Читать книгу Essay on the Theory of the Earth - Georges baron Cuvier - Страница 32

Table of Contents

Naturalists, certainly, have not yet explored all the continents, nor do they even know all the quadrupeds which inhabit the countries that they have explored. New species of this class are discovered from time to time; and those who have not examined with attention all the circumstances belonging to these discoveries, might also imagine that the unknown quadrupeds, whose bones are found in our strata, may remain to this day concealed, in some islands not yet discovered by navigators, or in some of the vast deserts which occupy the middle of Asia, Africa, the two Americas, and New Holland.

However, if we carefully examine what kinds of quadrupeds have been recently discovered, and in what circumstances they have been found, we shall see that there is little hope of our ever finding alive those which have hitherto been observed only in a fossil state.

Islands of moderate extent, and at a considerable distance from the continents or large islands, possess very few quadrupeds, and these, for the greater part, of diminutive size. When they happen to contain any of the larger species, these must have been carried to them from other countries. Bougainville and Cook found no other large quadrupeds than hogs and dogs in the South Sea Islands; and the largest species of the West India Islands was the agouti.

It is true that the great continents, such as Asia, Africa, the two Americas, and New Holland, possess large quadrupeds, and, generally speaking, contain species peculiar to each; insomuch, that whenever large countries of this description have been discovered, which their situation has kept isolated from the rest of the world, the class of quadrupeds which they contained has been found entirely different from any that existed elsewhere. Thus, when the Spaniards first penetrated into South America, they did not find a single species of quadruped the same as any of Europe, Asia, or Africa. The puma, the jaguar, the tapir, the cabiai, the llama, the vicuna, the sloths, the armadilloes, the opossums, and the whole tribe of sapajous, were to them entirely new animals, of which they had no idea. Similar circumstances have recurred in our own time, when the coasts of New Holland and the adjacent islands were first explored. The various species of kangaroo, phascolomys, dasyurus, and perameles, the flying phalangers, the ornithorynchi and echidnæ, have astonished naturalists by the strangeness of their conformations, which presented proportions contrary to all former rules, and were incapable of being arranged under any of the systems then in use.

If there yet remained some great continent to be discovered, we might still hope to become acquainted with new species, among which there might be found some having more or less similarity to those of which we have discovered the remains in the bowels of the earth. But it is sufficient to cast a glance over the map of the world, and see the innumerable directions in which navigators have traversed the ocean, in order to be satisfied that there remains no other large land to be discovered, unless it may be situated towards the South Pole, where the existence of life would necessarily be precluded by the accumulation of ice.

Hence, it is only from the interior of the large divisions of the world, that we can have any hope of still procuring quadrupeds hitherto unknown. But a little reflection will be sufficient to convince us, that our expectations from this source have as little foundation as from that of the islands.

Doubtless, the European traveller cannot easily traverse vast extents of countries, which are either destitute of inhabitants, or are peopled only with ferocious tribes; and this is more especially true with regard to Africa. But there is nothing to prevent the animals themselves from roaming over these countries in all directions, and penetrating to the coasts. Even when there may be great chains of mountains between the coasts and the deserts of the interior, they must always be broken in some places to allow the rivers to pass through; and, in these burning deserts, the quadrupeds naturally follow the banks of rivers. The inhabitants of the coasts also ascend these rivers, and soon become acquainted with all the remarkable species which exist even to their sources, either from personal observation, or by means of intercourse with the inhabitants of the interior. At no period, therefore, could civilized nations have frequented the coast of a large country for any considerable length of time, without gaining some tolerable knowledge of such of the animals which it contained as were remarkable for their size or configuration.

