Let us hope that some coming geologist
of the dim future, finding the fossil remains of the sunken 'Captain,'
or the plated scales of the 'Comte de Grasse,' firmly embedded in the
upheaved ooze of the existing Atlantic, may shake his head in solemn
deprecation at the horrid sight, and thank heaven that such hideous
carnivorous creatures no longer exist in his own day.
FOSSIL FOOD
There is something at first sight rather ridiculous in the idea of
eating a fossil. To be sure, when the frozen mammoths of Siberia were
first discovered, though they had been dead for at least 80,000 years
(according to Dr. Croll's minimum reckoning for the end of the great ice
age), and might therefore naturally have begun to get a little musty,
they had nevertheless been kept so fresh, like a sort of prehistoric
Australian mutton, in their vast natural refrigerators, that the wolves
and bears greedily devoured the precious relics for which the
naturalists of Europe would have been ready gladly to pay the highest
market price of best beefsteak. Those carnivorous vandals gnawed off the
skin and flesh with the utmost appreciation, and left nothing but the
tusks and bones to adorn the galleries of the new Natural History Museum
at South Kensington. But then wolves and bears, especially in Siberia,
are not exactly fastidious about the nature of their meat diet.
Furthermore, some of the bones of extinct animals found beneath the
stalagmitic floor of caves, in England and elsewhere, presumably of
about the same age as the Siberian mammoths, still contain enough animal
matter to produce a good strong stock for antediluvian broth, which has
been scientifically described by a high authority as pre-Adamite jelly.
Pages:
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330