OCR Text |
Show GOO Till~ MONOGENISTS AND understand, by accidental, disturbances of a more recent and local character, snch as earthquakes, volcanoes, ruptures of mountain ban·iers, terrestrial subsi<l nccs, inund:1,tions of rivers, &c.; and by natu1·al, those earlier commotions, cataclysms, and disruptions, known in geolocrical history. Kloe 300 remarks-" One would conceive a false idea of fossils, if it wore thought that they wore always remains of organic bodies, of petrified animals or vegetables. A fossil is oftenest nothing more than tlte mineral filling the apace originally occupied by an O?',(/anic body, vegetable or mineral, of wltich the hard parts have been successively penetrated and 1·eplaced by m.ine1·al substances. ometimos this substitution is made with such }Jrecision, that these last have altogether taken the structure and form of tho parts annihilated; which has given to the mineral a striking resemblance to tho organic body destroyed." In the following observations, however, by tho term "fossil" are meant only such bones as those tmly fossilized; ex. gr., those of the rnegalosaurus, palceotlterium, rnegalonyx, iguanodon, &c., &c. By" humatile," we understand bones which, not having boon subjected to those conditions that incommensurable periods of geological time have alone supplied, arc uocossarily more recent- containing more or less animal matter, phosphate of limo, and so forth; according to their own relative ages, various ingredients, and several gradations of condition. With "petrifactions," of course wo have nothiug to do ; because they are of all epochs-fossil as .well as lturnatile- and can be made in stalactite caves, such as those of Derbyshire or of Kentucky; or manufactured by chemical procedures at any moment; not to speak of tho lost art of the Flore11tino, Sogato.30J With this definition, lot tho query bo repeated-Are lturnan fossil remains extant? . I have not yet seen Prof. Agassiz's Floridian "jaws and portions ~f a foot;" but, so far as literary or oral instruction extends, I can i!u.d but ?n~ l~uman fossil. . 0Ul' Phil~dolphia Academy of N atnral Rcwnces IS Its possessor, VIZ., Dr. Dwkeson's "trouvaille" of tbe f'~·a.gment of a pelvis at Natchez. Dr. Usher 302 'pleads for its authontwlt! as afossil;,which c~ndition .neither human art, nor any procosfl sbott of Natures geolog1cal por1ods, can, 'tis said, fabricate. Sir Charles. Lyell, acknowledging the bono itself to be a fossil, suggests that th1s same os innominatum may have fallen down, from a recent ~ Le Dtluge, Oonaiderationa gtologiquea et hiatoriquea 1ur le1 derniera cataclyam1 du Globe P&rls, 18mo., 184.7. ' p. ~~!~ARLAN's translation of OANNAJ.'S Iliatory of Embalming, Philudelpbia, 8vo., 1840; 101 'l'ypea of Afanki1ld, pp. 844, 349. THR POLYGENli:l'I'S. 501 Indian gt·avc-yard, among anterior fossilized relics of extinct gonem discovered with it,- some of which, together with tho human fossil, may at any time bo behold in tho ilrst case of vertebrated remains in the lower room of the museum of our Academy. " Componere lites," in matters of science, or for the increase of knowledge, wherein agitation really becomes the lifo and soul of progress, is a thing repugnant to my instincts. It remains (constat), therefore, that there is but one human fossil bone in the world ; and that the causes of its fossilificatiou, not its fossilized state, are disputed. This, thus far uniq uc, instance eliminated from the argument--all human remains hitherto discovered in alluvials, cavoms, or osseous strata, are nUMA'l'ILE; and so are Lund's callith1·ix primcevus and protopitltecu11, with other past simiadre found in South America, of which the genus is not merely identical with the airnim platy1·ltinm belonging to this continent, and wholly wanting elsewhere, but, what is extremely noteworthy, their '1species" is very nearly the same 30:J as that of each of their succedaneums skipping about Brazilian forests at the present hour. There is a solidarity, a homogeneity here, of circumstances between monkeys and man, not to be contemptuously overlooked. . Thus much established, is it, I would ask, through mere fortmtous accident that the Guadaloupo human skeletons, equally burnatile with Lund's American simice, should, by Mantell,3(\1 be assimilated to the Peruvian, or Carib, indigenous races of America, soeiug that they present "similar craniological development?" or that Moultrio,"05 finds in the skull of one of them, brought by M. L'IIeminior to Charleston, S. C., "all the characteristics which mark the American race in general?" Must we attribute, as Bunsen has it, to "the devil, or his pulchinollo, accident," 300 a coincidence, that, in the same deposits with humatile American simim, Luud should discover skulls of humatile American man ;307 "difioring in nothing from the acknowledcred type?" 01·, finally, is mere chance the cause that, on this c~ntinont, by naturalists now recognized to be the oldest in ago, if among the newest in name, there should bo 803 " Referable to fou1• modific11tions of tho existing typos of quadrumana"- says MAN'n:LL (Wonders of Geology, ubi ~upra, I, pp. 258-9). I)(K Op. cit., I, pp. 86-90. 805 MORTON, Physical type of the American Indimla. 806 Philoaophy of Universal lliatory, (supra, note lG) I, p. 4. 801 MoltTON, ( 'fl11pe1 of .Mankind, pp. 208, 850), Proceedi1l!JS A cad. Nat. Soc., 1844:LUNll himself (Lt.ttre a AI. Rufn, 28 Mars, 1844-apud KM:E, Le Deluge, p. 328) says" La race d'hommcs qui a v6cu dans cetto ptu·t.io du mondo, daus son antiquit6 Ia pluR r6cu16e, 6tnit, quttnt il. son typo g6neml, Ia memo qui l'h11bit11it au temp~ de sa d6couvo1·to par los :Europ6ons." |