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Those whom these suppositions do not satisfy, may tell us, that a number of things are still wanting towards enabling us to form any judgment on the origin of those heaps of bones daily discovered in the bowels of the earth. It is much to be wished, that some active and ingenious naturalist would collect together all the particulars that have from time to time been given on that subject. But nothing appears to me more striking than the facts related by the Abbé Fortis, in his observations on the Isles of Cherso and Ozero, in the Adriatic. He describes two caverns in the former of those two isles; and adds, that the shores of Istria afford a great number which are very spacious. One of these two caverns is, properly speaking, composed of three grottoes, that communicate with each other. Their inside, from top to bottom, is between two beds of marble. In these are a quantity of bones, in a half petrified state, and connected together by a kind of ferruginous ochre. They lie in one of the deepest recesses of this subterranean cave, two feet above the ground, and at the depth of thirty feet beneath the superficies of the mountain, which is all of marble. These fossil bones, of which other vestiges are met with on this isle, are found scattered along the whole of Dalmatia, as they are all over the isle of Cherso. They are the bones of various terrestrial animals, some broken, and some entire. They are found in greatest quantities in vertical and horizontal gaps, and in the interstices of the beds of marble which constitute the base of the hills of this isle. Every parcel of these bones is enveloped in a coat of quartz and stalactes above a palm in thickness. The substance of these bones is calcined and shining. As they are constantly found in the isle of Cherso, in a stony and martial earth, and as these beds of marble preserve a certain correspondence with the sides of the cavern and the continent; we may suppose that these layers, alternately composed of a stratum of marble and one of bones, agree with the northern shore of the Quarnaro, as far as the isles of the Archipelago, and probably farther. At the Museum Britannicum they shew enormous jaw-bones with all their teeth, bones, and tusks, similar to the bones and tusks of the largest elephants, all of them found in the earth on the banks of the river Ohio, and sent to the Museum by the celebrated Dr. Franklin. These bones have hardly changed their nature. As to the jaw-bones, they certainly never did belong to elephants; the teeth of them are not disposed in lamina, like those of that animal, but are of the nature of the teeth of carnivorous animals. They are attributed, till something better can be found out for them, to uh

VOL. II..

the mahmout, the existence of which is totally destitute of all probability.

In the cabinet of the Royal Society at London there is a large piece of the rock of Gibraltar, containing a great quantity of fragments of human bones; which, although they have not changed their nature, are perfectly inherent to the mass of the rock.

Mr. Thomas Falkner, in his description of the country of the Patagonians, relates, that a very large quantity of what to all appearance were human bones, of extraordinary magnitude, are found on the banks of the river of Carcarania or Tercero, at a little distance from the place where it falls into the Parana. They are of different sizes, and seem to have belonged to people of different ages. Mr. Falkner says, "he has seen the bones called tibia, ribs, sternums, fragments of sculls, and particularly molar teeth, which are above three inches in diameter at the root. I am assured," adds he, "that the like bones are found on the banks of the Parana, Paraguay, and even in Peru."

When I passed through Chirikova, about thirty versts from Simbrisk, I was shewn various bones of elephants, found in different parts upon the two shores of the Sviæga. The inhabitants produce likewise several little works carved out of the tusk of one of these animals discovered twenty-five years ago in the same place, the ivory of which is very yelJow. A much greater number of these bones, and even the scull of an elephant, were dug up near Nagadkina, on the bank of the rivulet Birutsk, which runs into the Sviæga. The people here have made a number of little toys, &c. of the ivory found in these parts, which differs in no respect whatever, and cannot be distinguished, from the finest ivory ever used. The point of the tusk, employed in these works, is the only part of it that is the least calcined, and began to exfoliate. But is it not to the last degree astonishing, that a bone should be preserved, in a hot climate, without undergoing the slightest alteration, through an almost infinite Succession of years?

It is pretended, that near the village of Nagadkina the remains of two ancient entrenchments still exist; and that, whenever the earth is turned up about them, they are sure to find a quantity of human bones. If this be true, though I could learn nothing probable about it, it would occasion a sort of little triumph to some authors, who are of opinion, that all these elephant-bones, found under ground in the different countries of the North, belonged to those animals that were brought by the armies that came on expeditions

into these parts. But this opinion may be overturned by a host of reasons more triumphant still. And it is much more natural to carry back the origin of these remains, scattered even as far as the banks of the Frozen Sea, to revolutions much more remote, and of far greater importance, even subversive of the whole face of the globe we inhabit.

