The fossil fish of Vestena Nuova are supposed to prove, from several circum stances, that their privation of life was sudden ; some having been found with the head of their prey still in their mouths ; and others with the remains of the fish which they have devoured still in their stomachs.
The fossil remains of birds are very rarely found ; although frequently men tioned, and even described by different authors. Fossils very much resembling the beaks of birds are sometimes found ; but these are much more probably parts of fishes. Several of those specimens which have been spoken more positively of, as petrifactions of whole birds, and of their nests, have been merely calcareous incrustations of very modern formation. Bones very muds resembling the bones of birds have been found in the calcareous stone of Oxfordshire, and in some parts' of France, and of Germany.
The fossil remains of quadrupeds, es pecially those of the larger kind, are such as must necessarily excite the attention and wonder of every curious inquirer in natural history. In various parts of this country have been found the remains of elephants, and of other animals of consi derable magnitude. In Ireland have been found the remains of deer of a size far exceeding any now known ; and in Scotland have been found the remains of the elk, as well as those of an enormous animal of the ox kind, but larger than even the urus. In France, Germany, Italy, and indeed in most parts of Europe, remains of large animals have been found, and in both North and South America, the remains of enormous unknown ani mals have been discovered. According to Pallas, from the Tanais to the conti nental angle nearest to America, there is hardly a river in this immense space, espe cially in the plains, upon the shores, or in the bed of which, have not been found the bones of elephants and other ani mals, not of that climate. From the mountains by which Asia is bounded, to the frozen shores of the ocean, all Sibe ria is filled with prodigious bones ; the best ivory (fossil) is found in the coun tries nearest to the arctic circle, as well as in the eastern countries, which are much colder than Europe, under the same latitude ; countries where only the surfice of the ground becomes thawed during summer.
The number of bones which have been discovered of the rhinoceros is very con siderable, not only in Siberia, but in Ger many, and in other parts of Europe : and in the opinion of St. Fond, founded not only on the discoveries of Pallas and others, but on his own observations made on the immense collection of Merck, joined with that of the Landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt, are of the species with double horns. An entire body of an animal of this species, still possessing the skin, fat, and muscles, has been dug up near the river Willioni, in the eastern parts of Si beria, from under a hill, which is covered with ice the greatest part of the year. St. Fond states, in confirmation of the above opinion, that another head obtained by Pallas from Siberia ; one existing in the cabinet of the Elector of alanheim ; and another in the cabinet of Merck, are all apparently similar to the head of the dou ble horned rhinoceros of Africa.
This circumstance, so contradictory to the opinion he had formed, of these re mains of large animals having been brought by floods from the eastern parts of the globe ; and which opinion was confirmed by discovering that no re mains of the African crocodile had been found in Europe ; led him to further search, by which he found reason to sup pose that, in fact, the rhinoceros, which corresponded with all the fossil remains which he had seen, was the rhinoceros of Sumatra. By ascertaining this circum stance, the difficulty was removed, since, Sumatra being separated from the penin sula of India merely by the Straits of Ma lacca, this animal might also have former ly existed there.
Much remains to be ascertained with respect to the fossil remains of elephants, of which considerable numbers have been found in various parts of England, France, Germany, and Italy ; but no where so abundantly as in. Siberia. In America indeed the remains of an un known: species of this animal are also very abundant. There appears to be only two species of elephants now in existence ; one (the Asiatic) being distinguished by its grinders being divided into transverse and nearly parallel plates, and the other (the African) having these plates dispos ed in lozenge•like forms.