"We see clearly from what has been stated that our seas are very poor in whales; we can easily count the individuals which have been stranded. But was it so in that ancient sea which deposited the red and black sand of the province of Antwerp?
"We shall remark that between the seas of two distinct geological epochs there existed, in respect to their great inhabitants, considerable differences, and these differences bear at once on the number of species and the quantity of individuals: as rare as they are rare now, as they were abundant then.
"If the chemical composition of the sea has changed like its inhabitants, we are still ignorant of it, but we shall not, perhaps, always be so. As Ehrenberg has pointed his microscope to the infusoria, and Herschel his telescope to the stars, Bunsen and Kirchhoff direct their scrutinizing prism over the entire world to find out its chemical nature, and they will soon tell us, doubtless, whether the Crag Sea contained the same chemical elements as the present ocean. May we not expect this from the savants who have noted gold and silver in the sun, and have determined the absence there of the most common metals of the earth, silicium and aluminium?
"We have already said, on other occasions, that the Crag Sea nourished such a great quantity of seals, dolphins, and whales, that their debris forms, in different localities, veritable ossuaries.[1] Bones of all dimensions are there thrown pell-mell; and we see clearly that the skeletons of these great cetacea have been, during a long time, the playthings of the water. At each tide, shreds of bones and flesh were swept backward and forward by the waves, until the soft parts were perfectly decomposed. The cetaceans only were thrown upon the greatest heights, during the highest tides; and they were sometimes buried in their integrity.[2]
"Independently of these legions of cetaceans, a great number of fishes frequented the same latitudes; but there are scarcely any other remains than those of the Selachian fishes that have come down to us. The most curious is the Carcharodon megalodon, which was not less than seventy feet in length, and for which an ox would have been only a mouthful. Teeth of the Carcharodon have been left in the Crag, and a very curious vertebra.
It is extraordinary that we find there so few remains of osseous fishes. "Perhaps we may find the explanation of the rarity of the ordinary fish in the fact that the ziphioid cetaceans predominated in that sea, and that the nutriment of these cetacea consists exclusively of cephalopodous mollusca. The great whales, as we know, feed only on the pteropodous molluscs, or on particular Crustacea, both of small size.
"We shall not say anything of the shell-fish, nor the superb corals, which peopled at that epoch the basin of Antwerp. It is upon M. Nyst, whose conscientious labours are so justly appreciated at home and abroad, will devolve the task of some day entertaining you with these interesting animals.
"We should not always think that these fossil bones and their high value in a scientific point of view may not have been already appreciated by naturalists. For a long time they have been known. These bones have often been attributed to giants. Who knows if they do not even enter into the legend of the origin of Antwerp? Be that as it may, the
- ↑ 'Les Grands et les Petits dans le Temps et dans l'Espace,' Bull. de l'Acad. Royale de Belgique: 2e série, t.x.
- ↑ The cetaceans, of which the relics are found in such abundance at Saint-Nicolas, appear to be under these conditions. 'Ossements Fossiles découverts à Saint-Nicolas en 1859,' Bull. de l'Acad. Roy. de Belgique, 2e série, t. viii.
