Produced by Barbara Tozier, Odessa Paige Turner, Bill Tozier and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's Notes: Obvious printer error's have been corrected. Inconsistencies in Hyphenation and use of accents have been maintained. Italic text has been surrounded by _, the only superscript character is marked by ^. The ligature of [oe] had to be represented as {oe}. THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, PAUL'S WORK. [Illustration: FASCINATION. _Front._] THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. by Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S. Second Series. LONDON: JAMES NISBET AND CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. M.DCCC.LXI. CONTENTS. I. THE EXTINCT. PAGE Death of Species -- Some Died in Early Historic Ages -- Some Dying Now -- Changes of Land and Water -- Tertiary State of Europe -- Dinothere of Germany -- Sivathere of India -- Gigantic Tortoise -- Pachyderms of Siberia -- Rhinoceros -- Mammoth -- Mastodon of America -- Great Quadrupeds of South America -- Sloths -- Habits of Mylodon -- Macrauchen -- Toxodon -- Ancient Australia and its Colossal Birds -- Ancient Britain -- Its Flora and Fauna -- Irish Elk -- Carnivores -- Chronology of the Tertiary Era -- Contemporaneous Existence of Man with the Fossil Fauna -- Gigantic Tortoise -- Condition of Siberian Pachyderms -- Discovery of the Remains -- Contemporary Fauna of Britain -- Chinese and Siberian Traditions -- Indian Traditions of the Mastodon -- State of its Remains -- Its Food -- Comparative Lateness of Geologic Processes in America -- Possibility that the Mastodon was a Beast of Burden -- Darwin on the South American Sloths -- Freshness of their Remains -- Synchronism with Existing Creatures -- Birds of New Zealand -- Maori Tales -- Evidence of Recent Existence -- Story of an English Seaman -- Examination of its Truth -- Fossil Eggs -- Comparison of Dimensions -- Larger Eggs in Madagascar -- Æpyornis -- Its Present Existence Possible -- Discovery of the Notornis -- Tertiary Britain -- Fossil Man -- Worked Flints -- Associated with Fossil Bones -- Species -- Age of Man -- Alluvium of the Nile -- Conclusions from it Delusive -- Rates of Geologic Changes Variable -- Examples -- Evidence of Contemporaneity of Man with the Tertiary Fauna -- Irish Elk -- State of its Remains -- Traditionary and Documentary Evidence of its Recent Existence -- Slaughtered by Man -- Proof of this Fact -- Great Accumulation of Skulls at Lough Gûr -- Weapons found with Elk Relics -- Proofs of its having been Cooked -- Manner of Hunting the Elk -- Ancient Irish Poem on Animals -- No Allusion to the Elk in it -- This Explained -- Notices of Early Oxen -- Their Fossil Relics -- Cæsar's Account of the Urus -- Wild Oxen in Ancient Greece and Western Asia -- Guy of Warwick and the Dun Cow -- The Turnbulls -- The Urus Fossil in Britain -- Vast Size of