ORGANIC REMAINS.
history of organic remains, or of vegetable and animal structures, more or less entire, preserved in the rocky or other strata of our globe, forms, a branch of natural science, involving the three departments of ge ology, zoology, and botany. It is also a department of natural history, which may, in a great measure, be said to have laid the foundation of all geology. Carrying an air of mystery with it, and encouraging that love of the mar vellous in which so large a portion of mankind delights, it formed the chief stimulus to those pursuits ; and by thus leading from one object to another, promoted the progress of these investigations. That the existence of the bodies of animals in situations so unexpected, should have excited much attention, particularly in the commencement of these pursuits, is no cause of surprise. In the infancy of all the sciences alike, new and uncommon phenomena,- by excit ing wonder, have been a chief cause of their progress.
If thus in times of comparative ignorance, such appear ances, so contrary to the general order of nature, appeared wonderful, now that astonishment has given place to sober and rational inquiry, few have proved more interesting. If, in finding shells that once lived under the sea, now im bedded in rocks deep beneath the surface of the earth, or strewed among sand and gravel on the surface of the dry land ; if, in finding huge masses of rock, as enormous in thickness as far and wide extended, almost entirely com posed of such bodies, the admiration of the early disco verers was excited, our own wonder is not dormant, al though produced by more rational views of the subject. To all, the myriads of bodies thus preserved, are, un avoidably, causes of astonishment ; while, to find animals that must once have inhabited the depths of the sea, ele vated to 12,000 or 13,000 feet above the ocean, has been a source of perplexity and speculation alike to the learned and the ignorant. Not unfrequently, such appearances have led even to doubt ; while, in others, they have had the much better effect of rousing ingenuity and exciting to further observation.
During the state of ignorance to which we have thus alluded, or in the early periods of observation, various ex traordinary opinions were also formed respecting some of these appearances. Thus the bones of elephants and of
other large animals found in the alluvial soils, were con sidered as belonging to ancient races of giants; while poe try and philosophy, with history, sacred and profane, were ransacked and perverted to the views of those who were determined to explain what, at that period of these studies, w,s inexplicable.
The increase of knowledge, and the progress of rational geology, have given a very different complexion to this subject: and if they have not increased the interest attach ed to these appearances, they have at least given it a more rational direction. But as the opinions of our ancestors on the subject of giants are both curious and amusing, we shall produce a few of their speculations for the perusal of our readers. That many of the large bones and teeth thus found were attributed to quadrupeds of uncommon size is, however, certain; as, in many cases, the nature and forms of the bones allowed of no other explanation. It was chiefly in the long bones of the extremities that these errors were commited, and occasionally in the teeth also; the study of comparative anatomy, as may well be imagin ed, not being then very widely diffused.
A Franciscan monk relates that he saw in Mexico a thigh bone, so large that the man to whom it had belonged must have been seventeen or eighteen feet high, while his head must also have been as large as a Castilian wine pitcher. Hernandes, who has expressly written a treatise on this subject, or a Gigantology, also describes huge long bones, together with grinding teeth five inches in breadth, and ten high ; whence he concludes, that the heads of the giants to whom he attributes them, must have been so large that two men could not have embraced them with their arms. That in these, and in innumerable other in stances narrated by writers, the bones and teeth belonging to the quadrupeds which we now know to be found in these soils, need scarcely be said ; but credulity and imposture united, determined to leave nothing undone to prove the former magnitude of the human race and the degeneracy of their posterity, have even pretended to find entire hu man skeletons of uncommon sizes.