Journey to the Sun, page 5
“There are several species of Palaeotheria, which all have a similar form and habits, but which differ in size. The median palaeotherium, P. medium, as a height at the withers of thirty-one or thirty-two inches; it resembles a tapir with thin legs, and among the other animals of its genre, is approximately what the babirusa is among the pigs.
“The short palaeotherium, P. curtum, closely resembles the large palaeotherium, but is much smaller. The thick palaeotherium, P. crassum, is almost thirty inches tall at the withers, and of all the species that is the one that most closely resembles a tapir. The large palaeotherium, P. latum, is between eighty and eighty-six inches at the withers; its head and body are heavy and massive and its legs enormous, which renders it slow and idle. The little palaeotherium, P. minus, is sixteen to eighteen inches at the withers, and has the form of a thin-legged and nimble tapir. The very small palaeotherium, P. minimum, is the size of a hare and it has the legs and agility of one.
“All these animals, which will soon disappear from the surface of the Earth, are the natural intermediates between hyraxes and tapirs. The general resemblance that exists in their compared bones is sufficiently striking to class them in a single family; however, if one wanted to operate in a classification as modern naturalists do, it would probably be necessary to divide them into two or three smaller genera.”
Soon afterwards, I saw an animal every bit as singular as those, which has not left any traces in living nature, The genius told me that it was a common anoplotherium, Anoplotherium commune. It seemed to me to be as big as a medium-sized donkey; it stood three feet and a few inches tall at the withers, and was eight feet long, including the tail, but the latter added at least three feet and was very stout at the base. Its light head, of medium size, bore rather long ears;19 its cloven feet were equipped with two toes, each enveloped in a hoof. Its entire body was covered in long silky hair. It frequented damp places to seek its nourishment, consisting of the roots and rhizomes of aquatic plants. Sometimes, it took the risk of swimming from one island to another, and then its long tail served it as a rudder. We did not see it dive, and none of the herbivore’s habits reminded me of a carnivorous otter.
Another species, the slender anoplotherium, A. gracile, launched itself into the plain, which it crossed in the blink of an eye with the rapidity of a chamois, of which it had the size, but its lighter and more gracious form would have made me mistake it for a gazelle if it had had horns. Like all fearful animas, it had long ears that warned it of the faintest sound and the slightest anger. Its body was covered with short and lustrous fur; it nourished itself on aromatic herbs and loved to graze on hillsides.
I perceived a third species, the hare-like anoplotherium, A. leporum, which did not differ at all from the previous one in its general form and habits, but whose exceedingly thin legs we even better adapted to rapid running, and whose size was almost equal to that of a hare. My genius told me that there were another three species of anoplotheria in ante-Paris, plus choeropotames, pachyderms forming natural intermediaries between pigs and anoplotheria, and adapis, other pachyderms a third larger than a hedgehog and similarly formed.
“It’s singular,” I said to him, “that of so many strange animals, not one will still be alive when I go hunting rabbits in the woods of Meudon. I’d very much like to bring back a little anoplotherium in my game-bag, even if only to know whether it’s as good as jugged hare!”
“They’ll disappear, and the cause is easy to explain; today they have their conditions of existence, which are the lack of large carnivores, the rarity of small ones, and, above all, the absence of humans, who will destroy the large carnivores in their turn and will gradually being about the disappearance from the globe of all the species useless to their needs and pleasures.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me, what has become of the types of dogs, horse and camels? Dead, or submitted to slavery! What has become of the gigantic aurochs that he first French princes loved to hunt in their forests? Dead, disappeared. And the colossal elk whose enormous antlers can still be found in a few peat-bogs? Entirely lost! Even the lion, the king of beasts, which once desolated Greece, Italy, European Turkey and a great part of Asia, has been driven back by humans into Africa, and is becoming rarer every day in the deserts of the Sahara and the Cape, the only places where it still exists. Probably, within a hundred years from 1836, it will only exist in paintings and in natural history museums.
