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Show IMBEDDING OF TilE REMAINS [Ch. XVII. Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans*. These when they subside may often produce considera~le beds of v~getable matter. In Holland submarine peat is derived from fuel, and on parts of our own coast from Zostera marina. In places where algre do not generate peat, they may nevertheless leave traces of their form imprinted on argillaceous and calcareous mud, as they are usually very tough in theit· texture. . Cetacea.-It is not uncommon for the larger cetacea, wh1eh can only float in a considerable depth of water, to be carried during storms or high tides into estuaries, or upon low shores, where, upon the retiring of high water, they are stranded. Thus a narwal ( Monodon monoceros) was found on the beach near Boston, in Lincolnshire, in the year 1800, the whole of its body buried in the mud. A fisherman going to his boat saw the horn and tried to pull it out, when the animal began to stir itself f. An individual of the common whale (Bahena mysticetus), which measured seventy feet, came ashore near Peterhead, in 168~. Many individuals of the genus Balrenoptera have met the same fate. We may content ourselves with referring to those cast on shore near Burnt Island, and at Alloa, recorded by Sib bald and Neill. The other individual mentioned by Sibbald, as having come ashore at Boyne, in Banffshire, was probably a Razor-back. Of the genus Catodon (Cachalot), Ray mentions a large one stranded on the west coast of Holland in 1598, and the fact is also commemo~ rated in a Dutch engraving of the time of much merit. Sib~ bald, too, records that a herd of' Cachalots, upwards of one hundred in number, were found stranded at Kairston, Orkney!. The dead bodies of the larger cetacea are sometimes found floating on the surface of the waters, as was the case with the immense whale exhibited in London in 1831. And the carcass of a sea-cow or Lamantine (Halicora) was, in 1785, cast ashore near Leith. We might enumerate many more examples de- * Page 78. t Fleming's Brit. Animals, p. 37; in which work may be seen many other cases enumerated, Ch. XVII.] OF MARINE PLANTS AND ANIMALS. i79 rived from foreign as well as British shores, but the facts above cited will suffice to show that such occurrences are not rare. To some accidents of this kind, we may refer the position of the skeleton of a whale seventy-three feet long, which was found at Airthrey, on the Forth near Alloa, imbedded in clay twenty feet higher than the surface of the highest tide of the river Forth at the present day. From the situation of the Roman station and causeways at a small distance from the spot, it is concluded that the whale must have been stranded there at a period prior to the Christian era*. Other fossil remains of this class have also been found in estuaries, known to have been silted 1.1p in recent times, one example of which we have already mentioned near Lewes, in Sussex. When we reflect on the facility with which these marine mammalia are thus shown to run aground upon shoals, even when there have been no great convulsions, such as hurricanes or earthquakes extending under the ocean, but merely such disturbances as the tides and storms of our seas may cause, we may be better enabled to form a sound opinion, in regard to the probability of certain geological theories, which have acquired no small share of popularity. It has been suggested, that if the ocean, displaced by the sudden upheaving of some great mountain~chain, such as the Andes, should make a transient passage over the land, a covering of alluvium might be left strewed over the hills and valleys, and that, in this alluvium, might be contained the remains of mammalia exclusively terrestrial. The skeleton of the gigantic whale, the long horn· of the narwal (harder than ivory), the strong grinders of the lamantine, these and other marine relics o.f the era Omne cum Proteus pecus egit altos Visere montes, might, we are told, be entirely wanting. Not one of them would be conspicuous amongst the refuse of the " bated and retiring flood," but instead of them we should discover the bones, tusks, and teeth of the elephant or rhinoceros, the hip- • Quart. Journ, of Lit. Sci., &c. No. 15, p. 172. Oct, 1819. |