The Perrysburg journal. [volume] (Perrysburg, Ohio) 1853-1861, 1854-01-30
S7N
The Predecessors of the Human Race.


North British Review has recently appeared
ascribed to DR.. Pyle Smyth. 1t brings be-
tore us some striking facts and solemn reason
ing on the various creations hich philoso-
pliers supposed to have preceded the forma-
ton OF man. The doctor refers to the me-
moir read by Curvier in 1896, at the first
sitting OF the National Institute, "On the
species Of fossil elephants, compared with
living species" in which he demonstrates
that the fossil elephant differs from all liv-
ing species, and that it is an extinct species,
now lost He undertook to prove the like
with respect to other animals. "May we
ASK" said he, "why we find so many re-
mains OF unknown animals, whilst we can
md none which we can rank among the
species which we know? We may see how
probable it is that they have all belonged to
the beings Of a world anterior TO ours-to
beings destroyed by revolutions of the earth,
and to beings which have been replaced by
existing Species
Surrounded by the eTuUie of former crea-
tions, the task assigned to Cuvier the article
goes on to state, was to restore the fragments
to their former positions. By great labor,
lie succeeded in tracing their connection,
and re-established l68 vertebral animals,
which form fifty distinct generations, of
which fifteen are entirely new and reckon
ing the additions which have since been
made, there is reason to believe that the
species of extinct animals are more numer-
Gus than the living ones
But Cuvier found that the differences of
structure between fossil and recent animals
increase with the age of the deposit in which
the former are found, and that these differ
ences mark the age of the deposits them
selves. AS the primitive rocks exhibit no
traces of plants or animals, he concluded
that there was time when no living beings
existed upon the earth; and that, before the
creation of man, the world was inhabited
by at least three different generations of an
inlals, which had been successfully created
and destroyed.
1t is supposed with reason, if the subject
De not too grand for our feeble reason, that
tie creation of vegetable bodies preceded
the creation of the animals that were to de-
YOUR them. The stately pine, the gigantic
equisetacea, and the lofty palm, waved in
the primeval forests, and the sea and the
land were inhabited only by small number
of the marine mammala, and scarcely any
of the terrestrial mamma!ia.
We then arrive at this startling conclu-
sion, that among the earliest inhabitants of
the globe We're reptiles of enormous magni-
tude, the Megalosaurus, being upwards of
seventy feet long; the Ichthyosaurus, above
thirty feet in length; the Plesiosaurus, an
animal combining the trunk of an ordinary
quadruped, with neck like the body of a
serpent, the head of lizard, the teeth of
crocodile, and the paddles of whale and
the Pterodactyle, the most extraordinary of
extinct animals, uniting the character of a
bird, reptile, and quadruped!
Ia the second period the terrestrial man.
malta increase in number, and we have along
with them numerous Pachydermata or ami
mails with thick skins, such as the Pa.eothe-
rum and Anopeleotherium, and other gene
ra OF aquatic animals which dwelt on the
margin.of lakes and rivers. In the first of
these extinct genera these species vary in size,
from the rhinoceros to the hog These and
other species, nearly fifty in number, We're
discovered by Cuvier in the fresh water for
nations of Montmartre near Paris.
In the third period lived the Mammoth,
the Mastodon, the Hippopotamus. and those
huge Sloths, thehMegatherium and the Meg
alonyx, the giants of the natural world, the
grandest apd the last specimens of that ex-
tTaordinary population over which man new
er swayed the sceptre.
The dion and tiger are supposed to be the
q a.. I.