Footprints of the Creator; Or, the Asterolepsis of Stromness (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1872. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... This affiliation has a special support in the brain of the dolphin family, which is distinctly allowed to be, in proportion to general bulk, the greatest among mammalia next to the ourang-outang and man. We learn from Tiedemann, that each of the cerebral hemispheres is composed, as in man and the monkey tribe, of three lobes, --an anterior, a middle, and a posterior; and these hemispheres present much more numerous circumvolutions and grooves than those of any other animal. Here it might be rash to found anything upon tne ancient accounts of the dolphin, --its familiarity with man, and its helping him in shipwreck and various marine disasters; although it is difficult to believe these stories to be altogether without some basis in fact. There is no doubt, however, that the dolphin evinces a predilection for human society, and charms the mariner by the gambols which it performs beside his vessel." Here, then, the author of the "Vestiges" palpably founds on a large development of brain in the dolphin, and on the manifestation of a correspondingly high order of instincts; and this altogether irrespective of the structure or composition of the creature's internal skeleton. The substance to which he looks as all-important in the case is brain, not bone. For were he to estimate the standing of the dolphin, not by its' brain, but by its skeleton, he would have to assign to it a place, not only not in advance of its brethren the mammalia of the sea, but even in the rear of the reptiles of the sea, --the marine tortoises, or turtles, --and scarce more than abreast of the osseous fishes. "Fishes," says Professor Owen, in his "Lectures on the Vertebrate Animals," "have the least proportion of earthy matter in their bones; birds the largest. The mammalia, especially th...