On the Microscopical Characters of certain so-called Cetacean Bones associated with Cetolites in the Detrital Bed of the Red Crag at Felixstow, Suffolk
Authors: Dennis J. B. P. 
Published: April 2021

In the detrital bed at the base of the Red Crag, especially at Felixstow, in the county of Suffolk, are found very singular fossils, and in such considerable quantities that they have been made available for economic purposes. But while the manufacturer of artificial manure is daily grinding down heaps of the relics of a former world to renovate the earth, in accordance with that law by which Nature, phœnix-like, arises with renewed beauty out of her own ashes, surely it would be ill becoming the scientific age we live in, not to derive at the same time intellectual advantage from these remarkable remains; and this has, in some measure, already been done—for amongst the fossilized fragments some were observed to be of regular form, and, though water-worn, still gave indications of their origin, and the credit is due to the Rev. Professor Henslow for the discovery of the tympanic bones of whales of which Professor Owen has determined several species. I am not aware, however, that any attempt has been made satisfactorily to determine by the aid of the microscope the nature of other associated bones which, from their irregular shapes, afforded no sure indications of the animals to which they once belonged, and I think it has been too prematurely concluded that they all belonged to huge whales, which have so plentifully left their ear-bones in the Crag; the microscope, and that alone, if judgment be employed in its use, must eventually settle this question. These irregular portions of bones evidently belonged to massive animals, and our study must be directed to other bones of such animals for a solution of the problem before us; and it would be certainly jumping too soon at a conclusion to assign all the rolled bones found in the Red Crag to cetacean origin, because the hard tympanic bones of many whales have escaped the wreck of ages, and still remain as monuments of those huge creatures that once sported in primæval seas. In fact, a slight examination of those osseous stones that have been rolled like the flints and other portions of rocks that form the present shingle on our coasts, must lead us to suspect the existence formerly of mighty mammifers which probably once trod on dry land and roamed over extensive regions; and who shall estimate the centuries during which those bones have rolled to and fro on some primaeval beach, lashed by the surge of seas which have, like those ponderous animals, been swallowed up by all-devouring time. We may fancy their first entombment, when probably numbers fell a sacrifice to some geological vicissitude during the convulsions of Nature in her throes to give birth to the world we live in, while she travailed with child—the future parent of civilisation and of the arts and sciences. Then again we see the deposit in which they were inclosed—“the great mammoth burial-ground”—broken up, becoming the sport of ocean, the bones torn from their resting-place and dashed to fragments on the shore, the harder portions resisting the action of the waves, and fighting for the mastery inch by inch, until the waters, vanquished at last, have spent their fury, perhaps shutting themselves out by their own turbulence, or else the land has risen in its defence. Thus again the osseous fragments are found entombed—the diminished, but not totally destroyed, remains of noble forms. Ages again roll on, and the Red Crag protects them, but not for ever,—the sea returns to the attack, and man, more ruthless than the waves, seizes upon them, and carries them away from their resting-place to grind them fine as the dust, and scatter them over the fields, not like the sown dragons’ teeth, to raise a crop of mail-clad warriors, but that they may reappear in the staff of life, and so fill the fields with joy and gladden the heart of man. To descend, however, from the regions of fancy, if a reality in some measure has not been fancied, let us engage ourselves with the facts before us.