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M. Pomel, whom I cited above, believed it to come from the brain of the whale called "cachalot." No one would have dreamt in the sixteenth century of mixing this precious stuff with beeswax for modelling purposes. At that date one would as soon have mixed amber with pitch. That reminds me that "grey amber" or "ambergris" is also a product of the sperm whale not to be confounded with spermaceti.
Spermaceti was known, probably from classical times onwards, as a rare and precious unguent, "resolutive and mollifying," as M. Pomel, "chief druggist to the late French King Louis XIV," says in his treatise on drugs, translated into English in 1737. It was applied as a liniment for hardness of the skin and breasts, and was also taken internally.
This great lake, occupying a hollow in the old granitic platform of Central France, must have been in existence for an extensive period, which MM. Pomel, Aymard, and Lyell all unite in referring to that of the Lower Miocene.
It is scarcely possible to determine the age of the oldest part of the fresh- water series of the Limagne, large masses both of the sandy and marly strata being devoid of fossils. Some of the lowest beds may be of Upper Eocene date, although, according to M. Pomel, only one bone of a Palaeotherium has been discovered in Auvergne.
The grinding-teeth are in fact very similar in shape and in pattern, and in the absence of any thick layer of cement, to those of some species of Paloeotherium, especially Cuvier's Paloeotherium minus, which has been formed into a separate genus, Plagiolophus, by Pomel.
In 1835, M. Joly, by his excavations in the Nabrigas cave, established the contemporaneity of man with the cave bear, and a little later M. Pomel announced his belief that plan had witnessed the last eruptions of the volcanoes of Auvergne.
But syre Arthur pressed unto Accolon with his sheld and gaf hym with the pomel in his hand suche a buffet that he wente thre strydes abak. * And at the next stroke Syr Accolon stroke hym suche a stroke that by the damoysels enchauntement the swerd Excalibur felle oute of Accolons hande to the erthe.
In like manner, the Amphitragulus elegans of Pomel, an Auvergne fossil, is identified by Waterhouse with Dorcatherium nanum of Kaup, a Rhenish species from Weissenau, near Mayence.
The grinding-teeth are in fact very similar in shape and in pattern, and in the absence of any thick layer of cement, to those of some species of Palaeotherium, especially Cuvier's Palaeotherium minus, which has been formed into a separate genus, Plagiolophus, by Pomel.
The total number of mammalia enumerated by M. Pomel as appertaining to the Lower Miocene fauna of the Limagne and Velay falls little short of a hundred, and with them are associated some large crocodiles and tortoises, and some Ophidian and Batrachian reptiles. The two upper divisions of the Swiss Molasse the one fresh-water, the other marine have already been described in the preceding chapter.
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