Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen.
- John Hunter
- Date:
- 1840
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen. Source: Wellcome Collection.
472/494 page 464
![head of the largest mastiff; how far the young white bear may vary from the old, similar to the young dog, I do not know, but it is very probable.* Bones of animals under circumstances so similar, although in different parts of the globe, one would have naturally supposed to consist chiefly of those of one class or order in every place, one principle acting in all places.t In Gibraltar they are mostly of the ruminating tribe, of the hare kind, and the bones of birds; yet there are some of a small dog or fox, and likewise shells. ‘Those in Dalmatia appear to be mostly of the ruminating tribe; yet I saw a part of the os hyoides of a horse; but those from Germany are mostly carnivorous. From these facts we should be inclined to suppose that their accumulation did not arise from any instinctive mode of living, as the same mode could not suit both carnivorous and herbivorous animals.t In considering animals respecting their situation upon the globe, there are many which are peculiar to particular climates, and others that are less confined, as herrings, mackerel, and salmon; others again which probably move over the whole extent of the sea, as the shark, porpus, and whale tribe; while many shell-fish must be confined to one spot.§ If the sea had not shifted its situation more than once, and was to leave the land in a very short time, then we could determine what the climate had formerly been by the extra- neous fossils of the stationary animals, for those only would be found mixed with those of passage; but if the sea moves from one place to another slowly, then the remains of animals of different climates may be mixed, by those of one climate moving over those of another, dying, and being fossilized; but this I am afraid cannot * [There are now skulls of the young and old white bear in the Collection of the College of Surgeons in London which confirm Hunter’s conjecture respecting the difference of form which is due to age in this genus, It will be seen that Hunter adduces this circumstance merely as one which must be taken into consi- deration in comparing recent and fossil crania of the same genus; and that he by no means asserts, as Cuvier states he does, that the differences which he had detected between the fossil and recent skulls, and between the different fossil skulls of the cave bears, are of the same nature and degree.—Ossemens Fossiles, 6me Ed., tom. vii., p. 236. _T [This sagacious conjecture has received remarkable confirmation from recent discoveries ; the fossil bones that have been found in Australia appertain for the most part to animals of the marsupial order, and those collected in South America contain a remarkable proportion of Edentata, some of them of gigantic propor- tions, but all protected by a bony armour analogous to that of the armadillos, which are peculiar to South America. ] a8 [Mr. Lyell thus describes some of the circumstances under which the bones of animals are accumulated at Gibraltar: ‘¢ At the north extremity of the rock are perpendicular fissures, on the ledges of which a number of hawks nestle and rear their young in the breeding season. ‘They throw down from their nests the bones of small birds, mice, and other animals, on which they feed, and these are gradually united into a breccia of angular fragments of the decomposing limestone with a cement of red earth.”” (Principles of Geology, vol. ili., p. 158.) § [For a full development of the relation which the geographical distribution of animals bears to the science of Oryctology, or Fossil Remains, the reader is referred to the second and third volumes of Lyell’s Principles of Geology. ]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33292292_0472.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