“In any case,” the demon continued, “here come the carnivores, which, although of inferior races, are commencing the war of extermination with the pachyderms. The one that you can see traversing the plain, running on the trail of the anoplotherium-gazelle, is the intermediary between the dog and the Arctic fox. It lives in the woods and, like the wolf and the fox, it hunts animals smaller and weaker than itself continuously. In those bushes you’ll find a genet the size of a dog and two civets, one of an ordinary size and the other a larger by a third.
“Look at the largest of the carnivores of this era slipping through the rushes of the marsh. It’s a mongoose, almost exactly similar to the ichneumon or rat of the Pharaohs, but attained the size of a large mastiff. It’s all the more redoubtable because of its trenchant teeth, arming extremely vigorous jaws. It roams incessantly around the waters in order to surprise the larger species of anoplotheria and palaeotheria, which it kills and devours.
“There’s a very singular little animal; it’s a sarigue the size of a marmoset; it had a membranous pocket on its belly, supported by a bony arch, sand it carries its young in that game-bag of sorts until they’re strong enough to look after themselves and their needs. From time to time it takes them out so that they can enjoy the benevolent influences of the air and sunlight, but at the slightest sound it hastens to gather them in and flee, carrying them away. Asia, Africa, Europe, and even less the environs of Paris, will not present you with any creature that has the slightest analogy with that one; it’s only in Australia and America that they will be encountered.
“There are several hundred other small mammals here. There’s a mouse, but it’s the size of a large rat. In compensation, the dormouse eating that fruit is smaller than a Muscardinus.
“Since we’re on the subject of rodents, I’ll point out an animal of which you’ve heard much mention, because its species has survived the most recent revolutions of the globe and its mores are rather extraordinary; it’s the beaver, of which a few isolated individuals are still to be found, living in burrows like otters, along the Rhône, the Danube, the Weser and a few other European rivers. The first voyagers who observed them in North America have exaggerated the accounts they gave of their mores and habits to such an extent that you probably won’t be sorry if I show you the truth here.
“Beavers are almost the same size as a large badger, their tail is flattened horizontally, in an almost oval form, and covered with scales. Their feet have five toes linked by a membrane, like those of a duck, which gives them a great facility for swimming, their tail fulfilling the function of a rudder. Their life is completely aquatic for several months of the year.
“They don’t live habitually in society, as has been said. From the first fine days of spring until autumn they remain solitary or in couples, in the woods, and they raise their family in burrows that they dig alongside streams. When the first frosts make themselves felt, it’s then that they gather together and occupying themselves building the famous dams of which such marvelous tales have been told. They consist simply of a mass of branches, stones and mud, which they accumulate in the bed of a stream in such a way as to block the watercourse and force it to back up in the form of a small pond. As the materials they employ consist of branches of aquatic trees growing on the banks of streams, it naturally happens that they take root in the fashion of cuttings, and the dam, whose thickness increase by the day, is fortified, forming a thick bush that owes its solidity more to nature than to its architects.
“As for the lodges, they are constructed on very nearly the same principle. They begin to heap up a large quantity of small branches, stones and mud in a place where the water is between eighteen inches and two feet in depth, and they give that mass the form of a conical mound, of which only half is submerged; then they hollow out a round hole in the mound, at water level, which they enlarge in the middle of the heap of materials in such a way as to give it a form analogous to that of an oven. It’s there that they deposit provisions of bark destined to nourish them during winter. They pierce another hole in the dome of that storehouse, and then similarly enlarge that hole in the form of an oven, thus making two rooms one on top of the other, which have only one issue. The latter room is above the high-water mark, and the family and sleep dry there.
