The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1874-09-10
Prof. Owen on Extinct Animals.

| PRoF. OWEN recently delivered lect-
ure in the British Museum TO number
of workingmen connected with the Work
ingmens Club and Institute, and con-
Quoted by Mr.. Hodgson Pratt. The sub
ject of the lecture was Extinct Ami
mails" although the professor almost
confined his remarks to the fossil ele-
plants. He began by directing atten-
| ton to the tusks and skull of the !" Ele-
phas Primogenus," which had been elab-
GRATED in the British Museum from sand.
stone blasted ssme forty years ago in the
formation of the Jumna Canal to point
900 feet above the Indian Ocean Ev.
cry bit of the original ivory and bony
substance had passed away, and had been
| replaced by particles of stone, but the
texture of the original ivory, which was
peculiar, was manifest with the aid of
the microscopsse
1.-THE Professor explained the existence
of the immense tusks in this fossil by
the supposition that when it roamcd the
forest no human beings existed on the
| earth, SO that it lived at ease and with
| out fear, and under these conditions de
vcloped its tusks to the fullest size But
when these conditions were altered, and
the elephant could not appear except
| under terror of that wretched little
biped, man, and his rifle, the nervous
| system was not allowed the quiet and
| repose it needed, and therefore there
| was not that development in existing an
imals that was to be found in the fossil
types. lie supposed that this Indian
elephant had died natural death, and
there was no doubt that the whole Him
alayan chain, the highest in the world,
had been raised since that old elephant
had lived, because in them, at greater
heights than the quarry in which it
was found, were discovered not only fos-
sill elephants, but hippopotami, which re-
CURED lakes and rivers to live in, and
| also fossil girafles Similar evidence was
to be found in the Alps, the Pyrenees and
the Andes. When they came to apply
their own trumpery way of reckoning
time, they had some evidence of nearly
s,0O0 years OF history; but that was a
mere hour, minute, compared with the
| lapse Of time involved in the production
OF the phenomena to which he referred.
| Therefore the real value of these speci-
mems was not the mere interest and
curiosity which attached to them rs such
but the light which they threw on much
| larger questions, viz: The immense
| duration of times past and the changes
which had taken place in the surface of
the earth by the upheaval and subsistence
of the land
The learned professor, referring to an
other specimen which had been found at
llford, remarked that elephants were at
one time abundant in England and that
when this was 50 England must have
formed part of a continent in connection
with Holland and the North of Europe.
Having given other proofs of the subsi-
dencc, as the discovery Of submarine
forest at the mouth of the Tyne, with
the antlers of deer and the horns of ri
gantic oxen, and the submcrsion of the
estate of the old Saxon Earl of Selsea,
as shown by the transference of the re-
mains Of the Saxon saints to Chichester
Cathedral, he briefly referred to the fos-
slls OF gigantic birds found in New Zea-
land and Madagascar, whose eggs would
require a hat for an egg-cup, and then
took leave of his audience.