This reasoning is confirmed by well known facts. Although the ancients never passed the mountains of Imaus, or crossed the Ganges, in Asia; and, although they never penetrated very far beyond Mount Atlas, in Africa; yet were they, in reality, acquainted with all the large animals of these two divisions of the world; and, if they have not distinguished all the species, it was not because they had not seen them, or heard them spoken of by others, but because the mutual resemblances of some of these species caused them to be confounded together. The only important exception which can be opposed to this assertion, presents itself in the Tapir of Malacca, recently sent home from India by two young naturalists, pupils of mine, Messrs Duvaucel and Diard, and which in fact is one of the most interesting discoveries with which Natural History has been enriched in these latter times.

The ancients were perfectly acquainted with the Elephant; and the history of that quadruped is given more accurately by Aristotle than by Buffon. They were not even ignorant of some of the differences which distinguish the elephants of Africa from those of Asia[32].

They knew the two-horned Rhinoceros, which has never been seen alive in modern Europe. Domitian exhibited it at Rome, and had it stamped on his medals, which have been very well described by Pausanias.

The one-horned Rhinoceros, distant as was its country, was equally known to them. Pompey shewed one at Rome; and Strabo has accurately described another which he saw at Alexandria[33].

The Rhinoceros of Sumatra described by Mr Bell; and that of Java, discovered and sent home by Messrs Duvaucel and Diard, do not appear to inhabit the continent. Hence, it is not surprising, that the ancients should have been ignorant of them; besides, they probably would not have distinguished them from the others.

The Hippopotamus has not been so well described as the preceding animals; yet very exact representations of it have been left by the Romans in their monuments relative to Egypt, such as the statue of the Nile, the Palestrine pavement, and a great number of medals. In fact, this animal was repeatedly seen by the Romans; having been exhibited by Scaurus, Augustus, Antoninus, Commodus, Heliogabalus, Philip, and Carinus[34].

The two species of Camel, the Bactrian and Arabian, are both very well described and characterized by Aristotle[35].

The Giraffe, or Camelopard (Camel-Leopard), was also well known to the ancients. A live one was shewn at Rome, in the circus, during the dictatorship of Julius Cæsar, in the year of Rome 708; and ten of them were exhibited together by Gordian III. all of which were killed at the secular games of Philip[36], a circumstance which may well surprise the moderns, who have only witnessed a single individual, which was sent by the Soldan of Egypt to Laurentius de Medicis, in the fifteenth century, and is painted in the frescoes of Poggio-Cajano.

If we read with attention the descriptions of the Hippopotamus, given by Herodotus and Aristotle, and which are supposed to have been borrowed from Hecatæus of Miletum, we shall find, that they must have been made up from two different animals, one of which was perhaps the true hippopotamus, and the other was assuredly the Gnou[37], a quadruped, of which our naturalists begin to take notice only about the end of the eighteenth century. It is the same animal of which fabulous accounts were given by Pliny and Ælian, under the name of catoblepas and catablepon[38].

The Ethiopian Boar of Agatharchides, which is described as having horns, is precisely the Ethiopian Boar of modern times, the enormous tusks of which deserve the name of horns nearly as much as those of the elephant[39].

The Bubalus and Nagor are described by Pliny[40]; the Gazelle by Ælian[41]; the Oryx by Oppian[42]; the Axis, so early as the time of Ctesias[43]; and the Algazel, and Corinne, are accurately figured upon the Egyptian monuments[44].

Ælian has well described the Bos grunniens or Yak, under the name of the ox having a tail which serves for a fly-flapper[45].

The Buffalo was not domesticated by the ancients; but the Indian Ox, of which Ælian speaks[46], and which had horns large enough to hold three amphoræ, was assuredly that variety of the buffalo which is now called the arnee. And even the wild ox with depressed horns, which is mentioned by Aristotle as inhabiting Arachosia, a province of ancient Persia, could be nothing else than the common buffalo[47].

The ancients were acquainted with the hornless variety of the ox[48], and with the African oxen, whose horns, being only attached to the skin, moved with it[49]. They also knew the Indian oxen, which equalled the horse in speed[50]; and those which were so small as not to exceed a he-goat in size[51]. Nor were the broad-tailed sheep unknown to them[52],—nor those of India, which were said to be as large as asses[53].

