monsters, and seen them in imagination roaming over the pathless forests of our island, had never yet beheld the entire animal reproduced before them;-geologists were for the first time to gaze upon the fruit of their industry, and the results of their science; to pronounce their verdict upon the truthfulness of the portraits, and to state how far they accorded with their preconceived notions. The opinion of Professor Owen has been given, and it fully justifies the directors for the boldness with which they entrusted to Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins—a gentleman who, in the most remarkable manner, combines in his own person an intimate acquaintance with geology, a profound knowledge of anatomy, and an intense love of art-the construction of these extinct animals. Many of the spectators who for the first time gaze upon these uncouth forms, will be disposed to seek for the authority upon which these antediluvian creatures have been constructed, and to ask if it be possible from a few scattered fossil bones to construct an entire anímal. A few years since, the answer to such a question would have involved something of doubt and uncertainty. Now, however, in matters connected with geology, as in many other sciences, brilliant hypotheses, and speculative ingenuity, have given place to well established facts, and clear, well supported deductions from them. The key with which Professor Owen can decipher the records of geological ages, is as certain and as infallible as that with which a Champollion or a Rawlinson can unlock the mysteries of Egyptian or Assyrian inscriptions. The difficulties and seeming contradictions which in its earlier days attached to geology as a science have disappeared, and if some of their retiring shadows still darken the horizon, they will, as the day advances, one by one melt away in the increasing light of science. Physical, like moral science," says Mr. Andrew Ramsay, owns no conflicting truths, nor can they ever be opposed. Truth has no discordant elements. Like a perfect instrument of music struck by an unskilled hand, the notes will jar; but touched by him who has mastered its mysteries, it gives voice to infinitely varied and full flowing harmonies." One of the most remarkable of the many claims which geology has recently put forward to be recognized on account of its truthfulness, was furnished a short time since by that most able and ardent votary of the science, Professor Owen, in his re-construction, from a portion of a fossil bone, of a "gigantic, wingless bird." Although the representation of this animal is not yet completed, and does not appear in the present collection, it affords so remarkable an instance of successful inductive reasoning, and of such profound anatomical knowledge, and bears so strongly on the veracity and value of the other restorations of extinct animals, that the visitor, before making acquaintance with the various antediluvian monsters to which he will be immediately introduced, will be pleased to learn the interesting circumstances under which this last addition was made to "the happy family." Some time since, Professor Owen received from New Zealand a small box containing a fragment of a thick bone of about a few inches in length. After most careful examination, the learned professor pronounced it to be a portion of the bone of some gigantic bird. The propriety of the decision was called in question by many persons, and it was thought that the science of comparative anatomy had received its death-blow, for it was said to be impossible that an animal which possessed bones of such extraordinary size and strength as this appeared to be, could ever have flown, and the bone could not therefore have formed part of the anatomy of a bird. The professor persevered in his opinion, and to the surprise of the learned and unlearned world, he declared it to have formed part of a "wingless bird," which he called the "dinornis " or monster bird. Could anything be a more preposterous, or a more unlikely animal to exist than a "wingless bird ?" and for once, not merely the science, but the common sense of the professor, was derided and called in question. Months rolled on, nothing was heard of the wingless dinornis, except an occasional joke, or piece of raillery, at the expense of the rash man who could venture to outrage all the experience and common sense of the 19th century. The strange announcement of Professor Owen in due course reached our antipodes, inquiry was directed to the subject, and in a short time several boxes of bones collected from the same locality as that where the first small fragment was found, were sent to London; the professor proceeded to examine them, and to put them together, until there stood before him the complete skeleton of the gigantic bird without wings, the previous existence of which he had asserted from the examination of a small piece of bone. Shortly after came information, gleaned from among the natives of New Zealand, that there once existed a great bird which had no wings, and which consequently never flew, and an old man of one of the tribes remembered to have heard a father or a grandfather tell of his having killed the last of these strange birds, called by the. natives the "moa," thus completely corroborating the opinion of the eminent geologist. The monsters of an antediluvian age may flee before the approach of man, or disappear amid the convulsions of nature, but from their bones entombed in rocks, or their footprints marked on the soft sandbanks, science can re-construct the extinguished races, and place them before the admiring and astonished gaze of the people of the present age. We may explain, as tending in some degree to show the means by which geologists are enabled to ascertain whether any particular bone belongs to an extinct reptile, a fish, or a bird, that the peculiar texture of the bones, or the forms of cells or molecules of which they are made up, differ considerably according to the animal to which the bones belonged, and aided by this unerring test, the skilful anatomist is enabled not merely to decide to what particular part of the body any fossil bone might belong, but also the nature of the animal of which it once formed part. It would be impossible, even if within our province to do so, in the narrow limits to which we are confined, to explain all the varied facts or theories of a science the object of which is to describe the solid materials of the earth which we inhabit, the order and causes of their arrangement, and the various organic remains which are found in them. Leaving untouched the wide field of speculation, and confining attention to the broad facts brought to light by geology, the visitor as yet unversed in the mysteries of this science may, however, be able to appreciate, and readily to understand the illustrations here placed before him. On piercing the crust of the globe, it has been found that the materials of which it is composed differ in their nature and construction, and deposited upon one another in regular order, they form distinct and clearly marked strata. At present there are about twenty-six different strata or depositions known and classified, and these are all arranged or grouped under three heads, known as "primary," "secondary," and "tertiary," or first, second, and third. Except in instances where convulsions of nature or other causes have upheaved or depressed them, these strata would be found