The hand : its mechanism and vital endowments, as evincing design.

  • Bell, Charles, Sir, 1774-1842.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hand : its mechanism and vital endowments, as evincing design. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    30 MAN SUITED TO THE PRESENT have the ichthyosaurus, megalosaurus, ami hyloe- osaurus, and igdanodon, pterodactyles, with long and short beaks, tortoises, and crocodiles; and these are found among reeds and grasses of gigantic proportions, algae and fiici, and a great variety of mollusca of inordinate bulk compared with those of the present day, as ammonites and nautili. Every thing declares, that these ani- mals inhabited shallow seas, and estuaries, or great inland lakes: that the surface of the earth did not rise up in peaks and mountains, or that perpendicular rocks bound in the seas; but that it was flat, slimy, and covered with a loaded and foggy atmosphere. Looking to the class of ani- mals as we have enumerated them, there is a correspondence; they were scaly ; they swam in water, or crept iqx)n the margins; there were no animals possessed of rapidity of motion, and no birds of prey to stoop upon them ; there was, in short, that balance of the power of destruction and of self-preservation which we see now to ob- tain in higher animals since created, with infi- nitely varied instincts and means for defence or attack. There is, indeed, every reason to be- lieve that the classes mammalia and birds Avere not then created. If man had been placed in this condition of the earth, there must have been around him a state of things unsuited to his con- stitution, and not calculated to call forth his capacities.