Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1858-09-18
From Hugh Miller's "Cruise Of the Betsey."
FOSSIL.

Thomas Campbell, when asked for a toast in q
society of authors, gave the memory of Napoleon
Bonaparte; Significantly adding, che once hung a
bookseller" On q nearly similar principle | would
DO disposed to propose among geologists a grateful
bumper in honor of the revolutionary army that
besieged Maesetricht. That city, some seventy.
five or eighty years ago, had its Jealous naturalist
in the person Of NJ. Hoffman,, a diligent excava'
tor in the quarrios of st. Peters mountain, long
celebrated for its extraordinary fossils. Geology,
as a science, had no existence at the time; but
Hoffman was doing, in a quiet way, all he could
to give it q beglnning;-he was transferring from
the rock to his cabinet, shells, and corals, and
crustacea, and the teeth and scales Of fl, hes, with
now and then the vertebr@, and now and then the
limb bone, of a reptile. And as he honestly re
Enumerated all the workmen he en- plOyed, and did
no harm to any one, no one needed him.
On one eventful morning. however, his friends
the quarters laid bare a most extraordinary fossil,
the o~ccipital plates of an enormous saurianr
with jaws four and a half feet long, bristling over
with teeth, like cheUauG de triSe; and after llutf-
mann, who got the block in which it lay embedded,
cut out entire, and transferred to his house, had
spent week after week in painfully relieving II
from the mass, all Maestricht began 10 speak OF
it as something really wonderful. There is II ca
thedral on st. Peters mountain, which is church
land; and the lazy canon, awakened by the general
talk, laid claim to poor HJffmann's wonderful fossil
as his property. He was lord of the manor, he
said, and the mountain and all that it contained
belonged to him. Hoffman, defended his fossil as
he best could in an expensive lawsuit; but the
judges found the law clean against him: the huge
reptile head was declared to be treasure trove'
escheat to the lord of the manor; and Hoffman,
half broken-hearted. with but his labor and thu
lawyers bills for his pains, saw 1t transferred 10y
rude hands from its place in his museum, to TIT
residence of the grasping churchman.
The huge fossil head experienced the fate OF Dr.
Chalmers two hundred churches. Hoffman, wa
a philosopher, however, and he continued to OBJ
serve and collect as before; but he never founC
such another fossil; and at length, in the midst o
his ingenious labors, the vital energies failed with
in him, and he broke down and died. The useles
canon lived on. The French Revolution broke out
the republican army invested Maestricht; the bat
teries were opened; aud shot fell thick on the devo
ted city. But in one especial quarter there alight
ed neither shot nor she'll. Al was safe arOun,
the canon's house. Ordinary relics would hay
availed him nothing in the cireumstances,-n
not 'tbe three kings of Cologne" had he posses
sed The three kings entire, or thejaw'bones of tn
"eleven thousand virgins" but there was virtue il
the jaw.bonss eff the MOsasaurus, and safety il
I their neighborhoOd. The French sdUans, like al
I the other SdUaRS of EuaOpe. had heard of llof
!, mann's fossil. and the French artillery had beel
directed to play wide Of the place where it lay.
? Maestricht surrendered; the fossil was fOunt
secreted in a vault, and sent away to the Jdrde
des Huntes at Paris, mangre the canon, to deligh
{ there the heart Of Cuvlef: pad the French, gener
A ously addressing themselves to the heirs of Ilsh
o mann as its legitimate owners, made over to then
a considerable sum of money as its price. The
A reversed the finding of the Maestrisht Judges; an,
i all save the monks of Saint Peters have acquies
ced in the justice of the decision.
~