“They know how to take full advantage of the current of the stream in order to float their materials to the place where they have to make use of them, but the piles, the trees sharpened at the foot and transported with a kind of artistry, the collaboration in the work, the pretended leaders who force the idle to play their part in the labor, the tail that serves as a trowel, the masonry and the solid walls roughcast with earthen mortar, the kind of police that reigns over each village or even each family, are all as many tall tales with which voyagers have enlivened their narratives.
“In spite of the lodges, the beavers don’t neglect to hollow out burrows in the environs, to which they retreat preferentially at the first sign of danger.
“There is, in the waters of this marsh, another species of beaver, the trogontherium, which will no longer be found alive in modern times. It only differs from the preceding one by virtue of its larger size, equaling that of a Siamese pig. Strong enough to defend itself against its enemies, it has no need to protect itself against their attacks by hiding in the middle of the waters, so it doesn’t construct lodges. It is a general rule that animals, and perhaps humans, only perfect their intelligence in proportion to their needs, and all possible needs have their source in two instincts innate in all organized and sensible beings: that of self-preservation and that of the conservation of the species.
“Study those two instincts, without which sensible beings would not exist; study as a physiologist the material forms that modify the innumerable ways of satisfying them, and from the sight of their forms you can deduce the mores and habits of animals of which you can no longer even recover all the fragments. Fear and amour: those are the two pivots on which all intelligence is posed; they are the unique source of all the passions, in humans as in animals.
“Here’s a hare much less timid than those of modern times, because it has far fewer enemies, walking tranquilly in the plain. Look at its ears; they’re not as long because it doesn’t make such continual use of the organ of haring. Exposed to fewer miseries than its unfortunate descendants, at has no need to be incessantly alert to ensure that he cruel pack doesn’t fall upon it. Its legs are les exercised by fear, so they’re not as long and little stouter by comparison with the modern species. As for its other general features and its size, there’s hardly any difference.
“There’s a rat of a species that will remain completely unknown roaming through the bushes. What is most remarkable about it is its size, which equals that of an average wild rabbit.
“Look—there are other rodents lodged in the cavernous holes of those trees; they’re pretty little animals, and above all, very innocent, resembling both muskrats and guinea-pigs, and having all their habits because they have all their weakness and general forms. Those forms are rather remarkable for the animals that can be arranged naturally in the same family. Their hindquarters, much surpassing in height their forelegs, force them to hop rather than run. When they’re seated, they carry their nourishment to their mouth with their forepaws, and it’s then alone that they develop all their graces. Their eyes are directed sideways; two large incisors arm the front of their jaws and serve to gnaw fruits, plants and bark, even wood when they nourish themselves thereon.
“Here are two species, which, like the beavers, live on the water’s edge, but their size attains that of a mouse at the most, and their form likens them to field-mice. They have furry tails almost as long as their bodies, and all the habits of our water voles. Like them they dig burrows in marshy terrain and raise their young families there. They dive and swim well, and nourish themselves on roots.
“It’s in peat-bogs and caves that the greatest numbers of rodent bones will be found.”
Fourth Epoch
135 meters above the zero-point
of the Pont de Tournelle
The genius said to me: “The sea has passed again, for the last time, over the site of Paris, and has raised it up by some 55 meters. First it deposited a layer of clayey green marl; a bank almost entirely composed of shells, including oysters; an immense thickness of micaceous sand; then sandstone devoid of shells; and finally a superior marine sandstone. As you see, the vegetation already bears a considerable resemblance to what there will be in the modern period. There are still a few rare palm trees to be found, but the zamias and the cycads have disappeared. The forests are composed of walnuts, elms, oaks and other trees mostly belonging to the class of dicotyledons. Even the animals are beginning to take on forms analogous to those they will have in modern times.”
