Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 25.djvu/228

134 According to Chinese cosmogony the earth was at one time inhabited by tribes of dragons and wild beasts of huge size and savage nature. So great was the confusion which spread through the world, and so loud the din of their incessant combats, that Heaven, unwilling to stand by and see so fair a land given over to continual strife and bloodshed, at length interfered and swept away the whole creation, introducing instead the present more orderly assemblage of animated beings. Proofs of this are found in certain beds in the centre and west of China, where bones of elephants, of tigers, and of gigantic horses and stags are dug up in sufficient abundance to form a common article of commerce under the name of Lung-kuh, "dragons' bones," or Lung-chi, "dragons' teeth;" and as these ancient animals were endowed with greater strength and vigour than the new race, Chinese philosophy holds that their remains used medicinally will impart to their enervated successors some of these lost qualities. Hence these bones and teeth, burnt and ground to powder, are administered in many complaints, for which they are held to be specifics.

These bones and teeth seem to belong to a Pliocene fauna ; they are, in some cases, beautifully preserved, showing the interior structure of the teeth perfectly, and seem to have been deposited in a bright red ferruginous clay with beds of sand and gravel. I have obtained specimens of the teeth of a species of elephant, probably E. priscus ; of fragments of altered ivory, probably belonging to the same ; of two species of horse, one with enormous curved teeth (E. curvidens? and plicidens?) ; of an animal seemingly intermediate between Palaeotherium and Rhinoceros, but the teeth of which are much broken ; of a tiger, a pig, deer, and some others, including a large deeply fluted tooth not unlike that of Glyptodon. Of the localities of these fossils I am not prepared to speak. The results of inquiries I have made seem to concur in pointing them out as common to most of the central and western provinces, and I am, from this reason, as well as others, inclined to connect them with the clay beds of the centre of China. In Ava, in the valley of the Irrawadi, and in India, on the slopes of the Sewalik hills, similar deposits have long been known to exist. Their mode of occurrence in China will probably be found to correspond.

Besides these teeth of apparently Pliocene age, I have met with a number of fragments of fossil ivory, apparently Mammoth tusks, in a completely different state of preservation, the gelatine and animal matter being simply removed and leaving merely the earthy matter behind. No substitution of other minerals has taken place, and the remains adhere strongly to the tongue. These tusks are known in the Chinese pharmacopoeia by the name of Lung-kuh, "dragons' bones." They are broken into small fragments before being brought to market ; but some specimens I have seen would seem to point to a tusk from 13 to 15 inches in diameter. I cannot speak of their locality. Some of the Chinese state that they come from Mongolia.

In China the superficial deposits may be divided into two great classes : — the modern alluvial deposits of the great rivers, and notably of the Hwangho and Yangtse, whose united delta stretches from the