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Show so EGYPTIAN MUMMIES IDENTICAL [Ch.II. an animal, which at Thebes or Memphis, two or three thousand years ago, had 1. ts own pri.e sts an dal ta rs *." Among the Egyptian mummies thus procured were not only those of numerous wild quadrupeds, birds, and reptiles, but, what was perhaps of still greater importance in deciding the great question under discussion, there were the mummies of domestic animals, among which those abov_e mentioned, the bull, the dog, and the cat, were frequent. Now such was the conformity of the whole of these species to those now living, that there was no more difference, says Cuvier, between them than between the human mummies and the embalmed bodies of men of the present day. Yet some of these animals have since that period been transported by man to almost every variety of climate, and forced to accommodate their habits to new circumstances, as far as their nature would permit. The cat, for example, has been carried over the whole earth, and, within the last three centuries, has been naturalized in every part of the new world, from the cold regions of Canada to the tropical plains of Guiana; yet it has scarcely undergone any perceptible mutation, and is still the same animal which was held sacred by the Egyptians. Of the ox, undoubtedly there are many very distinct races; but the bull Apis, which was l_ed in solemn processions by the Egyptian priests, did not differ from some of those now living. The black cattle that have run wild in America, where there were many peculiarities in the climate not to be found, perhaps, in any part of the old world, and where scarcely a single plant on which they fed was of precisely the same species, instead of altering their form and habits, have actually reverted to the exact likeness of the aboriginal wild cattle of Europe. In answer to the arguments drawn from the Egyptian mum4 mies, Lamarck said that they were identical with their living descendants in the same country, because the climate and "' Ann. du Museum, d'Hist. Nat., tom. i. p. 234. 1802, The reporters were MM. Cuvier, Lac6pede, and Lamarck. Ch. II.] WITH SPECIES STILL LIVING. 31 physical geography of the banks of the Nile have remained unaltered for the last thirty centuries. But why, we ask, have other individuals of these species retained the same characters in so many different quarters of the globe, where the climate and many other conditions are so varied ? The evidence derived from the Egyptian monuments was not confined to the animal kingdom ; the fruits, seeds, and other portions of twenty different plants, were faithfully preserved in the same manner ; and among these the common wheat was procured by Delille, from closed vessels in the sep~lchres of the kings, the grains of which retained not only the1r form, but even their colour, so effectual has proved the p~ocess of em~alming with bitumen in a dry and equable climate. No difference could be detected between this wheat and that which now grows in the East and elsewhere, and similar identifications were made in regard to all the other plants. And here we may observe, that there is an obvious answer to Lamarc,k's objection*, that the botanist cannot point out a country where the common wheat grows wild, unless in plac.es ~here it may have been derived from neighbouring cul.tJvatl~n .. Al.l naturalists are well aware that the geogra~ hi~al dtstnbutwn of a great number of species is extremely hmtted, and that it was to be expected that every useful plant shou!d ~rst be cultivated successfully in the country where it ':as md1gen~us, and that, probably, every station which it parhal~ y occu_Pied, when growing wild, would be selected by the agncultunst as best suited to it when artificially increased. Palestine has been conjectured, by a late writer on the Cerealia, to hav~. been .the original habitation of wheat and barley, a sup~~!:ntwn winch appears confirmed by Hebrew and Egyptian tradmons~ a~d ~y tracing the migrations of the worship of Ceres, as mdiCative of the migrations of the plant t. If we are to infer that some one of the wild grasses has been * Phil. Zool., tom. i., p. 227. t L'Origine et la_Patrie des C~reales, &c. Ann. des Sci, Nat., tom, ix., p. 61, |