We saw a mammoth walking slowly along the edge of the marsh where the channel of the Ourcq now passes; its height surpassed that of the largest Indian elephant, of which it otherwise had the general form; but its body was heavier and more thickset. Over its neck flowed a long black mane, prolonged over the dorsal spine; the rest of its body was covered in dark brown hairs fifteen inches long, hiding a fine, silky wool nine or ten inches long, slightly curly, especially toward the thick root, tawny in some places and red in others. Its trunk was very similar to that of an elephant, but its tusks, enormously longer, where curled back in a spiral and directed outwardly. It had an elongated head, a concave brow and ears garnished with dense tufts of hair. Its inferior jaw was neither pointed nor advanced, but short and truncated in front. I also noticed that the soles of its feet overlapped the toes somewhat.20
“Several animals exist, in the epoch to which I’ve transported you, that have an analogy with that one,” the genius told me, “and which are similarly herbivores—the mastodons, for example. The large species, which inhabits America, is very similar to the elephant; it has the same height, but is more elongated; it has a thinner belly and thicker limbs. The narrow-toothed mastodon is a third smaller; it lives in Europe, as do the small mastodon and the tapiroid mastodon.”
At that moment a rhinoceros passed close to us, heading toward the location of Montmartre. Like that of India it only had one horn on the nose, but of enormous size; its head was longer and narrower, smooth and without calluses; its eyes were set further back, placed above the last molar and not the fourth; it lacked incisors. Its limbs were very short, from which it resulted that its belly as almost trailing on the ground. Its feet terminated in triple hooves. A very abundant fur, especially on the legs, covered the entire body, and its skin did not form any folds. Furthermore, it had the stupid and ferocious gaze of animals of its genre, and it loved to wallow in the mud of marshes.
“In a country not far from here,”21 the genius told me, “there’s another species of rhinoceros that only differs from this one in having incisors. If you know the African rhinoceros, you can judge for yourself that it doesn’t resemble it at all.”
“Indeed,” I replied. “I not only know the African, but the Indian and the Sumatran. The first has two horns on its nose, and can’t, in consequence, be compared to it; that one has a skin without folds, but bare; in the Sumatran rhinoceros it’s almost devoid of folds, but it also lacks fur and has a second horn placed behind the first; finally, the Indian rhinoceros has only one horn, and its skin is remarkable for the profound folds that form behind and over its shoulders; that thick armor is so hard that it not only resists the Indians’ arrows and spears, but also the bullets of our best rifles, so hunting that untamable animal is very dangerous.
“Rhinoceroses are not cruel, but their brutality and natural stupidity render them very redoubtable to hunters bold enough to go after them. They flee at first, like all animals; then, in the end, harassed by the dogs, the noise, the horses and he gunshots, they become furious, turn round and charge head down at all the objects that disturb them, knocking over and trampling underfoot the horses and hunters unfortunate enough to get in their way, and only falling under the redoubtable blows of their enemies when a bullet strikes them in the had close to the eye, where there is a chink in their impenetrable armor. It’s neither their courage nor the instinct of their power that makes them brave danger thus and hasten toward death, but rather a blind fury that calculates nothing, comprehends nothing and often, in captivity, develops for no reason and against anything.
“At any rate, those formidable animals flee inhabited places and seek the solitudes of marshy and wooded deserts, where they nourish themselves on grass, reeds and young tree-branches. If, in its nocturnal roaming, chance leads one into a cultivated field of sugar cane, maize or bananas, it breaks and overturns everything, and spoils ten times more produce than it would need to nourish itself. Lured by a nourishment that pleases it, it withdraws during the day to sleep in a nearby forest, and for several nights it returns to inflict similar damage.
“As soon as the Indians perceive its disastrous visits, they follow its tracks from the place where it has broken the bamboo fence to get into the field; experienced hunters know that where it has passed the day before it will pass again that day and the next.
“Immediately, a ditch between twelve and fifteen feet wide and deep is dug and the opening hidden by extending bamboo canes and date-palm leaves over it, which are covered with dry leaves, moss and a little earth. Then the owner of the field, hidden in the branches of a tree a few hundred paces away, waits for the redoubtable but not very cunning animal to fall into the trap.
