Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/386

336 quadruped. South America has never known, nor does it at this time know, either the elephant, the rhinoceros, or any other animal of equal bulk. All those which have originated in this continent, do not attain the size of a horse. The peregrinations of the elephants, which Buffon introduces into the system of the creation and population of the universe, are contrived with great ingenuity, but are devoid of all probability, and have fallen into universal discredit, more particularly since the learned abbe Baruel has demonstrated their absurdities and incongruities. One of our associates has drawn up a short dissertation, in which he endeavours to give a certain degree of plausibility to the conjecture, that the thickness of similar petrifications may be the effect of a repeated supraposition of lapideous substances, assimilated with the bodies which served them as a basis, and which may have acquired their present exuberant growth, by the means of a vegetation similar to that which many naturalists allow to stones.

Amid the difficulties and incoherences which present themselves, in the investigation of the origin and quality of these enormous petrifications, it will not appear extraordinary that we should leave the question undecided, while we refuse to adhere to the opinion, so generally received in the age of credulity, that they are the bones of some marine monster, deposited in the swampy grounds of Tarija at the time of the universal deluge, and gradually petrified by the means of those lapidific juices which are generally recognized in Nature. To conclude:—the learned will form on this subject the systems which may appear to them to be most susceptible of bination