Although the accounts left us by the ancients, respecting the Aurochs, the Rein-deer, and Elk, are all mingled with fable, they are yet sufficient to prove that these animals were in some degree known to them, but that the reports which had reached them, had been communicated by ignorant people, and had not been corrected by a judicious examination[54]. These animals still inhabit the countries which the ancients assigned to them; and have only disappeared in such of them as have been too much cultivated for their habits. The aurochs[55] and elk still exist in the forests of Lithuania, which were formerly continuous with the great Hercynian Forest. The former of these animals still occurs in the northern parts of Greece, as it did in the days of Pausanias. The rein-deer inhabits the snowy regions of the north, where it always had its abode; it changes its colour, not at pleasure, but according to the change of the seasons. It was in consequence of mistakes scarcely excusable, that it was imagined to have occurred in the Pyrenees in the fourteenth century[56].

Even the White Bear had been seen in Egypt while under the Ptolemies[57].

Lions and Panthers were common at Rome, where they were presented by hundreds in the games of the Circus. Even several Tigers were exhibited there, as well as the Striped Hyena and the Crocodile of the Nile. In the ancient mosaics preserved at Rome, there are excellent representations of the rarest of these animals. Among others, the striped hyena is seen represented with accuracy in a fragment preserved in the Museum of the Vatican; and, while I was at Rome in 1809, a mosaic pavement, composed of natural stones, arranged in the Florentine manner, was discovered in a garden beside the triumphal arch of Galienus, which represented four Bengal tigers executed in a superior manner.

In the Museum of the Vatican, there is deposited the figure of a crocodile in basalt, which is almost a perfect representation of that animal[58].

It cannot in the least be doubted, that the Hippotigris was the Zebra, which, however, is only found in the southern parts of Africa[59].

It would be easy to shew that almost all the more remarkable species of Apes and Monkeys have been distinctly indicated by the ancients, under the names of Pitheci, Sphinxes, Satyri, Cebi, Cynocephali, and Cercopitheci[60].

They even knew, and have described several species of Glires of inconsiderable size, when these animals presented any thing remarkable in their conformation or properties[61]. But the small species are of no importance with reference to the object in view; and, it is sufficient for our purpose to have shewn, that all the large species, which possess any remarkable character, and which we know to inhabit Europe, Asia, and Africa, at the present day, were known to the ancients; whence we may fairly conclude, that their silence in respect to the small quadrupeds, and their neglect in distinguishing the species which very nearly resemble each other, as the various species of antelopes, and of some other genera, were occasioned by want of attention and ignorance of methodical arrangement, rather than by any difficulty proceeding from climate. We may also conclude, with equal certainty, that, as the lapse of eighteen or twenty centuries, together with the advantages of circumnavigating Africa, and of penetrating into India, have added nothing in this department to the information left us by the ancients, there is no probability that succeeding ages will add much to the knowledge of our posterity.

But perhaps some persons may be disposed to employ an opposite train of argument, and to allege that the ancients were not only acquainted with as many large quadrupeds as we are, as has already been shewn, but that they have described several others which we do not now know,—that we act rashly in considering these animals as fabulous,—that we ought to search for them before concluding that we have exhausted the history of the present animal creation,—and, in fine, that among those animals which we presume to be fabulous, we may, perhaps, discover, when we become better acquainted with them, the originals of those bones of unknown animals which we discover buried in the earth. Some may even conceive, that those various monsters, which constitute the essential ornaments of the history of the heroic ages of almost all countries, are precisely those very species which it was necessary to destroy, in order to allow the establishment of civilization. Thus the Theseuses and Bellerophons of ancient times had been more fortunate than all the nations of our days, which have only been able to drive back the noxious animals, but have never yet succeeded in exterminating a single species.