below represents a gigantic Salamander of the Tertiary deposits.

It is a curious fact, illustrative of the ignorance of all anatomical science in those

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days, that, when the remains of this reptile (Audrias, as it is now called) were first discovered toward the close of the seventeenth century, they were described by old Professor Scheuchzer as the bones of an infant destroyed by the Deluge, and were actually preserved, not for their scientific value, but as precious relics of the Flood, and described in a separate pamphlet, entitled, "Homo Diluvii Testis." Among the Tertiary Reptiles the Turtles seem to have been a very prominent type, by their size as well as by their extensive distribution. Their remains have been found both in the far West and in the East. The fossil Turtles of Nebraska are well known to American naturalists; but the Oriental one exceeds them in size, and is, indeed, the most gigantic representative of the order known thus far. A man could stand under the arch of the shield of the old Himalayan Turtle preserved in the British

Museum.

It would carry me too far, were I to attempt to give anything more than the most cursory sketch of the animals of the Tertiary age; and, indeed, they are so well known, and have been so fully represented in text-books, that I fear Some of my readers may think even now that I have dwelt too long upon them.

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Pentelicus in Greece, in the later Tertiary deposits; but these remains have not yet

been collected in sufficient number to establish much more than the fact of their presence in the animal creation at that time. I do not offer any opinion respecting the fossil human bones so much discussed recently, because the evidence is at present too scanty to admit of any decisive judgment concerning them. It becomes, however, daily more probable that facts will force us sooner or later to admit that the creation of man lies far be

yond any period yet assigned to it, and Monkeys were unquestionably introdu- that a succession of human races, as of

ced

upon earth before the close of the

animals, have followed one another upon

Tertiaries; some bones have been found the earth. It may be the inestimable

in Southern France, and also on Mount privilege of our young naturalists to solve

this great problem, but the older men of our generation must be content to renounce this hope; we may have some prophetic vision of its fulfilment, we may look from afar into the land of promise, but we shall not enter in and possess it.

The other great types of the Animal Kingdom are very fully represented in the Tertiaries, and in their general appearance they approach much more closely those of the present creation than of any previous epochs. Professor Heer has collected and described the Tertiary Insects in great number and variety; and the Butterflies, Bugs, Flies, Grasshoppers, Dragon-Flies, Beetles, etc., described in his volumes, would hardly be distinguished from our own, except by a practised entomologist. Among Crustacea, the Shrimp-like forms of the earlier geological epochs have become much less conspicuous, while Crabs and Lobsters are now the prominent representatives of the class. Among Mollusks, the Chambered Shells, hitherto so numerous, have become, as they now are, very few in comparison with the naked Cephalopods. The Nautili, however, resemble those now living in the Pacific Ocean; and some fragments of the Paper - Nautilus have been found, showing that this delicate shell was already in existence. There is one very peculiar type of this class, belonging to the Tertiaries, which should not be passed by unnoticed. It partakes of the character both of the Cretaceous Belemnites and of the living Cuttle-Fish,

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rithium, are accumulated in vast numbers. The limestone quarries out of which Paris is chiefly built consist wholly of these Shells. The fresh-water basins were filled with Helices, one of which is represented in the following

wood-cut, with Planorbis, Limnæus, and other Shells resembling those now so

common in all our lakes and rivers, and differing from the living ones only by slight specific characters. The Bivalves also have the same resemblance to the present ones, including fresh-water Mussels as well as the marine Clams and Oysters. Among Radiates, the higher Echini (Sea-Urchins) have become numerous, while the other Echinoderms of all families abound. Corals include, for the first time, the more highly organized Madrepores.

In the Tertiaries we see the dawn of the present condition of things, not only in the character of the animals and plants, but in the height of the mountains and in the distribution of land and

sea.

Let us give a glance at the continents whose growth we have been following, and see what these more recent geological epochs have done for their completion. In Europe they have filled the basin in Central France, and converted all that region into dry land; they have filled also the channel between France and Spain; they have united Central Russia with the rest of Europe by the completion of Poland, and have greatly enlarged Austria and Turkey; they have completed the promontories of Italy and Greece, and have converted the inland sea at the foot of the Jura into the plain of Switzerland. But this fruitful period in the progress of the world, when the character of organic life was higher and the physical features of the earth more varied than ever before, was not without its storms and convulsions. The Pyrenees, the Apennines, the Alps, and with them the whole range of the Caucasus and Himalayas, were raised either immediately after the Cretaceous epoch,

or in the course of the Tertiaries. Indeed, with this most significant passage in her history, Europe acquired all her essential characters. There remained, it is true, much to be done in what is called by geologists "modern times." The work of the artist is not yet finished when his statue is blocked out and the grand outline of his conception stands complete ; and there still remained, after the earth was rescued from the water, after her framework of mountains was erected, after her soil was clothed with field and forest, processes by which her valleys were to be made more fruitful, her gulfs to be filled with the rich detritus poured into them by the rivers, her whole surface to be rendered more habitable for the higher races who were to possess it.

We left America at the close of the Carboniferous epoch. A glance at the geological map will show the reader that during the Permian, Triassic, and Jurassic epochs little was added to the United States, though here and there deposits belonging to each of them crop out. In the Cretaceous epoch, however, large tracts of land were accumulated, chiefly in the South and West; and during the Tertiaries the continent was very nearly completed, leaving only a narrow gulf running up to the neighborhood of St. Louis to be filled by modern detritus, and the peninsula of Florida to be built by the industrious Coral-Workers of our own period. The age of the Alleghany chain is not yet positively determined, but it was probably raised at the close of the Carboniferous epoch. Up to that time, only the Laurentian Hills, the northern side of that mountainous triangle which now makes the skeleton, as it were, of the United States, existed. The upheaval of the Alleghanies added its eastern side, raising the central part of the continent so as to form a long slope from the base of the Alleghanies to the Pacific Ocean; but it was not until the Tertiary Age that the upheaval of the great chain at the West completed the triangle, and transformed that wide westerly slope into

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