(5/8. If we suppose the case of the discovery of a
skeleton of a Greenland whale in a fossil state, not a single
cetaceous animal being known to exist, what naturalist would have
ventured conjecture on the possibility of a carcass so gigantic
being supported on the minute crustacea and mollusca living in the
frozen seas of the extreme North?)
With regard to the number of large quadrupeds, there certainly
exists no quarter of the globe which will bear comparison with
Southern Africa. After the different statements which have been
given, the extremely desert character of that region will not be
disputed. In the European division of the world, we must look back
to the tertiary epochs, to find a condition of things among the
mammalia, resembling that now existing at the Cape of Good Hope.
Those tertiary epochs, which we are apt to consider as abounding to
an astonishing degree with large animals, because we find the
remains of many ages accumulated at certain spots, could hardly
boast of more large quadrupeds than Southern Africa does at
present. If we speculate on the condition of the vegetation during
those epochs, we are at least bound so far to consider existing
analogies, as not to urge as absolutely necessary a luxuriant
vegetation, when we see a state of things so totally different at
the Cape of Good Hope.
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