to exist piled up in regular order and succession. The lowest of this series of depositions, so far as science has at present discovered, reposes upon granite, bearing traces of its once having existed in a molten state, or having been acted upon by tremendous volcanic agencies. So great, however, have been the convulsions to which the globe has been subjected, that this granite has been found to force its way through all the uppermost strata, and having in its resistless course overcome the resistance of the earth's crust, has towered on in its unimpeded way into the region of the clouds, where its snow-capped head reposes upon the loftiest of our mountain chains. Basalt and gneiss, of an origin somewhat akin to the hoary granite and other rocks, have also played their freaks with the poor tortured crust of the globe; they have disturbed its repose and the regular order of its stratification, and formed upon its surface "Some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm; By the upheaving of these vast rocks, the superimposed strata have been disarranged; earthquakes, too, have lent their desolating influence; water has contributed its rushing or wasting effects, and has hewn deep channels for its passage, or ocean-beds for its reservoirs; fire has sent forth its streams of lava; storms have ravaged the face of the earth; and countless myriads of coralline insects have united their tiny powers to produce vast rocky reefs and newly-formed islands. Add to all these, the myriad wasting and denuding atmospheric effects, and some idea will have been obtained of the mighty causes which have given diversity to the face of our globe, and introduced confusion into the order of its stratification. The visitor will not therefore conclude, because he may see the various strata regularly piled upon each other in these illustrations, that they are uniformly to be found superimposed with the same regularity upon each other in the wider field of nature. If he were to pierce the earth at the spot upon which he is now standing, and penetrate to a great depth towards its centre, he would probably find in his journey that several of the strata were deficient, but he would observe no departure from that regular order of succession as portrayed in the illustrations by which he is surrounded. The geologist finds chalk strongly marked at Dover, or in the Surrey Hills, the lias in Dorsetshire, the wealdon in Sussex, the oolite in Oxford, the red sandstone in Warwickshire and Devonshire; but whatever strata are below, they will be found to be those which had preceded them in order of time. THE TERTIARY EPOCH. From the top of the high mound, forty feet in height, the visitor will see spread before him the extensive "tidal lake," of thirty acres in area, in which are situated several small islands, devoted to the reception and illustration of geological animals and strata. The first island, the Tertiary, is not so far advanced as that devoted to the secondary epoch; but it will be advisable, in our imaginary journey through the crust of the globe, to commence with this latest series. The uppermost of all the tertiary beds, or rather the one which reposes upon the latest of tertiary formations that upon which the visitor is now standing-is distinguished as the "historical." It is that which has been the theatre of all the great events of history-which has been stained with the blood of battles fought for freedom and national existence; it is the soil from the fruitful bosom of which springs the grain which rewards the anxious toil of the husbandman; it nourishes the grass that decks the smiling hills, and the towering oaks that impart beauty and majesty to the woodland scenery; it is the strata out of which man was formed-upon which the flowers of Paradise blossomed-which trembled as it heard its curse pronouncedwhich afterwards drank up a brother's blood--and upon whose face toiling millions of the free and the enslaved have, for 6,000 years, expended their lives of weary toil. At the first step which the visitor takes below this mere surface-soil, all traces of human remains and human works cease; and his grave, shallow though it be, will be formed amid the dust of a departed world. Formations of sand and clay, and gravel and limestone, many of them of great thickness, underlie each other; and as we pass through them, the most familiar of animal forms are found rapidly receding from view, and their places supplied by strange and yet stranger forms, till in the lowest division, where the great secondary epoch is reached, traces of existing species are rarely found, and creatures of strange form and uncouth appearance everywhere arrest the attention as they lie petrified in their rocky cemeteries. The rocks of this tertiary system are generally spoken of as "basins," as the "London" and "Paris" basins, for they appear to have been formed in great hollows in the surface of the chalk series. The tertiary formations commence immediately beneath all watermoved gravel, river-sand, or mere surface-soil. In these formations, some of the animal remains approach nearly to the existing forms of animal life, and the first traces of ruminant animals, such as the ox, rein-deer, and others, are discovered. Among the fossil remains of gigantic animals discovered throughout these strata, some of them differ widely from, others approach nearly to, existing specimens, and the remains of fossil elephants are very numerous. Mammoths' or elephants' bones and tusks occur throughout Russia in the diluvial formations, and more particularly in eastern Siberia and the Arctic marshes. The tusks are very numerous, and in so high a state of preservation that they even now form an article of commerce, and are employed in the same works as that which may be termed the "living ivory" of Asia and Africa, though the fossil tusks fetch an inferior price. Siberian fossil ivory forms the principal material on which the Russian ivory-turner works. The tusks most abound in the Laichovian isles, and on the shores of the frozen sea; but the best are found in the countries near the Arctic circle and in the most eastern regions, where the soil in the very short summer is thawed only at the surface, and in some years not at all. The first discovery of these curious remains was made in 1799 by a Tungusian, named Schumachoff, who, after the fishing-season of the Lena was over, generally went to hunt and fish at the peninsula of Tamut. He had constructed for his wife some cabins on the banks of the lake Oncoul, and had embarked to seek along the coasts for mammoth tusks. One day, he saw among the blocks of ice a shapeless mass, but did not then discover what it was. In 1800 he perceived that this object was more disengaged from the ice, and that it had two projecting parts; and towards the end of the summer of 1801, the entire side of the animal and one of the tusks were quite free from ice. The summer of 1802 was cold; but in 1803, part of the ice between the earth and the mammoth, for such was the object discovered, having melted more rapidly than the rest, the plane of its support became inclined, and the enormous mass fell by its own weight on a bank of sand. In March 1804 Schumachoff came again to his mammoth, and having cut off the tusks, exchanged them with a merchant for goods of the value of fifty roubles. Some portions of the carcass of this animal were found two or three years afterwards; and when the different bones |