The opinions of naturalists on the origin of these skeletons of exotic animals are very various. Some, with all possible subtilty and ingenuity, have advanced, that the climates of the earth have successively changed their nature; and, that those which are at present cold, were hot a great number of ages ago. Others attribute it to the deluge. But perhaps there may be no necessity for wandering so far into the darkness of antiquity. In the year 1767, as they were digging a well near the Birutsk, at the depth of a fathom and a half they found a quantity of human bones, without the smallest trace of a coffin, or any thing that might serve as such; and similar bones are often found in the neighbour-hood of that stream. Sometimes, it is said, the iron heads of pikes are found among the bones, and parts of other offensive weapons; which indubitably prove, that a battle has formerly been fought in these parts. Now we know that a great many of the Asiatic nations used elephants in war. It has been thought apparent, therefore, that these carcases of exotic animals were buried in the neighbourhood of the Volga several centuries perhaps, but not so many thousand years ago as some suppose. But how are these pretended mahmout-bones often covered with so many layers of earth, and actually found in the cliffs that form the very banks of the river? It is thought not difficult to explain it. We know that the current of the immense rivers that traverse Russia frequently undermine and cut their most solid banks, and that the soil where rivers, both great and small, have formerly flowed, is now quite dry. The Volga, even in our days, has swallowed up whole islands, and formed new ones in other parts. Nay, sometimes it leaves its ancient bed, and forms another. This is proved by all those hillocks of sand, irregularly placed, and containing a very great quantity of fluviatile shells. This once laid down, we may easily conceive how those regular layers have been formed with which these elephant-bones are covered. And we see too how it is possible that a certain quantity of these bones may have been detached from a former place by the waters, and carried lower down by the current and then covered afresh with earth. These, however, are far from solving the different appearances of those numberless collections of

bones that present themselves in various parts of the globe I should be very happy if some of your learned naturalists would take this subject into consideration.

1785, July.

M. M. M.

XXV. Fossils in the Vicinity of Oxford.

MR. URBAN,

Oxford, March 22, 1757. IN your two last Magazines you have obliged your readers with some entertaining remarks upon fossils. Of late years greater attention has been given to that branch of natural history than formerly, as is evident from the valuable collection's in the cabinets of the curious. Were these collections not made for amusement only, but also for the better investigation of the hidden cause of the dissolution of the earth, when it received these adventitious bodies into its bosom, we might entertain some hopes of coming at the true solution of that difficult problem, than which, perhaps, there is none in all natural history more intricate, though the effects of that dissolution are every where obvious.

It is true that extraneous fossils are found more abundantly in some places than others; but there is not a tract of land in the whole world entirely without them; and they are found at all depths, indifferently, so far as the miners have hitherto had occasion to follow them.

Hordel-Cliff is very productive of extraneous fossils, and affords great variety of them, as your ingenious correspondent observes: they are also more wonderfully preserved in that stratum of clay, than in any other part of this kingdom, being very little changed from their original state, and ap pear equally elegant with recent shells of the same tribes, saving the colour and polish, which are somewhat impaired. But I think we can boast of as great variety, (though in a very different state) at a small village called Stonesfield, near Woodstock, in this county. Most of these are entombed in slate stone, have a more striking aspect, and shew apparent tokens of far more remote antiquity, though I believe them to be of the same date with those at Hordel-Cliff.

In splitting this stone, the workmen find great variety of 'extraneous bodies, such as sharks teeth, which the naturalists call Lamiodontes; there are also found Lycodontes, or Wolves teeth; Conichthyodontes, or tusks of sea animals;

Icthyperia, or palates of fishes; all of which cramp names with their icons, may be seen in Hill's Nat. Hist. Vol. I. There are also found at the same place, (but in different strata) Echini Ovarii, Cordati, Clypiati, &c. variety of Anomie Chama; oysters in abundance, of a crooked form, which has given them the name of the sickle oyster: belemnites, nautilites, jaws of fishes with the teeth perfect in them; bones of quadrupeds, ribs, vertebræ, &c. some of birds; the medullary cavities being larger than the others, they are more frequently compressed, I suppose, by the general subsidence of matter at the deluge. American ferns are also found in this slate-stone, with other vegetables. The plant on one side, and the impression on the other, has a pretty effect, and is a sure proof that the matter which formed the stone was once in a fluid state. It would take up more room than you have to spare, to enumerate all the varieties that are found in this slate-stone, and the strata above it.

About three months since, there was found in the same stratum, the thigh-bone of some large animal; it is twentyseven inches long, and by computation, (for it is bedded in stone) about 16 or 18 inches in circumference. One half of the bone is clear, and one end entirely detached from the stone, and perfect; so that it may be looked upon as a capital fossil, and a great rarity. I suppose it to be the thigh bone of the Hippopotamus, or sea-horse, though I have but little judgment in osteology.

I formerly met with two pieces of bone, and some vertebræ of the same kind, and of a proportionable bulk, at the same place, which are now in the collection of a gentleman in London.

All the way from the abovementioned village to Oxford, which is ten miles, the different strata abound with plenty of fossils and this famous seat of learning is surrounded with still greater variety, and, if possible, more curious; so that one would imagine providence had placed it in the midst of these natural rarities, to exercise and divert the minds of the curious, after their close attention to things of greater importance.

This city has on the north side, large beds of gravel, of singular use in making those beautiful walks and gardens in and about it, which are kept in very great order by the University. In this gravel are found porpites, fungites, astroites, and such like coralloid bodies. Pectines, anomiæ, ostracites, &c. are also found in it.

Near the east gate of this city, and in St. Clement's adjoining, the gravel beds are lost, and we find a stratum of

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